Changes?

More rumours about changes to the SPL set up. Jim Spence on the BBC reports that:

The Scottish Premier League could be set to increase to 14 clubs from season 2011-12, with relegation play-offs also featuring in the new set-up. A senior Scottish football figure has told BBC Scotland that the current 12-club set-up could be replaced.

The new format would see all clubs play each other twice and split after 26 games into a top six and bottom eight. The SPL insists that a 14-team league is being considered but is not the only option open to them at present.

Many of you will have spotted that this retains the split. I'd actually go a bit further and say that this takes the split and makes it worse, a feat that only yesterday might have seemed all but impossible.

Time for me and everyone else to face facts: the SPL split is here to stay. All the discussions are going to be based around the principle that extension means adapting the current league, split and all. This is not a march to revolution but a few baby steps to compromise. 

But at least the discussion seems to be taking place and the idea of relegation play off is to be applauded. Don't hold your breath though.

This is only one of a number of proposals that the SPL clubs are set to discuss at a "strategy review" at the end of the season. Oh, to be a fly on the wall at that meeting of minds, it will be nothing less than a modern day Yalta Conference.

They'll also discuss extending the league to 16 or 18 teams and the old issue of the SPL2 is being whispered about again.

The problem of course is that any changes need that 11 to 1 voting majority. If any proposal is going to be strong enough to emerge as a consensus building strategy remains to be seen.

Ah, Yalta right enough. We've not got a Churchill, we search in vain for an FDR. But we've got a version of democracy that would have Uncle Joe beaming with pride.