Click here or read below for my article on the radical SPL play-offs proposed by Dundee United chairman, Stephen Thompson. It was published on www.theawayend.net.
Play-off Madness
Dundee United chairman, Stephen Thompson, has controversially proposed his own Scottish Premier League plans which would determine the winner through a play-off system at the end of each season.
All twelve current SPL clubs were due to meet on Monday to discuss the possibility of a ten team league,only for the snowy weather to scupper the plans. The discussion was to be based around the system proposed by SPL Chief Executive Neil Doncaster, a system which would see the bottom side in the Scottish top tier automatically relegated, with the winner of a 'SPL2' moving up a division automatically. As the regular season finishes, a play-off scenario containing the ninth placed team in the SPL and second, third and fourth in the SPL2 would then take place.
However, Thompson believes the SPL proposals are not radical enough and says that the top four teams to finish in the SPL should battle for the title in a play-off.
Thompson has stated that "just going back to a top 10 will not change anything. If we are to have just 10 in the top league, we have to look at really radical proposals.
“Fans of teams outwith the Old Firm have become fed up of those two sharing the title between them.
"I think we need to go further and make things more interesting at the top of the table as well as having promotion/relegation play-offs."
Fair?
Is Thompson's idea fair though? Is there really any justification for a team to finish top of a league after 36 gruelling fixtures, only for the SPL to turn around and say “sorry guys, but now you have a match against the fourth placed side who finished 'x' points behind you, to see who are the champions”. If that fourth placed side knocked out the table toppers and went on to win the play-offs, would they really be worthy winners? Despite (for arguments sake) finishing twenty points behind the first placed side, why should they be rewarded with the trophy because they managed to collect a decent amount of points during the regular season and then winning four games on the bounce, right at the end?
Surely, the worthy and correct champions of a long league system are the side who collect the highest number of points? Scotland's top flight already has two competitions which have a knock-out system. The Scottish Cup (a competition that Thompson's side won last season) and the Scottish League Cup are already in place and give teams outside the Old Firm a better chance of winning competitions because teams do not have to be consistent over a long period of time to win it.
Crowds
Thompson asks us to consider “a top-four play-off with home and away games and a play-off final at Hampden.
"There would be full houses for all the games and it would create huge interest from the TV companies and the fans and would generate a lot of money, perhaps as much as £2m extra income for the teams in the SPL.”
That is all fine and well, the play-off matches would indeed be absolutely exhilarating. However, what about the money and crowds that Celtic and Rangers will lose during the regular season? The last time an Old Firm side finished outside the top four in Scotland was in the 1989/1990 season, when Celtic finished fifth. In every other season since, both of the Old Firm have finished in the top four. So what exactly is appealing to Celtic and Rangers fans about this play-off ending season? All Old Firm fans will realise that their clubs have an extremely rare chance of not making the play-offs. So why do they need to bother going to any league games until the play-offs? There is no incentive at all. Most Old Firm fans would find something else to do on a Saturday because there would be no reason to turn up to watch their team play a meaningless match.
Thompson may not care if Old Firm home crowds drop sharply, but what he would certainly miss, as a chairman, is the thousands of Old Firm fans that pay to come through to Dundee to watch games containing his football club.
Conclusion
Not only is Thompson's proposal grossly unfair, but it is also selfish and clearly only in the interests of his and similar sized clubs. We may well see Hearts or Dundee United win the top tier of Scottish football once more with this new system, but if they finish ten or twenty points behind the actual winner after 36 games, do they really deserve to be holding the trophy?
