Fairly obvious - distinct lack of resources means poorer players, poorer teams and a poorer league. Rangers/Celtic star player would absolutely jump at the chance to join any team in the relegation zone of the PL - kind of says it all really.
Why is Scottish football so bad?
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) was joined by comedian Ali Woods to look back at the best and worst moments of a rollercoaster season with the annual United Hour Awards.
Has Ten Hag been sacked yet? We're not sure and we hope not, but it's looking more likely as the days pass.
Who should replace him and why is it taking so long to make a decision?
Billionaires want a return on their money though.
No point from the investor pov to put money in Ireland and Scotland to develop players, when they can just sign players from Brazil,France,Croatia, Netherlands,Belgium ,etc
One thing that reduced massively the influx of irish,welsh, and scottish players in the PL is that english football opened its doors since the late 90s, to french,dutch,balkanic,spanish, italian, scandinavian players, so british players had to compete with a huge number of continental talented players...and all this started with the arrival of Arsene Wenger to England.
Last night was very damaging for Scottish football which now looks a laughing stock
Irish football has already received a lot of investment. We have some fantastic players at underage level who are branching out to Europe instead of heading over to England. 6/7 of our brightest talent have signed for Italian clubs so someone thinks it’s worth an investment.
Both teams are out with a whimper.
Absolutely dreadful campaigns.
Absolutely dreadful campaigns.
Scottish football is a joke. It's a joke of a country really though, so that checks out.
At least Westminster replace their governments (or at least the party leaders) when it turns out they're shit. We're 15 years into the glorious age of SNP and we're too thick to realise that they've been utter shit.
Football follows suit. The national culture is the reason football is still shit. Defeated before they even set foot on the pitch. Always the victim. International rugby is the total opposite of course... Our one recent (relative) success.
At least Westminster replace their governments (or at least the party leaders) when it turns out they're shit. We're 15 years into the glorious age of SNP and we're too thick to realise that they've been utter shit.
Football follows suit. The national culture is the reason football is still shit. Defeated before they even set foot on the pitch. Always the victim. International rugby is the total opposite of course... Our one recent (relative) success.
It's difficult for Scottish football as the EPL is so accessible in Scotland that a lot of Scottish people will support an English club and have a second scottish team due to the disparities in quality which I don't think helps and I myself am a culprit of. The quality of the overall league is poor and the way we develop talent is still stuck in the 80s/90s at times and there needs to be a bit of an overhaul on the way we do things I think. It doesn't help either that Rangers had all of the adrenaline of a European run sucked out of them last season and this season they've started terribly and needed to go through qualifiers. I think Celtic are actually well managed but the money involved means that unless they get a bit of luck they'll also struggle. Rangers just aren't in a good place overall since Gerrard left (but even toward the end of his reign there were signs that it wasn't the same). I still think Rangers are quite a bit back from Celtic despite the title win and European run. They don't have the same structure and continuity that Celtic have due to the relegations and promotions. It will take time. It's good that we have the two qualifying places now as without them it would be even more of a struggle to get back to the 'top' so to speak.
The two clubs are hindered by having clubs who would be the equivalent size of lower championship all the way down to non league in the spl. The TV money is a fraction of what the bottom team in the PL would get. This in turn means they have players that 80% of the time would struggle in league one.
The old firm teams if they get a decent player they're lost in the next transfer window. Rangers lost a few of their best players in the summer that where the center of their run to the Europa final eg bassie.
Unless a band of high millionaires/billionaires who want to get involved in football but can't afford a premier League side decide to invest in Aberdeen, hearts, Hibs and the 2 Dundee's and buy them into the title race, Scottish football will never be competitive enough for the old firm or Scottish football to thrive domestically and in Europe.
Money has ruined the competitive nature throughout Europe. It's basically the same teams/countries that will compete for the next load of decades while Scotland, Portugal, Netherlands etc etc will be further and further adrift
The old firm teams if they get a decent player they're lost in the next transfer window. Rangers lost a few of their best players in the summer that where the center of their run to the Europa final eg bassie.
Unless a band of high millionaires/billionaires who want to get involved in football but can't afford a premier League side decide to invest in Aberdeen, hearts, Hibs and the 2 Dundee's and buy them into the title race, Scottish football will never be competitive enough for the old firm or Scottish football to thrive domestically and in Europe.
Money has ruined the competitive nature throughout Europe. It's basically the same teams/countries that will compete for the next load of decades while Scotland, Portugal, Netherlands etc etc will be further and further adrift
Celtic played decently in games in fairness. Lacked the goals. Rangers, aside from 30 minutes against Napoli have been a disaster
Yeah, and the fried Mars bars at half time to provide a sustenace has alway struck me as slightly odd too.
To some extent this is true. The rest of the league is pretty poor which gives them little to no competition in their league. However, I have done analysis on Celtic (Rangers were away for too long for me to think it was a fair comparison at that time) and what I discovered was that if Celtic qualified for the CL group stages they ended up with revenues not far off the likes of Benfica, Porto and Ajax.
For me the problem with Scotland to some extent was Celtics decision, when Rangers got relegated, to become incredibly small time and focus on 'doing the 10' rather than maintaining a squad that could compete in Europe. This to some extent has been shown when Rangers came back and they got to the Europa final and Scotland now has a guaranteed CL spot and a qualifying spot in 3rd round.
I am not saying the Scottish league is equivalent of the Portuguese, it isn't, which is why they get the two automatic spaces plus a qualifying space in the 3rd round. This is because they have a third big team and the teams outside are much better than the Scottish league. However, with their finances the Old Firm shouldn't really have allowed things to get to the stage where they were out of the top 10-11 leagues in Europe. The reason for that was principally due to Celtic becoming so small time.
Players leaving the Old Firm clubs for midtable PL teams is a big problem, no? I remember Barry Ferguson all those years ago being the captain of Rangers, first to Blackburn, who to be fair were a decent team chasing European spots but ultimately also midtable, then leaving them for Birmingham who were no more than a relegation battling team. Having such a hugely popular and obscenely rich league on your doorstep is a very difficult thing to overcome.
Definitely. As seen with Patterson to us, Bassey to Ajax (but PL interest), Aribo to Southampton etc. Aribo and Bassey were fantastic and very hard to replace for Rangers.
Why? City scored six against us a week ago. Surely that’s far more embarrassing for us than this result is for Rangers.
At the end of the day, small countries are generally always going to struggle to produce top teams now, even traditionally strong footballing ones. Look at Crvena zvezda, a far bigger history than Rangers and can barely get a look in at Champions League football. It’s all about money.
And United scored 3? Away from home.
I’ve never heard such a bizarre comparison in all my life
Okay. The 6-1 then? Or does our one goal make that less embarrassing?
Southampton lose 9-0 regularly and they take Rangers best players from them.
What are you on about?
Rangers 1-7 Liverpool
Manutd 0-5 Liverpool
Manutd 0-5 Liverpool
Yeah when players can up their wages by a lot by swapping Rangers for, say Crystal Palace or Southampton, then it's clear the biggest monster that Scottish football is dealing with is the PL.
You claimed it was an embarrassing night for Scottish football, but teams get beat in the Premier League by similar score lines regularly. Case in point, United (a far bigger team than Rangers) losing to Man City, at home, by a similar score line.
Second point in my original post that you skipped, teams bigger than Rangers get spanked in the Champions League all the time (if they get in it).
It’s really not that embarrassing, it’s just the way football is now. Clear things up for you?
It wasn’t an embarrassing night for Scottish football then?
This is a thread about Scottish football. The clue is in the title.
Your comparison involves two different teams, a different competition, a totally different score line and the reverse of home and away.
Its the most odd thing I’ve ever heard.
Rangers just got 7 put past them with ease against a team that is completely shot to bits right now and every EPL team lick their lips at playing. They had a guy come on and score a hat trick in 6 minutes against them. The fastest ever. And that’s with Liverpool being heavily depleted with injuries.
Bare in mind this is the best that Scotland has to offer.
Whereas we lost to the best team in the world at the moment.
You couldn’t have chose a worse comparison.
Celtic and Rangers should have joined the PL years ago. Two huge clubs having to play St Mirren every other week. Makes for a shite league, shite players and then embarrassment against top European teams. Rangers last season did pretty well though.
He uses the United 1-6 PL score from nearly 12 years ago try to prove his point that it wasn’t an embarrassing night for Scottish football in the CL .
That’s even more damning. They didn’t even make it to the group stages!Celtic is.
Real Madrid is.
I agree with your overall point that british players were pushed out of the talent pool to Europe.
I can't speak for everyone, but the Scandinavian players started to come to England in early 1980's, also Cantona came to Leeds 91 or 92 so it is wrong to say it started with Wenger (1996) when it started atleast 15 years before he came, its more that money started to be really good when Wenger came and he were smart about his business and got cheaper european players instead of local players.
not sure if serious
No, nothing out of the ordinary for a team from a small country these days unfortunately. The Scottish national team is ranked below Egypt. The population of the whole country is about 5 million. The wage budget of Rangers is 1/6th of Liverpools - actually very similar to Bournemouth’s - who incidentally just lost 9-0 to Liverpool.
Okay I used Premier League examples involving us, because I thought that you would be able to recognise that if a club like United can concede six, then of course a club like Rangers could concede seven.
We’ve seen so many teams lose by seven in the Champions League. Teams from Germany, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, Belgium, Czech Republic. It’s normal when the financial disparity is so big.
Its just a silly comparison really which is my issue with what you said.
Anyway @Chief123 has covered the other bits in his post.
This is quite true. The problem of facing top 3/4 EPL teams, Bayern, Real or PSG nowadays is that if those teams do a good game they will probably batter second tier league top teams like the ones from portuguese league, scottish league, netherlands league, etc, etc
Even though Benfica managed to get a double 1-1 draw with PSG, the fact is if in one of those nights things went well to PSG, they could got a win by 3 or more goals.
The difference between budgets is very huge and most of those clubs have squads who are being built for a few years which makes it even harder for tier 2 teams to get positive results against top european clubs.
Again, it’s not a direct comparison. I told you why I used the example.
Injuries or not, the team Liverpool put out is miles better than what Rangers can offer. And no shock they pulled away when Salah, Jota, Robertson and Thiago came on.
The players, manager and coaching staffs don't understand each other
At least the goalie should know that his job is to try to keep the ball from going in the back of the net. Guess that's not true at Rangers.
Baffled why you used it then as it adds nothing to the argument in the slightest.
Rangers should never have been in the CL. In retrospect, PSV going out to them is pathetic.
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I used it to show that if those score lines can happen to bigger, richer teams. They can certainly happen to smaller teams like Rangers. And do all the time.
That’s what I’m arguing the whole time, I dont know why you think that adds nothing to my point of view.
Anyway, one thing I’m sure we agree on is that Rangers and Scottish football is generally quite shit. I just don’t think there should be an expectation for them to be better than teams from other small nations.