Talks over two-tier SPL on ice for another two weeks

Published on Friday 17 December 2010 13:38

Discussions with leading clubs over wide-ranging reforms of the Scottish game will be deferred until the new year after the Scottish Premier League postponed tomorrow's scheduled general meeting.

Proposals for a two-tier SPL, with ten teams in each division, and changes to the calendar were set to be put to all 12 Clydesdale Bank Premier League clubs tomorrow.

However, the Arctic weather conditions which have decimated the fixture programme and disrupted travel across Scotland have caused the SPL to rearrange the meeting for January 4.

A strategic review group - comprising SPL chief executive Neil Doncaster, SPL chairman Ralph Topping and representatives from Hibs, St Mirren, Motherwell, Celtic, Rangers and Aberdeen - set up by the organisation concluded their eight-month schedule of meetings last Sunday.

All top-flight clubs have been involved in the ten or so meetings at some stage, discussing how to overhaul the Scottish game. The radical plans would mean a 36-match league season and the removal of the split, which has caused numerous controversies due to the anomalies in fixtures.

One automatic promotion place would be supplemented by play-offs between the ninth-placed team in the top tier and three teams in the second tier.

Those changes are unlikely to come into force straight away but a July start date, coupled with a winter break, could be introduced next season ahead of reconstruction.

Although persuading 12 clubs to vote for a ten-team league could prove difficult, the ethos of the plans is understood to focus on reducing the gap in revenues between clubs in the SPL and Irn-Bru First Division.

Several clubs have suffered financially for years after failing to secure an instant return to the top flight.

Teams finishing in the upper echelons of any SPL2 would receive income closer to the clubs in the bottom reaches of the top flight, while lower divisions could be regionalised.

The Scottish Football League have been incorporated in the talks, as have the Scottish Football Association.

Former Scottish First Minister Henry McLeish was also heavily involved in the discussions and endorsed them as he announced the findings of his review of the Scottish game.

But the clubs are cautious, with some believing the top flight should be expanded, rather than contracted.

Kilmarnock chairman Michael Johnston said: "I think a ten-team league could work, but there are all sorts of permutations that could work better.

"Most of the managers in the SPL have come out and said that they would prefer a bigger league rather than a smaller league. There are also the issue of play-offs; you can have play-offs up and down the leagues as the Dutch have shown.

"There's all manners of ways of getting the right number of fixtures and having arrangements with play-offs that make it attractive to TV companies and for commercial reasons.

"So a ten-team league might be the right answer or it might not, so I'm keeping an open mind on it."