Curls wrote:How on earth does the Scottish league work?
They've played 35 games and there are 12 teams.
If they played against one another 3 times, it'd be a total of 33 games.
There are 3 games left, so it'll be a total of 38 games,
that gives 5 games extra? I see now they're doing bottom six and top six? so that would account for the 5 games, is that to make relegation battle fairer/more on par?
But surely if you finish comfortably 7th and win all 5 of your bottom 6 games, and the team who came 6th lost all five of their top 6 games, that would just be completely unfair for league position,
is it locked in after 33 games so 7th and 8th can't overtake 5th and 6th?
Why have i never noticed this before, why do they need so much football?
Some teams play each other 4 times a season.
You're mostly right yeah. I can try and explain this in a little more detail but it's needlessly complicated and, honestly, an ill-thought out shower of shite at the best of times. We have a 38 game season to keep the league in line with England's top division and make the package more attractive for potential television deals and, I think, keep our European teams competitive with regular football for a full season. However, the entire population of Scotland is a little over half that of the city of London, so the professional league system is naturally much smaller than England's. We have 42 teams across four leagues, something like 25-30 of which are fully professional (I think Falkirk may have been the only fully professional team in League One this season, so possible even less). The Scottish league system was a closed shop until 2014-15 as well, we've only had relegation out of the bottom league for about a decade.
Because there are so few top level teams in the country, our top league only has twelve teams, which doesn't translate into a 38 game season. So after 33 games - three rounds - the league "splits" into a title half and a relegation half, and the places are locked. Seventh place or below at the split can't finish higher than seventh, and sixth place or above can't finish lower than sixth. Theoretically without this, a team playing against weaker opponents could finish higher than a team who has a much tougher final five games and get into Europe (imagine the difference between Celtic, Rangers, Hearts and Ross County, Livingston, St Johnstone in your final three).
The post-split fixtures are worked out after the 33 matches have been played based on how many home and away games each team has left, which is where the system really shows its flaws. It can be expected that the top six will consist of Celtic, Rangers, Hearts, Hibs, Aberdeen and somebody like Kilmarnock, Dundee United or another form club from the previous season, so the first 33 fixtures are worked out accordingly.
For example, Rangers and Celtic will always,
always, have two home and two away games against one another in a season, but sometimes one of the two might have to play in a slippery away game, like at Tynecastle, Easter Road or Pittodrie, three times in order to balance out home and away fixtures because there are only five post-split matches and sometimes a surprise team makes it into the top half. This season has a couple of examples because the league was a bit funny - Aberdeen (lol get it up them) and Hibs strawberry floated it, but smaller clubs St. Mirren and Dundee made it into the top six. Spare a thought then for St. Mirren, who have had to go to Celtic Park three times this season, or St. Johnstone who have had to go to Pittodrie and play Aberdeen three times.
Of course, as I say, the whole thing is perpetuated to make Scottish football more attractive for TV deals, especially after the Setanta fiasco. Scotland's TV deal is worked out that each team will have four games televised at their home ground per season, as a way of mitigating the disproportionate amount of television time for the Glasgow teams. An extra Ol...Old...Glasgow derby, usually an extra Edinburgh derby, a couple of meaty, league deciding top of the table clashes at tough away games for the Glasgow teams mitigates a system that makes almost as much sense as a Scottish refereeing decision.
The final problem with the way Scottish fixtures work is that you find yourself playing the same teams over and over again. Celtic and Rangers played each other seven times in all competitions in 2010/11, six times in 2016/17 and five times this season by the time it's done, which is ludicrous. And strawberry floating stressful! I had to go and stand inside for the last five minutes yesterday, thank strawberry float for John Lundstram
. They've played each other 440 times in domestic competition, versus 214 between Man United and Liverpool, for example.
I'm hungover and going off memory for a lot of this, so Prototype or someone can correct me on the finer details if needed. But that's the jist of how it works up here.