The debate about league restructuring has become wearisome and disappointing.  The affliction of self-interest, which has dogged our game, continues to impede any form of restructuring which will facilitate the delivery of a product on the park so desperately sought by the fans of all clubs.  The conversations never seem to get to the crux of the matter – tinkering about with the league structure won’t solve the bad business management which is at the heart of the problem; a bad business model set in place by the creation of a top 10 Premier League in the mid 70’s where every club predicated their financial planning not on how they trade, but on how many times they can get to play Celtic and Rangers.  This model determined by fan base of just two clubs was then crippled by the ludicrous “speculate to accumulate” culture fostered by Murray, Masterton and their cohorts at Bank of Scotland which created a player arms race yet took no heed of the new dynamics of England’s TV deal which generated 1,600% player wage inflation.  Scottish football can be saved, but clubs, SFA and all supporters need to be honest about what a country of our size can achieve.

Do you recall the heady days when 10’s of thousands of punters were at stadia across Scotland?  When everywhere you turned were queues at turnstiles and EVERYONE seemed to go to a game? No?  What age are you – 10?  Ignore the perceived wisdom that the halcyon days of Scottish football were in the times of our fathers and grandfathers – we’ve just lived through them!

This season has been odd to say the least.  With no rival or threat to us domestically we have waltzed through the league campaign, our performances regularly looking like we have a group of players who know they are better than the opposition and therefore can’t be bothered moving out of 2^nd gear.  Europe has been the exact opposite; some nervy initial performances at home but, with the exception of Benfica some of the best away European performances ever.  We broke the away game hoodoo of the Champions League.  The best team in Europe lead us for mere seconds across over 180 minutes of football home and away.  But it is domestic performances that put season book bums on seats and pay the wages – and many have been dire.

I first wrote about this in September.  Our home performances I felt were unbecoming of the money season book holders pay.  The defence seemed to be that everyone knew we were going to win the league so all energies were being channeled into Europe and to be fair as a pot 4 team we over achieved and reached that last 16 of the Champions League.  Indeed, I found it odd that as I escalated my comments on twitter from irritation to frustration to annoyance to anger, the largest response seemed to be …”But we beat Barcelona.”