How television turned our game into painful viewing

Spurs have an annual turnover of 120 million. Opponents Hearts, who the English club crushed 5-0, have a turnover of 8m.

The White Hart Lane squad was assembled at a cost of 190m. The Tynecastle equivalent? A mere 10m. Clearly, we are not comparing like with like, but the haves with the have-nots.

The chasm between Scottish and English football was brutally exposed at Tynecastle as Spurs barely broke sweat to inflict a record European defeat on a dumbstruck Hearts side.

On an evening which also saw Rangers and Celtic leave themselves with much to do against Slovenian and Swiss opponents respectively if they are not to join Hearts in exiting Europe's secondary club competition before the end of August, Harry Redknapp's blunt observation about the vast difference in financial resources north and south of the Border said it all.

It wasn't always this way. Where once Scottish and English teams met on a fairly level playing field, now they operate in different worlds.

There was no gloating from Redknapp, nothing patronising in his comments. From a generation of Englishmen who respected Scotland as one of the greatest production lines of top-class footballers, Redknapp was simply stating the bald facts which can be traced back to a television-inspired revolution almost 20 years ago.

For if we transport ourselves to 1992 for a moment, we can reflect on a final qualifying round tie in the inaugural Champions League which saw the title holders from Scotland dispatch their English counterparts 4-2 on aggregate with no little panache.

But the level playing field which Rangers and Leeds United occupied at Ibrox and Elland Road on those occasions was about to ripped up and relaid by the emergence of a competition which has led to the fiscal mismatch referenced by Redknapp.

It was the year which saw the birth of the English Premier League, the leading clubs' secession from the Football League funded by British Sky Broadcasting in a five-year contract worth a then staggering 191.5m. The figure pales into insignificance now. From a 670m renewal in 1997, breaking through the 1 billion barrier in 2003, the EPL's domestic television contract is now worth a breathtaking 1.75bn. That's just under 600m a year for the screening of matches in the UK alone, an annual growth figure since 1992 of 27 per cent.

Factor in the extra 460m earned from overseas TV rights and it's easy to see why the EPL has become football's land of milk and honey.

By comparison, Scotland is surviving on a diet of thin gruel. When the top clubs tried to jump on the Sky bandwagon with the formation of the Scottish Premier League in 1998, they initially earned 11.25m a season.

Four years later, as then chief executive Roger Mitchell floated the notion of going it alone with SPL TV, a 45m renewal offer from Sky was rejected and an 11th hour deal with BBC Scotland, worth just 5.5m a year, was the only option left.

The SPL returned to satellite paymasters in 2004 with Setanta for 8.75m a year, a move which did lead to a record 125m four-year contract with the Irish-based firm in 2008.

But Setanta's subsequent collapse the following year left the SPL high and dry. They were simply grateful to accept their current deal with BSkyB and ESPN which nets them 13m a season, worth less in real terms than that first contract they signed back in 1998.

Once, Scottish football's disadvantage was that it drew on a population base that was a tenth of England. Our clubs could still punch above their weight, but now, the spending powers of English clubs give them the pick of talent from across the world, which is to the detriment of development of players for their national team, but has allowed the clubs to take their ambitions to a new level, one which is unattainable for even Scotland's big two.

Rupert Murdoch, pictured inset right, has taken the rap for many things recently and the Australian media magnate's billions have certainly been the single biggest factor in placing English football in a different stratosphere from its Scottish counterpart.

And ironically, while the screening of our games on live television have brought levels of exposure our clubs could never have dreamed of before, the development has made our game poorer to watch.

The illustrations of the financial gulf are easy to find and utterly startling. Celtic, for instance, published their annual accounts earlier this week which revealed a turnover of 52.56m.

Spurs, the tormentors of Scotland's third best club on Thursday, earned more than that in television revenue alone last season as they collected a cheque for 53m for their fifth-place EPL finish.

Blackpool were the lowest TV earners in the EPL last season, but their payment of 39m still dwarves the 2m TV income Rangers received for winning the SPL. Even Burnley, Hull City, Middlesbrough and Portsmouth raked in 15m each from EPL television contract parachute payments despite remaining in the Championship.

Rangers and Celtic, who for a while in the late 1990s and early 2000s attempted to keep in touch with the salaries and transfer fees commanded in the EPL, now find themselves priced out of the market. Frustrated supporters of the Scottish champions have spent the summer watching their club being gazumped by English Championship outfits who can afford to pay higher wages courtesy of the Football League's own 88m-a-year television contract.

That deal will be cut to 65m a year from next season, perhaps a sign that the Championship bubble may burst, but it will remain five times more than the SPL contract is worth.

Bryan Jackson, a partner at leading accountants PKF who has been involved in the crises which have struck Motherwell, Clydebank, Clyde and Dundee over the past few years, finds it difficult to see any light at the end of Scottish football's ever-darkening financial tunnel. "I'm very sympathetic to the situation facing Scottish clubs and it is a difficult situation to reverse," Jackson told The Scotsman. "We are in a recession which makes it even harder. It is more difficult to secure sponsorship and merchandising income is in decline. It means it is even more of an uphill struggle. The gap between what English clubs can afford to spend and the resources available to Scottish clubs continues to widen."

Even when it comes to shopping abroad, Scottish clubs are browsing the shelves in the bargain basement stores. Only the most knowledgeable football anorak has previously heard of the majority of the foreign imports who come into the SPL. Celtic deserve credit for their resourcefulness in signing players such as Emilio Izaguirre and Beram Kayal, who have emerged as potentially EPL-standard, while Rangers have done likewise with the recruitment of Nikica Jelavic.

But the harsh reality is that none of those players would be in Glasgow right now had any EPL club wished to sign them. If they do make the progress expected of them with the Old Firm, then they will be lured south sooner rather than later and double their money.

Scottish football's problems are not entirely attributable to the balance sheet, of course. The SFA and our leading clubs have to accept responsibility for standards of coaching and youth development, while local and national government investment in training facilities remains an issue.

But the game finds itself caught in a vicious circle in which diminishing standards on the pitch lead to an SPL product in which no television company will rush to invest the kind of money required to effect the improvements in performance levels and results so badly needed. And with a population of five million, television rights are held back by a limited audience if there is no significant demand elsewhere to tune into the thrills of the SPL.

Redknapp understandably bemoaned the standard of player being produced in Scotland in his post-match reflections on Thursday. Certainly, there are no Dave Mackays, Denis Laws, Kenny Dalglishs or even Joe Jordans being exported to England's top flight now.

Yet Spurs did pay Rangers around 9m for Alan Hutton three years ago, while Craig Gordon and Charlie Adam have both commanded similar fees in recent times to ply their trade in the EPL. Talent is still emerging from the Scottish game but the better the player, the less likely he is to remain here and improve it, David Goodwillie's move from Dundee United to Blackburn Rovers being the most recent example.

It can only be hoped that the Scottish national team at least sees some benefit from more players being exposed to action in the EPL, having paid its own price for the game's general decline in the shape of no appearance at a major tournament finals since 1998.

As recently as 2003, Scottish football still found itself able to go toe-to-toe with its oldest rivals at club level when Celtic saw off both Blackburn Rovers and Liverpool on their way to the Uefa Cup final. Now, however, any European draw which prompts the "Battle of Britain" label in the tabloid sports pages is to be feared rather than relished.

Last season, the arch-pragmatist Walter Smith refused to make any apology for the smothering 5-4-1 tactics which secured Rangers a 0-0 draw against Manchester United at Old Trafford in the Champions League. The man who oversaw that swashbuckling defeat of Leeds 18 years earlier had reached the conclusion that damage limitation was now the only option.

The former Scotland and Rangers manager had been warning us for some time of the grim fate awaiting Scottish football. Tynecastle on Thursday night may just have provided the most damning evidence yet that the doomsday scenario is closer than any of us might have believed.