There's one thing I don't quite get about the whole "Rangers and Celtic joining the English league" thing - how ANYBODY benefits from it, except the teams left behind in the Scottish league.

There are two arguments for why the OF would want to play in the Premiership - competition and money. Let's take them in order.


1. COMPETITION
Um, why would Rangers and Celtic want this? Why would they want to lose more games than they currently do? It's a well-documented fact that both clubs, but especially Rangers, lose fans like snow off a hotplate when results start going against them. And what's the benefit to either club of a greatly reduced chance of qualifying for the Champions' League? Which brings us to:

2. MONEY
The big argument is that the OF would get more money from TV if they were in the English league, which is undoubtedly the case. However, you have to balance that against the money they'd lose by almost certainly NOT being in the CL every season. Now, I haven't looked at the respective figures, but I'm almost certain that one year's CL money is worth more than one year's TV money from the Premiership (on average, both of these things being variable by performance), so they're almost bound to end up with LESS cash overall. Factor in attendances (lower numbers of home fans because they're losing more, and probably no more away fans, because how many supporters are going to travel up from London, Birmingham, Portsmouth, Southampton etc every other week?) and the financial situation gets even worse.


So there's nothing in it for the OF. What about the English teams? Well, the big teams would face extra competition for CL/UEFA spots (I trust nobody's seriously going to argue that the OF are worse than Leicester or Wolves or Leeds or Middlesborough), which they're unlikely to welcome. The middle sides face increased danger of relegation, and the sides at the bottom get kicked out straight away to make room.

Money? It's hard to see the OF bringing in serious extra revenue for Premiership clubs. Most Premiership games, as far as I know, sell out or pretty close to it already, and certainly in the cases of the bigger sides. So the large supports of the OF don't bring in any extra money there. (Plus there are possible issues with extra policing costs.) And I doubt Sky would pay significantly more for Premiership rights just because Rangers and Celtic were there. After all, the novelty of Scotland vs England clashes is going to wear off pretty quickly when there are two every week.

Clearly there's nothing in it for the lower-division English clubs, who'd face an even harder time breaking into the gravy train of the Premiership. The only people who stand to benefit are the smaller Scottish sides. They'd lose some TV money, but it seems at least plausible that it'd be compensated for by higher attendances, since it's pretty dispiriting following a Scottish club when the OF hoover up 98% of the trophies. Take them out and you've got a genuinely competitive league in which anyone can win, and surely that's going to generate more fans, as would the greatly-increased chances of European qualification.

Nobody's suggesting that this proposed move would be done for the benefit of the lesser Scottish league sides, so can anyone explain to me who, even in theory, benefits from it?


(All of the above, incidentally, makes the assumption that the technical UEFA matters were sorted out, ie Rangers and Celtic would be allowed to represent England in Europe despite playing in Scotland. Heck, as far as most Scottish people are concerned, they currently represent England and Ireland respectively anyway, as anyone who was at the UEFA final last year would confirm.)