The real changes that Scottish football needs

You can’t polish a turd. This is what the people behind the restructuring of the Scottish game appear to be trying to doing.

I’ve said before that if we have the same players, the same struggling clubs, the same referees, the same senior management, then the product on the pitch is likely to be the same – regardless of what we call the leagues.

At the end of the day, if there’s competition within the league and ticket prices are reasonable then the fans will turn up. Obviously a ‘reasonable’ price is something that is up for debate but the point is that a good product will get a bigger crowd coming to watch it.

I know the league season is only one match old, but we’ve already saw the same old rubbish from the same useless officials. I am referring to the ridiculous penalty decision that Willie Collum (for reasons best known to himself) decided not to give. My seat is just behind the goal and I was able to see it was a clear penalty, the replay on TV was even clearer.

If the referee cannot see that, then he’s incompetent and shouldn’t be getting paid more per match than what some of us earn per month.

This is the same referee who has given plenty of very bizarre honest mistakes in the past. Funny enough, those honest mistakes always seem to go against Celtic or in favour of whoever our opponents happen to be.

Moving on to the league itself, will we have a more competitive league this season? In the past, I have said that I don’t see the death of Rangers as taking away from the competitiveness of our league. Instead it’s not having any challenger that could take away from how good our league is.

Were a team like St Johnstone, for example, able to step up and run us close, then it’s going to be an exciting season with all runners and riders abiding by the rules and laws of the land despite the lingering presence of non-contributers like Neil Doncaster, Campbell Ogilvie, Stewart Regan and the honest mistake brigade