Scottish Football

I'm more annoyed at our inability to get the basics right yesterday and be competitive on any level yesterday, absolute embarrassment, but take your wider points, football has been rubbish for decades now. I think Klopp made the point about Newcastle with their money, it essentially just means they can afford to make mistake after mistake and still succeed eventually, their is no risk, their money guarantees them success (Everton a good example how to make a mess of things mind, but Newcastle money a different level), finance is almost all that matters now. No real loyalty from players, managers etc... I mean Alec Neil moving from Sunderland to Stoke an example.

Yea this is a decent wider point, but this Celtic side is no different to the one we were competitive why in 3 our of 4 league games last season, conceding just 6 goals

Alex Neil going from a bigger club to Stoke is indeed weird

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Originally Posted by Sande_Man

It’s depressing but it’s the same in quite a lot of leagues:

PSG - will win the league 9 seasons out of 10 (should really be 10 out of 10 and most likely will)
Bayern - will win league 9 seasons out of 10 (going for 11 in a row)
Juve/inter/Milan - will win 10 out of 10 (Juve won 9 in a row)
Madrid/Barca/Atletico - will win 10 out of 10 (Atleti winning 2 titles in last 8 years is almost miraculous)
Benfica/Porto - will win 9 out of 10 (sporting winning was miraculous)
PSV/ Ajax - will win 9 out of 10 (feyenoord was a miracle too)

It’s not just Scotland that has suffered from money ruining the game.

Follow the Brazilian league if you want a league that can be won by 4 or 5 different teams each year.plus there’s about 20 derby games! Braw!

Or the NFL….salary cap and draft system means teams don’t dominate for long (patriots was a complete perfect storm)

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I agree largely with your post but in the past 40 years or so, apart from the brief early period where Aberdeen and us got the better of them, the Old Firm have totally dominated our League, winning something like the past 35 or 36 themselves. In the same period there have been 7 Spanish, 7 German, 7 Italian and 10 French teams winning their top Division. Portugal is the closest to our League regarding domination by a few teams with only 5 teams winning their top league since it started in the 1930s, two teams only once and the rest split 37/30/19 between Benfica/Porto/Sporting and these teams have dominated the second and third places too. I totally agree that these Leagues are being increasingly dominated by fewer teams and the future winners, likely, are as you predict.

The NFL have at least tried to even things out with their salary cap/draft situation which does work up to a point. Well run teams like the Patriots, the Cowboys and 49ers in the 90s etc. seem to be able to work around the system to build winning dynasties and the poorly run teams continue to bomb (like my team the Dolphins since their heady days of the 80s; high hopes for this season though!). The draft, of course, is an irrelevance to football here but a salary cap could work up to a point if there were ever a cat in hell's chance of it being voted in (thanks again Aberdeen F C).

Still depressed.

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Originally Posted by shedka

Yea this is a decent wider point, but this Celtic side is no different to the one we were competitive why in 3 our of 4 league games last season, conceding just 6 goals

Alex Neil going from a bigger club to Stoke is indeed weird

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Is Sunderland not a bit of a basket case though falling further and further behind Newcastle even before their derby rivals took the Saudi cash to move even farther ahead.

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Originally Posted by shedka

Yea this is a decent wider point, but this Celtic side is no different to the one we were competitive why in 3 our of 4 league games last season, conceding just 6 goals

Alex Neil going from a bigger club to Stoke is indeed weird

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Tripling his Sunderland salary apparently.

Football in Scotland has long been finished as an enjoyable,entertaining spectacle. Its all about survival now. Being hard working,hard to beat & being physical is the be all & end all. Dont get me wrong that all of these things & mid table mediocrity is a dream compared to our current implosion but its soul destroying to watch the mostly turgid stuff that passes as football nowadays. Also how can all the clubs coaching set ups, scouting & training where young boys are supposedly coached for years to do nothing but play football & you end up on matchday with players who can hardly do the most basic things & lose all confidence in the blink of an eye? Also those players,who utd in particular seem to push the boat out for, that make an entire lucrative career from one good season then do the square root of bugger all for the rest of their career but always think they are big shots

Just hate the this talk always starts up when we get a pumping though, there's is no excuse for how bad we are doing in recent weeks under JR, and no excuse for being destroyed like that, by far the worst I've seen.. we should have been looking to kick on under Courts this season, maintain the solid base and try to find a better style at top end of park, that must have been the way he would have been looking at it had he stayed

JR has managed to remove the solid base we had and we are less threat than last season in a lot of ways upto now

We don't have the solid goalkeeper now either (despite Benji throwing in a few howlers second half of last season he was generally reliable)

Each to their own and all that but I can't understand why folk go and watch when they think we aren't worth watching. Last season I'm on about, not this. ☹️

[QUOTE=shedka;40108441]Yea this is a decent wider point, but this Celtic side is no different to the one we were competitive why in 3 our of 4 league games last season, conceding just 6 goals

Alex Neil going from a bigger club to Stoke is indeed weird[/QUOTE]

Sunderland are only a bigger club in the sense they have a bigger stadium and support. Neil will have a better opportunity of making it to the Premiership with Stoke as opposed to Sunderland IMO.

Sunderland are a bigger club full stop, this is the best shape Sunderland have been in for awhile from what I can see, the fans are happy and engaged with the club, a solid year and they would be ready for a crack a promotion next season, would be much better getting a club like that promoted again, especially with Newcastle in the prem and looking to kick on

Mon the Vale 😉