SCOTLAND: The new branding of Scottish Football

The new branding of Scottish football has been announced this week at Hampden, The Scottish Premier League (SPL) and The Scottish Football League (SFL) will now operate as one new governing body with the name of The Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL).

The new board made up of representatives are as follows Eric Riley (Celtic), Stephen Thompson (Dundee United), Duncan Fraser (Aberdeen); Les Gray (Hamilton), Mike Mulraney (Alloa); and Bill Darroch (Stenhousemuir).

The league structure remains the same for 12-10-10-10 but play-offs will be introduced between the top and second tier leagues, this comes after earlier plans of a 12-12-18 laughable league structure that had failed elsewhere in Europe was rightfully kicked in to touch as Scottish football tries to re-invent itself to get away from being the laughing stock of club football in Europe.

The 15 hour meeting that including failing SPL chief executive Neil Doncaster being voted as the SPFL chief ahead of David Longmuir which is a mystery in itself, the merger means there will be greater distribution of wealth from the top to the bottom of the pyramid.

The merge also means that Rangers will obtain full voting rights in the new setup. Rangers chief executive Craig Mather said the “best bit of the day” was that his club now had full membership and voting rights, following its associate membership status with the SFL.

“I’m very happy,” he said. “It’s been interesting but we’ve got there. We’ve always been active. We continue the road and will be humble.”

The branding of the leagues will also change with the SPL now being called the Scottish Premiership, Division One now having the name of The Championship, Division Two now being called League One and Division Three being called League Two, much like the English league system, and also without a sponsor it is clear that Neil Doncaster and company do not have a very good start with the branding set to take place in August.

Doncaster told http://www.Scotprem.com “A mountain of work has been done over the summer to get to this point and I believe there is much more that can be done. The new branding sets a new identity for the future of Scottish professional league football. The new league set-up reflects very much the recommendations Henry McLeish made in his report for the future of Scottish football.”

The new website for the new beginning for Scottish football http://www.SPFL.co.uk will be launched at the beginning of August.