Celtic’s hopes of fielding a B team in a new look Conference League from season 24/25 are under pressure from two sources.
With Aberdeen pulling out there are just three Premiership clubs prepared to take part with growing opposition to the plan from clubs in the SPFL, Lowland League and Highland League.
SPFL clubs have repeatedly voiced their opposition to B teams being installed in their set up, after two seasons playing in the Lowland League the SFA have conjured up another new league aimed at satisfying the need for B team football without shoe-horning clubs into an existing set up.
Four Premiership clubs joined six from the Lowland and Highland Leagues in a new fifth tier was put forward as the solution but a week before the AGM of the SFA there are serious doubts that the plan will get off the ground.
Stephen McGowan of the Daily Mail reports:
PLANS for a new Scottish Conference have suffered a setback after Queen’s Park ended their interest in entering a B team.
Controversial proposals for a new 10-team fifth tier, pitching Premiership Colts teams against sides from the Lowland and Highland Leagues from season 2024-25, will be put to the vote at the SFA AGM on Tuesday.
Celtic, Rangers and Hearts are prepared to pay a £100,000 fee to enter a team in the proposed new division.
Queen’s Park expressed an interest after Aberdeen decided against getting involved, but the Championship club informed the SPFL last week that they would not be pursuing the idea.
To pass muster the new competition needs 55 of the 102 member clubs to vote in favour.
Responding to a backlash by supporters, however, Peterhead, Albion Rovers, Bonnyrigg Rose and Raith Rovers have already gone public with their plans to say no.
Ten Highland League teams and five from the Lowland League have also signalled their intention to vote against the plan, leaving the SFA and SPFL facing the growing possibility of defeat.
After two seasons of playing in the Lowland League it doesn’t look like any Celtic B team players are closing in on a place in Ange Postecoglou’s first team squad.
Rocco Vata and Ben Summers have made brief top team appearances off the bench but really need a season of first team football in the Championship or Premiership to advance their claims.
Part of the conditions of membership of the Premier League ought to be running a reserve side to an acceptable level. This garbage about colt teams in the Lowland league and this proposed ‘conference’ is nonsense. The Lowland League and Highland League teams are generally opposed to it because after years of campaigning for a promotion pyramid in to the SPFL but now having this imposed on them, it makes a mockery of their competition, but like an unhappy partner they are coerced into acquiescence because of the money on offer.
That this is the best idea they can come up to bridge the gap between youth teams and SPFL First XI’s tells you all you need to know about the empty blazers running Scottish football. Neil Doncaster couldn’t be left unsupervised with a box of matches.
Sevco tae pay 100k…
Get it in full…
Nae payment plan ffs..?
This is all down to the SFA’s grip on the structure of Scottish Football.
There should be a clearly defined separation of Professional and Amateur Football
with separate Governing bodies.
The whole idea of Amateur Clubs voting on issues relating to the Professional Game is a nonsense.
These are the blazer & brown brogue chairmen apprentices for the SFA.
The SPFL should divorce itself from the SFA. Take it to the Courts and all the way to the CAS if necessary.
The SFA is by its very nature and composition a restriction on the growth of the Professional Game.
The Game is run (sic) by ego driven glorified Bowling Club Administrators.
The Highland and Lowland leagues bleating on about, preserving the ‘Pyramid’ structure and route for promotion blah, blah, blah.
When was the last time a team made the transition from the Highland & Lowland Leagues?
There are far too many Clubs in the present Pro / Semi/Pro structure that should in reality be playing in the Amateur leagues.
We can’t afford the present 4 top divisions as it is. But hey every wee ‘ brogue wearing ‘ Chairman
has to have a chance at the ‘greasy pole’ to the land of milk & honey at SFA HQ.
That’s what is holding the game back.
Narrow minded bigots in an insular country who have no real love of the game itself
and who have no intention of relinquishing control of the Cash Cow.
For Cash Cow read Celtic.
For context, when I say Amateur I ‘m referring to the bottom 2 leagues in the present 4 league structure.
Average Attendance: 125 old pipe smoking old men and 3 dugs.
Club Chairman is a noted local business man ( runs a local taxi firm and 2 tanning parlours).
A lot of the smaller clubs you disparagingly refer to serve smaller communities, where a crowd of say 2,000 is the equivalent proportion of its population as 50,000 at CP or iBrox would be, and League One regularly saw crowds bigger than many Premiership clubs this season (Dunfermline and Falkirk often drew bigger crowds than Livingston, Motherwell, Ross County, St Johnstone and Kilmarnock in the season just ended). They have every bit as much right to exist and compete in the SPFL as Celtic have to compete in the Champions League – like them, we’ll never win it, but competing is enough. Don’t buy in to the ‘big is best’ idea, if you take that to its logical conclusion even Celtic don’t survive, all you end up with is the self-defined ‘megaclubs’ playing each other all the time – the apocalyptic crap that the “European Super League” would have delivered – on TV.
In answer to your question ‘when was the last time a team made the transition from the Highland and Lowland leagues?’, since 2014/15 when the pyramid was introduced there has been four – Edinburgh City/FC Edinburgh, Cove Rangers, Kelty Hearts and Bonnyrigg Rose (the first three of whom have already secured at least one subsequent promotion since joining the SPFL) with a fifth about to join them (Spartans). If you are suggesting teams from the Highland or Lowland Leagues haven’t been very successful since joining the pro ranks, have a quick check who we are playing in the Cup Final on Saturday…..