SCOTTISH PREMIERSHIP ARTICLE - February 1998
| So, would anyone care to tell me the point of the new
Scottish Premiership, then? As far as I can see, 10 teams have split from the current
10-10-10-10 set-up, to form a new league of 10, leaving the other 30 teams behind in, er,
3 leagues of 10. Instead of the current one-up, one-down system between the Premier clubs
and the rest, we'll have... a one-up, one-down system between the Premier clubs and
the rest (except without a 9th-vs-2nd playoff, which the Premier
teams always won anyway). So far so completely pointless. But wait! Apparently, the new set-up is going to "greatly increase the competitiveness of Scottish club football", as well as improving our European club performances and those of the national side. How is this going to be achieved? By eventually extending the top league to 12 teams, of course! Oh joy! Another 8 games a season! Just what everyone's been praying for, there. I can see the happy May smiles on the players' faces now, as after a series of exciting cup runs they trot out for their 70th competitive fixture of the season. (Anything up to 20 of which will have been played in the last 6 weeks, given the traditional Scottish winter freeze and the equally-traditional end-of-season fixture pile-up). And I'm looking forward to Euro 2000, too. What a non-stop party we'll all have then. How fine it will be to be a Scotsman, watching with pride as a knackered and confused Gordon Durie is trundled into the box in a wheelchair for every corner in the last 20 minutes, trying to nod a low cross in at the near post without disturbing his tartan travelling rug or running over any of the prone bodies of his home-based team-mates. The real and only purpose behind the new Scottish Premiership, of course, is to snatch away the huge bags of TV/sponsorship money currently landing in the hands of the lower-league clubs (I mean, aren't we all just sick of watching Albion Rovers and Caledonian Thistle on Sky yet again?) and use every last penny of it to buy another two packets of chocolate biscuits for Rangers' reserves. It's possibly the most despicable act of bare-faced, short-sighted, pointlessly sickening greed ever perpetrated, not just by the world of football but by the entire human race, and I hope every single one of the idiot scum involved in it is visited late at night by the Ghost Of Christmas Past and killed in their sleep. And that's true. |
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