SPFL reconstruction debate ignores an inconvenient truth

A press conference was called at the Royal Scot Hotel in Edinburgh to announce that Hibernian, Motherwell and St Johnstone had joined the revolution. And the big ticket sales pitch was the promise of a return to a 10-team top flight where the number of games would be slashed to 36 a season.

Good luck selling that idea these days. Three decades since the rancour of the Scottish Super League, the names, faces and fashions might change, but the debate rumbles on. Festering under the surface like a virulent cold sore, league reconstruction is the virus which lies dormant for years then breaks out when no one is looking.

Fifty years since they created the Scottish Premier League they are still striving to find the balance between the financial needs of clubs and the physical demands on players.

Still deluding themselves that the perfect league structure is out there somewhere, if Neil Doncaster would only search a little harder. Still searching, in growing exasperation, for the utopia no one ever finds.

The Hampden fixtures computer is grinding to a halt with all these extra games in Europe. And a lack of free, available dates in the domestic calendar has forced the SPFL’s Competitions Working Group to look, yet again, at the options for change.

The SPFL hierarchy would welcome a top flight of 10 teams, and a reduction in fixtures from 38 to 36 would be the cleanest and easiest way to clear some dates in the calendar. The problem for the administrators issue is that they don’t get a vote. And those who do are running for the hills.

The vitriolic response to proposals for a smaller Premiership has killed the idea of firing up the Flux Capacitor and travelling back to 1975 stone dead.

Fan-owned outfits like Hearts, Motherwell and St Mirren don’t even need to canvas members on how they feel about the matter. Two working ears and an internet log-in does the job just fine. A 10-team league is going the same way as Monty Python’s parrot.

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Deciding what doesn’t work is the easy part. Finding something that does is the hard bit.

In the years between 1975 and 2000 the top flight flitted between 10 and 12 teams three times.

These days the need for an 11-1 majority makes it easier to reverse global warming than it is to change anything about the Scottish Premiership.

Every time clubs are faced with a major decision they revert to a default position. They study the league table and ask, ‘what’s in it for us?’

You could have put the kettle on for the chairman of St Johnstone being first out the blocks with a call to expand the league instead of shrinking it. American owner Adam Webb believes a 10-team league would be a “huge mistake” and that can’t possibly be linked to any personal boredom over Saints playing the same teams four times a season. The man has barely been here five minutes.

Despite yesterday’s heroics against Celtic, a more likely explanation stems from the general problems St Johnstone have holding their own in a 12-team top flight. Slash the number to 10 and Simo Valakari’s toiling team are down and out.

Earmark three clubs for the chop next season and there’s a chance they would be dragging Kilmarnock and Dundee down behind them. No surprise, then, that Derek McInnes and Tony Docherty are talking up the virtues of a bigger league as well.

Webb would prefer the Scottish Premiership to model itself on the English Premier League by moving closer to a league of 20 teams.

St Johnstone owner Adam Webb would like to see the Scottish top flight modelled on the English Premier League (Image: SNS) Cast an eye around Europe, however, and the size of a top flight usually corresponds to the size of the country. Bigger nations with bigger populations comfortably sustain more teams. England, Italy and Spain have 20 in the top flight, Turkey has 19 and Germany, France and Poland 18.

Smaller nations with populations similar to Scotland – think Croatia, Denmark, Ireland, Slovenia and Slovakia – find that 10 or 12 works better. There’s more jeopardy, more meaningful games and, most important of all, fewer mouths to feed.

The compromise is three leagues of 14. Yet, in 2010 the Henry McLeish report expressed reservations over a 14-team top tier. While the idea carries plenty of public support, the former First Minister claimed it would “run the risk of some serious financial difficulties and a reduction in the financial distribution going to (more) clubs”.  Besides which, any league where some clubs play more fixtures than others – like Greece and Israel – has a credibility issue.

A 16-team set-up is the popular pick with supporters, but rarely seems to gain any serious traction with clubs.

If that’s the case again then they might be forced to consider the possibility that there isn’t a great deal wrong with what’s in place now. In the coming weeks a 12-team league split will guarantee drama and storylines from third place right through to the relegation zone.

If they “must” change to address fixture congestion, they could always look at how the Danes split their top 12 into six and six after 22 games, with teams playing each other twice more home and away in a campaign of 32 games. If that’s a solution all parties can live with – and good luck with that – it’s worth a serious conversation.

There really is no way of keeping supporters and broadcasters happy at the same time. No realistic hope of finding a solution which suits Celtic and Rangers as well as East Fife and Stenhousemuir.

Sure as day, the time will come when a group of 20 or so full-time clubs summon up the spirit of Mercer, tire of the tail wagging the dog, pull up the drawbridge, take the Sky money and leave the part-time teams to squabble amongst themselves.

Until then Scottish clubs will torture themselves yet again by going through the motions of searching for a one-size-fits-all solution to the reconstruction question which doesn’t actually exist.

At a time when everyone else is throwing in their tuppence worth, this column might as well do the same. Clubs should hold their nerve, ignore the clamour for change and stick with the devil they know.