Can anyone ever see...

WCD, you figure it out.
If you think that's good what's wrong with the status quo?

QB, I'm not sure what you're talking about. If I think what's good? The number of different winners in Scotland? Is that really the only thing you took from my posts?

Whats wrong is the old firm have pulled much further away from the rest in the last 15-20 years. Practically every club in the country is in debt and operating at a loss. Crowds are falling. Our teams are performing poorly in Europe. I'm not sure why you want me to point this out to you or how it helps the debate.

As for play-offs, or even two relegation places. But with the current SPL voting system you're asking for turkeys to vote for Christmas.

Whats wrong is the old firm have pulled much further away from the rest in the last 15-20 years. Practically every club in the country is in debt and operating at a loss. Crowds are falling. Our teams are performing poorly in Europe.
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The gap between the OF and the rest was a factor of x4 in the 70's/ 80's, now it is a factor of x10.

Its not a gap any non-OF team will bridge anytime soon.

Crowds are actually okay in Scotland: you have one of the highest attendances at football matches per head of pop'n in Europe (if not the highest).

The problem is the gap and the quality outside the OF. Unless the OF shunt some resources to these teams the product and challenge will remain poor.

The problem is not the number of professional teams its the skew and distribution from the bigger ones. The OF dwarf everyone else, who are also dwarfed by the city teams: Hearts, Hibs, Aberdeen and Dutd.

You have far too many small teams.

16 team league won't work in the s-term: too many meaningless games and not enough bigger games; and the loss of 2 OF games each season would mean a serious revenue drop in TV money.

"The gap between the OF and the rest was a factor of x4 in the 70's/ 80's"

Do you know hw times times between 1977 and 1996 celtic and rangers both finished in the top two? Zero. There was no gap in the 80s.

"Crowds are actually okay in Scotland: you have one of the highest attendances at football matches per head of pop'n in Europe (if not the highest)."

Compared to other countries our attendances are pretty good, but they are down considerably compared with five or ten years ago, which is still a problem.

The crowd's are skewed because of the O/F bringing 50/60,000 every week.
That's the reason Scottish attendances "look" good.
D.U. have played to less than 4,000 in matches this season.

In what way does including the old firm 'skew' the attendances? Are they not part of Scottish football?

"D.U. have played to less than 4,000 in matches this season."

Dundee United aveagre 7,410 to a game this season
and Dundee have averaged 4,380. That's 11,790 people attending home games in a city with a population of 150,000. 1 in 15 attending games is actually quite good if you comapre it to most cities and towns in Europe.

I'm not sure why you have such a chip on your shoulder about Scottish football outwith the old firm.

The resource gap was bridged by better coaching at the likes of Aberdeen, DUtd and HFC. The resource gap is bigger and better or comprable coaching qualities cannot bridge it.

Quality outside the OF is really poor.

West-coast, you want to re-arrange the chairs.
I'm saying it'll take a lot more than that to fix Scottish football.

In what way do the O/F attendances skew the average?

Oh I don't know. Here's an idea, take out the O/F attendances and see what the average is.
Think about it, man.

Yeah, that's not skewing - they are part of the avaerage. If you take out the old firm attendances, you no longer have the average SPL attendance. You have the average attendance of 10 SPL teams. What the relevance of that stat is, I'm not sure. Think about it. Man.

You have given two ideas for fixing Scottish football, and I've shown you why they won't work. (I'm assuming your idea of putting rangers and celtic in the 3rd division was a joke. If you were being serious, I can tell you why that won't work either.)

I do want smaller changes than you, but that's because you seem to want to reconfigure Scottish football into something unrecogniseable. I don't think it needs such drastic changes to survive.