Scottish football

Aztec chimera

Aztec chimera

Well-known member
Decent documentary on BBC. Makes you wonder what's happened to them now. Their football is league 1 at best. Whatever happened to Scottish and irish football since its heyday in the 80s?
 
Money basically. There was a time in the late 80s when Rangers were basically the richest club in Britain and bought some of the best English players and paid far and away the biggest wages. Rangers actually had more players (4) in the 1990 England World Cup squad than any other team. Then in 92 everything began to change, the Premier League and the increased revenue meant they were suddenly much more wealthy than their Scottish counterparts and that money trickled down the English leagues. Many of the players that Scottish teams may have bought were now being snapped up by English teams, and if a team played for a Scottish team and was half decent, they'd be snapped up by an English team.
You also had the anolomy of some of the most overachieving managers in the history of the game like Ferguson, Stein and McLean managing in the 60,70s and 80s.
Plus deep fried Mars bars.
 
The SPL rejected a deal with Sky in 2008 and threw their lot in with Setanta Sports, who offered them a too good to be true deal.
Turned out is was actually too good to be true and they went bust a year later, leaving Scotland in the lurch. They had no option other than to accept scraps.
 
The Card Cheat said:
There was a time in the late 80s when Rangers were basically the richest club in Britain and bought some of the best English players and paid far and away the biggest wages.
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That was partly due to Heysel and Liverpool getting us kicked out of Europe this raising Scottish football stock through the roof as a quick back door back into Europe.

Without that they’d not have been the draw they were.
 
I remember reading before that the Sunderland title teams in the 1920’s were pretty much Scottish. There have been some brilliant Scottish players over the years, but the standard of their league isn’t great.

Rangers and Celtic totally dominate so others have no chance. I always find it strange how there’s loads of Celtic fans in Aberdeenshire, for example. Just support your own team and they might be able to compete.
 
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This was my first Boro game (v Leicester in the FA Cup 5th Round 1965; Boro lost 3-0).

Leicester had 6 Scottish players! Boro had at least three (not all nationalities listed for Boro) - Ian Gibson, Jim Townsend and Jimmy Irvine. Leicester were a mid table Div 1 team at the time. Probably an equivalent of Wolves or Brighton now.

I would also say the most recent 'heyday' of Scottish Football was mid 60s to early 80s when Celtic won the European Cup (before any English team), and Rangers and Aberdeen both won the cup winners cup. Scotland also qualified for the 74 and 78 (a memorable fail) World Cups, when England failed to qualify for either.
 
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It's not just the money back in the 70's and 80's there some brilliant Scottish players Souness, Hanson, Dalglish Mcqueen etc all the top teams in England had good Scottish players, they not producing the players anymore I read years ago someone reckoned it was due to the heroin epidemic in the big cities, but maybe a bit far fetched
 
Fattyfoggon said:
It's not just the money back in the 70's and 80's there some brilliant Scottish players Souness, Hanson, Dalglish Mcqueen etc all the top teams in England had good Scottish players, they not producing the players anymore I read years ago someone reckoned it was due to the heroin epidemic in the big cities, but maybe a bit far fetched
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They were actually one of the favourites for the 78 WC.
Their win against the Dutch showed how good they were. Pity they didn't prepare properly or do their homework on Peru and Iran.
A couple of decent documentaries on YouTube.
Particularly this one:

A lot of it is from the fans' perspective and some great stories.
 
The Card Cheat said:
Money basically. There was a time in the late 80s when Rangers were basically the richest club in Britain and bought some of the best English players and paid far and away the biggest wages. Rangers actually had more players (4) in the 1990 England World Cup squad than any other team. Then in 92 everything began to change, the Premier League and the increased revenue meant they were suddenly much more wealthy than their Scottish counterparts and that money trickled down the English leagues. Many of the players that Scottish teams may have bought were now being snapped up by English teams, and if a team played for a Scottish team and was half decent, they'd be snapped up by an English team.
You also had the anolomy of some of the most overachieving managers in the history of the game like Ferguson, Stein and McLean managing in the 60,70s and 80s.
Plus deep fried Mars bars.
Click to expand...

I think the European ban for English clubs played a part in that too. Ok, I think it was only 5 seasons, but that could conceivably be a player's prime years.
 
Aztec chimera said:
Decent documentary on BBC. Makes you wonder what's happened to them now. Their football is league 1 at best. Whatever happened to Scottish and irish football since its heyday in the 80s?
Click to expand...
I don’t think you can draw many parallels between the two.

Scottish football was genuinely strong, both domestically and in respect of the National side, in the 70s and 80s (and for that matter the 1870s and 80s when Scottish footballers coming south were the vanguard of professionalism). I guess the present trough is probably the effect of a smaller population pool leading to greater variability. They’ll have decent sides again.

The brief flirtation that the RoI National side had with competitiveness in the 80s and 90s never had anything to do with the domestic league structure. It was entirely on the back of the English leagues, and of some quite dubious player qualifications. The LOI was always rubbish. It’s probably the strongest it’s ever been at present and it’s still poor. The IL had a marginally more illustrious past and some decent European club performances from the 60s, but these days it’s even worse than the LOI
 
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