Davieboy

1. The mind-blowing arrogance of Rangers, putting themselves forward as one of the 2 automatic teams to have their Colts in the bottom league. 2. The comparisons to European leagues who already have Colts – several of these leagues have been dominated by a ‘big’ 2, 3 or 4 etc. However, I don’t think their ‘big’ teams are several times larger than their nearest diddy teams like we have here is Scotland. e.g. Spain have their Real Madrid and Barca, but they also have Athletico Madrid, Valencia and several other etc. The advantage to the big teams of having Colts is not as large if the other clubs have them too. What Rangers are proposing means the diddy teams can’t have Colts in the SPFL. Don’t answer this by saying ‘well your didddy team can’t afford it, why should that stop the old firm?’ Why should the premier league clubs have to pay to do this? If it is going to benefit the national team, would the SFA not be clamouring to pay the clubs to do it? They won’t, because it won’t. Simples. 3. My own team play in the championship; the prospect of it being watered down by having old firm Colts in there depresses me. You want to be promoted by finishing top, not by finishing 3rd behind the old firm colts. 4. What happens if the Colts draw the parent team in the cup? Have special rules for this? Do we really need more special rules to accommodate the OF. We already have it e.g. bye’s in early round of League Cup, ‘free’ week to go off on a jolly to play glamour friendlies, etc. 5. In my opinion, the number 1 problem in Scotland is the utter dominance by the OF. They maintain the status quo by manipulating bigots and the media and by stifling any real challenge from other teams. The medium to long term effect of this plan will be to strengthen the OF and widen the imbalance in the game. The short term financial benefit to the lower league is pennies to the OF. 6. This imbalance would be worsened by reducing the likelihood of people going to support their local (small) club. There are already too many OF ‘fans’ across the country, most of whom never set foot in parkhead or ibrox. Say you have a guy who is a ‘fan’ of rangers or celtic but also goes to see his local (wee) team on occasion. What does he do when the colts come along? I suspect he will become a big fan of the colts, and lose interest in his ‘wee’ team. There is very little chance of wee teams growing their support as the ‘floating’ OF fans will all be lost to them. 7. If Rangers want to help the lower league clubs, why not just give them the money, without the Colt thing? It’s because it isn’t about helping the lower league clubs; it is a financial investment that they hope will reap good returns in the future. The timing is so cynical too. Sure, the game doesn’t feel great at the moment (in large part that is due to Ranger’s ‘operation chaos’, which has been in full flow since mid-March in an attempt to get the null and void result), but this plan is nothing more than a bribe to clubs in desperate financial difficulty. The time to restructure is after a decent length of discussion and planning, not in the immediate aftermath of a whirlwind.