Overdue For An Examination

[amms 0]

for the greater good.......

 

Really? Because Ayr and Kilmarnock fans will put decades of enmity behind them and embrace this great new age? C'mon, you want to increase attendances at Kilmarnock give them a chance of competing and put Ayr in the same division as them. Nothing pushes clubs forward like competition.

[the gunslinger 3,366]

Sacrifices will have to made for the greater good.

[The Real PapaBear 0]

Sacrifices will have to made for the greater good.

 

yes, very good.

Now take your tongue out of your cheek and look up "Reductio ad absurdum"

[The Real PapaBear 0]

I'd like to know how anyone is going to decide where the line for that "more equitable" split could fairly be drawn under a gate sharing plan.

 

Without European competition group stage football each year neither us or the east end lot are even close to being profitable clubs and yet you guys think we should be able to take a £15m per season ticket revenue hit on the chin?

 

Right well, there goes any chance of having a squad which is going to regularly have a shout of making it through 3 qualifying rounds to reach European competition group stages.

 

There goes half, perhaps even more of the club's infrastructure and staff.

 

Are the people who ultimately decide gate sharing will be good for Scottish football even if it shatters Rangers & Celtic going to pop down to Ibrox & Auchenhowie to hand out the 50 to 100 redundancy letters personally and apologise to the employees?

 

You raise four fair points here, which I would answer thus;

 

1. it would take two reasonable people somewhere between 10 and 12 minutes to work out what would be an equitable split of gate receipts. Me? I'd go for 60/40.

2. If we are a loss making enterprise whilst having an income 6 times the league average, then that's a systemic failure; i.e it doesn't matter what our income was, we'd still be loss making. it is that systemic failure which needs to be addressed, not the amounts being lost.

3. The redundancy notices handed out at Ibrox would accompany the job offers being made at Hamilton, Livingston, Hibs, Falkirk and Motherwell whose businesses would be expanding.

4. It's almost certain that we'd struggle to achieve regular CL qualification during the first years of gate sharing. But how is that different from recent history when we failed as often as we succeeded?

 

The point is that the increased funds to smaller sides allows them to develop more talent so the quality of the Scottish game, over time, would result in a better Rangers side and Scottish teams achieving a higher co-efficient which would mean that we would be entered into the CL groups or Q Round 3. The way it used to be when teams like Aberdeen, Dundee Ud etc used to be able to hammer Borussia Moenchengladbach or Bayern Munich - when we had gate sharing.

[calscot 0]

Some of the people advocating gate sharing need to think more about the situational evidence.

 

The US examples are closed systems, we are not. Maybe Aberdeen et al were sometimes competing with Bayern Munich etc but if it was a time of gate sharing for Scotland, was it not the same for Germany ie weren't BM handicapped by the same system that boosted Aberdeen? Not only that, it was before TV money was the main income - and in Germany commercial income is also far bigger than gate money.

 

Trying to compare the past with the present (and also omitting the effects of a decent pool of Scottish players and the presence of Alex Ferguson) is like comparing Britain's standing in the world during the Empire and now.

 

Even the competitions were far different where getting to the semifinal meant winning just a few ties against only the champions of each country instead of a league with multiple TV (and billionaire) funded teams from the top five countries.

 

Do we really think both the OF would have gotten to a UEFA cup final while giving away say 30% of their income?

 

On a basic level it seems that if we gave away the share of our gates in the top league, we'd probably have a similar income to that which we have now - basing it on £15 a ticket now and £25 a ticket in the top league.

 

The type of team we have now is what we'd have to compete with every year with no chance of improvement. Would it make the other Premiership clubs more competitive? Of course but would we be competitive in Europe right now? Not a chance.

 

We already have a skill drain of players down south with most of our national team playing in England. Would this not make it even worse with our national game becoming like that of Ireland?

 

There is just not enough money in our game to support this and any cause and effect conclusions drawn from what is now an alien past is just folly.

[amms 0]

We reached a UEFA Cup Final with a squad that cost a fraction of squads in previous seasons that didn't do anything of note in Europe, your budget argument goes both ways.

 

Assumptions are being made about income going down. Gate receipts will almost certainly go down but why should that determine other income too? If we have a genuinely competitive league with a higher calibre of opposition that will generate more interest. More interest leads to better sponsorship, increased TV revenue, corporate entertaining and higher attendances. It should also lead to better players being produced which should also improve revenue. More importantly it should mean we are all watching better matches where both teams try and win. It's worth it for that alone frankly.

 

Comparisons with the League of Ireland are pointless and scaremongering. The average attendance in the LOI was 1,653, the highest only 5,621, despite that some of their club sides have done better than ours in Europe of late!

[Super Cooper 0]

We reached a UEFA Cup Final with a squad that cost a fraction of squads in previous seasons that didn't do anything of note in Europe

 

Are you sure about that? Our costs that year were so much that we posted the highest turnover in our history and our debt still increased, reason given was higher wage costs. Our captain had also negotiated our clubs highest ever bonuses and we carried a squad which was as big as anything we have ever had.

[54andcounting 0]

...I can't stop thinking about this bit

 

... the prostate exam from an overweight medico with fingers like fairtrade bananas.

 

 

Thanks Andy

[calscot 0]

We reached a UEFA Cup Final with a squad that cost a fraction of squads in previous seasons that didn't do anything of note in Europe, your budget argument goes both ways.

 

I'm not sure what you are arguing here. Previous squads at least had the potential to compete in Europe. We're now worried about competing with prem teams in the domestic cups who struggle against Europe's minnows.

 

Assumptions are being made about income going down. Gate receipts will almost certainly go down but why should that determine other income too?

 

Not only will gates receipts probably go down but also the gates themselves. The OF hedgemony as boosted both clubs' gates to unprecedented levels for averages. Can't see that lasting with both clubs struggling to buy quality players while being outbid by League One and lower Championship sides in England. I doubt the increase in other clubs would compensate.

 

If we have a genuinely competitive league with a higher calibre of opposition that will generate more interest.

 

I can't see where this interest would come from. As said above the interest from OF fans could drop off quite a bit and not necessarily be compensated by fans of other clubs. Interest from outside is mostly in the OF and that won't last when they are seen as great teams of the past but emasculated and poor quality in the present.

 

More interest leads to better sponsorship, increased TV revenue, corporate entertaining and higher attendances. It should also lead to better players being produced which should also improve revenue. More importantly it should mean we are all watching better matches where both teams try and win. It's worth it for that alone frankly.

 

That's a pretty rose tinted viewpoint. Where is the evidence of this? I really can't see where the money is going to come from for a league about the same level as the top of the English League One. What people also forget is that so called "competitiveness" can be incredibly boring which is the way of Scottish football outside the top two. When everyone is about the same then you get no big games, no trends, just a jumble of random results. There is no drama to speak of except maybe the odd local derby.

 

Think of thermodynamics, when you lower any potential difference, you have less events and less reactions, everything gets into equilibrium and nothing of note happens anymore.

 

 

Comparisons with the League of Ireland are pointless and scaremongering. The average attendance in the LOI was 1,653, the highest only 5,621, despite that some of their club sides have done better than ours in Europe of late!

 

 

Perhaps instead of Ireland we should be comparing with Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Austria and Switzerland. All rich, footballing countries of a similar population size to us.

[amms 0]

Are you sure about that? Our costs that year were so much that we posted the highest turnover in our history and our debt still increased, reason given was higher wage costs. Our captain had also negotiated our clubs highest ever bonuses and we carried a squad which was as big as anything we have ever had.

 

I am sure, yes. Compared with Smith's squads during 9 in a row and all of Advocaats.