Rival watch

Their reputation has been dwindling for years.
It’s always difficult to gauge where Celtic and Rangers are at, but their trajectory is downwards as they have little meaningful domestic competition and recruiting decent players has become harder. The gulf between Rangers and a smaller European club in Club Brugge looked huge.
The rest are League One standard - which is where they sign many of their players from.
It’s hard to imagine Aberdeen and Dundee Utd getting anywhere near repeating their feats of the past.
How long before Celtic and Rangers want to play in the PL again? Some owner/investor will see it as their only viable option.

 

Scottish players used to account for over 90% of Scotland's top league it is now down to less then 40%. In the Premier League it is around 32% English players which is even lower. England, you could argue, is producing more quality players than ever before but Scotland probably less than ever before.
Scotland has lost its heavy industry and mining where most of its footballers came from. England too has lost much of its heavy industry but take the sons of first and second and maybe third generation immigrants out of the England squad and see how the quality would drop. I take it Farage is not a football fan. England is lucky to have such resources.

 

The Scottish national team is better now than it has been for quite some time.
The Serie A contingent speaks for itself and there's positivity there, too.
The Scottish football pyramid is bloody awful, though.

The Ugly Sisters did a job on it financially, then Rangers ****ed it completely.
How a club in that position managed to go under I'll never understand.
The English leagues have a lot of things to criticise, but this is another level.
Having one team dominate so completely and easily doesn't help.
The failure of everyone else to step into the vacuum left by Ranger is awful.

 

Scotland has made some efforts by building large indoor football pitches for youngsters. Another factor in all of this is the banning of ball games in parks, the privatisation of sports fields, and also the growth of motor transport. Street football was a British pastime as well as street cricket (in England at least) that's no longer possible because of parked and moving cars. If you want to play football now you pretty much have to join somewhere or something.
The other side of the coin is the huge money available to pro. Footballers, even down the quality pyramid it's good. That should in the end increase the number of top footballers produced.

 

I think most small countries can only support one or two elite football teams. Following the collapse of the USSR there are now many more East European teams and that increases the competition as we can see in the national tournaments and the Champions League. Football has grown so enormously worldwide in the last 50 years it's literally a different ball game.

 

I believe Scotland's got plenty of room for decent teams, though.
Ajax are the dominant Netherlands side, but you've still got depth there.
Portugal has their big three and Braga.

The Edinburgh sides mystify me, but I think that may get sorted soon.
Decent sized city with plenty going for it and an obvious derby match.
Horribly run and generally underperform.

 

Edinburgh is more like? well just imagine a city like Bath having a top football team or Cheltenham. Leith is really the football place. I think Hamilton or Motherwell might have more chance of establishing an elite team.

 

Hearts have Tony Bloom on board now. He’s very ambitious with his plans.

 

I was wondering what your take on Scottish football might be King?

 

Motherwell have always punched above their weight.
Only team not to have been relegated from the SPL other than Celtic, IIRC.
Local population is tiny, though. Edinburgh is half a million-ish. Motherwell is 32k.

 

Yeah, I'm surprised that more English clubs haven't tried it.
His approach to football should push them on massively.

 

Motherwell is also fan owned. The catchment area is bigger though PNP, the Central Belt contains most of the population of Scotland.

 

Most of it's carved up between other sides though, Spurf.
Glasgow and Edinburgh have obvious choices and some less obvious ones.
Most of the towns have their own clubs, too. Falkirk, Livingston, St Mirren, etc.

 

Your knowledge of world football always amazes me PNP. East Kilbride is large area not far away and Hamilton of course. Despite that the problem is the huge money needed now for top players and Scotland can only hope to develop their own talent

 

Celtic are complacent because Rangers seem to be in a never ending cycle of hiring the wrong manager which means Celtic can just coast through and win the league under no real pressure. I’ve been up here since 2013 and Celtic have won every title bar 1. That’s not good for the game.

I’d love to see one of the other clubs (most probably one of the Edinburgh sides or Aberdeen) actually finish second to freshen things up a bit but the gap is so big that even a disaster of a season for Rangers and they’ll still probably finish second.

I hope Hearts can benefit from Tony Bloom and become contenders, it would make things much more interesting