Soccer Football - Scottish League Cup - Semi Final - Rangers v Aberdeen - Hampden Park, Glasgow, Scotland, Britain - January 15, 2023 Rangers manager Michael Beale reacts Action Images via Reuters/Jason Cairnduff
Micky Beale believes that the SPFL isn’t a fair league and lacks credibility.
The rookie Ibrox boss isn’t a fan of the split which ensures that every team has a different set of fixtures.
This season it looks like Celtic will face a top six team three times at home and just once away, by the time of the split at Fixture 33 Ange Postecoglou’s side will have hosted two Glasgow derbies, Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen twice with just one away visit to each of those sides.
Ibrox chief Stewart Robertson has sat on the SPFL board every second year without questioning the set up but with 10 matches left to go Beale is starting to squeal.
He told the Daily Record:
Everyone has an opinion on whether Celtic and Rangers should be in the league or out of it. I have a personal opinion on the split. Unless everyone plays everyone else the same amount of times, it’s not a fair league.
Why not just add two more teams and then we can have a six and an eight split? The more complicated you make the competition, the less credibility it has as well. That’s not me talking down the league.
In the first batch of fixtures for next season Celtic will travel to Ibrox and almost certainly to Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen, every club is aware of the scheduling with no alternatives put to a vote.
Should the Glasgow derby SPFL matches be for home fans only
Yes, it is inevitable- get it done
I’ve never liked the split.
As opposed to the 80 Min league, the VAR penalty league etc etc!!
The split isn’t great but here we go:
1) they want more than the 36 matches the 10 team Premier Division generated, but not the 44 matches 12 teams playing each other 4 times creates.
2) they need 4 Glasgow derby matches in the league for selling to TV.
3) they want minimum relegation but fewer dead rubber matches.
therefore we have the split, which creates anomalies. Live with it or or change it. A 20 team top division would give the same number of matches with no split, but would generate only two Glasgow derby matches in the league, and unless there was willingness to increase promotion/relegation from the current one plus a play-off spot, it would also create a huge number of fairly meaningless dead rubber matches for sides nowhere near contention for European places nor in any danger of relegation. Be careful what you wish for…..
Clubs that don’t have to fear relegation will be more likely to blood young players and try to play a more attacking game than the turgid every-point-a-hostage/survive-at-all-costs pish we currently see.
They say the split adds drama but it doesn’t really. The truth of the matter is that most seasons at the bottom you have two or three clubs well in the relegation fight and the rest just going through the motions (dead rubbers0, and at the top you have the same two sides fighting it out (or not as the case should be with us crushing the hun) and the rest fight it out for the chance to get pumped out the first round of Europe the next season. Split or not it would just be the same thing.
Expand the league to 18 teams with more promotion and relegation. We get offered an absolutely insulting pittance of a TV deal here so why should we worry about giving them four derbies each season? Scrap the TV deals and allow clubs to set up their own PPV systems. They’d probably make as much directly (if not more) over the course of a season that the pathetic slice of the fun-size pie the get now.
I wasn’t necessarily arguing in favour of the status quo, just explaining why it is the way it is, but the old pre-1975 SFL set up was done away with because it had become so stagnant and generated heaps of dead rubber games between safe but uncompetitive teams. The so-called ‘top ten’ did invigorate the league enough (for a time anyway) to give us Aberdeen and Dundee United winning championships. And nearly Hearts… nearly but not quite (thank you Albert, from the bottom of my heart, thank you).
I don’t imagine that the MENSA members running Scottish Fitba’ have it in them to come up with anything truly innovative so any changes would probably involve one of the methods already used: 10 teams – 36 matches, 12 teams – 44 matches or 18 teams – 34 matches…. Maybe regularly changing it around is the answer to keeping it fresh although moving from 18 back down to 12 or 10 would potentially involve one very big relegation season like the end of 1974/75 when EIGHT clubs lost their top tier status, probably involving a lot of job losses and pain.
I don’t think there is a Holy Grail here and the extremely imperfect ‘split’ might be the best of a bad lot.