There is one big problem standing between Scottish football and any change to the league set-up. Actually there are two. Celtic and Rangers.
Since league reconstruction in the mid-1970s, there have been four league meetings between Celtic and Rangers each season. Four massive games for broadcasters Sky to build their Scottish football TV audience around. Four games to rule them all.
Any plan for league reconstruction has to dance around the sacrosanct principle that these two warring tribes will face off four times, twice at Celtic Park and twice at Ibrox.
An SPFL meeting will be held later this month with league reconstruction back on the agenda. Reconstruction talks have been partly driven by an increased strain on the fixture schedule, with extra European matches leaving fewer available dates in the domestic calendar. Premiership sides currently play 38 league fixtures per season.
There are currently four options up for discussion: retaining the current 12-team format with a split or switching to a 10, 14 or 16-team alternative.
Indications this week were that there would be a push towards decreasing the size of the Premiership to 10, but there now appears to be more appetite for an increase.
Celtic and Rangers are the biggest problem regarding changes to the Scottish league structure
The Old Firm currently go head-to-head four times a year and the fixture is key to any TV deal
SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster has previously indicated he would be open to change
There is actually a fair degree of consensus among supporters of the non-Old Firm clubs. Playing each other three or four times a season is boring, they say.
Familiarity breeds contempt and who can blame fans for the fatigue that sets in playing the same teams over and over again.
A bigger league would provide more variety and open up the possibility of playing teams once away, once at home.
Good luck getting that past Sky, who will do anything to protect the golden egg of the Old Firm fixture.
The size of the Premiership has other major side effects. An SFA report from last year came to the conclusion that clubs in Scotland are failing to bring through enough young players and ‘significantly underachieving its potential’ in youth development compared to countries of a similar size.
If we had a bigger league, the theory goes, young players would get more of a chance as there would be more clubs safe from relegation and therefore more inclined to give game time to young, up and coming players.
If the promising 18-year-old midfielder at your club is sitting in the stands in August and September, don’t expect the besieged manager to put him out on the pitch when the team is locked in a tooth and nail relegation battle six months later when livelihoods are at stake.
The top six is often criticised for its imperfections but Scotland is not the only league in Europe to use such a format, and any future reconstruction would likely involve a variation of that theme.
The labyrinthine SPFL rules also provide a formidable barrier to any structural change.
Any proposed change would require the backing of 11 out of 12 Premiership clubs, plus 75 per cent of Premiership and Championship clubs combined, as well as 75 per cent of the 42 SPFL clubs combined in order to pass.
The ‘11/12 rule’ ensures the Glasgow giants can act as a bloc to kybosh any plan or proposal that they don’t like the look of. But it also makes it easy for any other clubs with common cause to thwart something that doesn’t suit their agenda.
It’s no coincidence that a vote to outlaw plastic pitches from the beginning of season 2026-27 came after Livingston were relegated, leaving Kilmarnock as the sole club in the top flight with an artificial surface.
For the avoidance of doubt, the voting set-up will also kill stone dead the likelihood of the top flight being reduced from 12 to 10.
Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas and no bottom six club is going to wave through a change that could see them setting their sat navs for Cappielow instead of Celtic Park.
After St Johnstone owner Adam Webb spoke out in favour of a bigger league earlier this week, Rangers assistant Neil McCann, Kilmarnock boss Derek McInnes, Dundee boss Tony Docherty and Motherwell manager Michael Wimmer all did likewise at their respective press conferences.
McCann recognises that an expanded league would aid the promotion of young players.
Rangers assistant Neil McCann says expanding the Premiership would be good for the game
‘I think we’ve got enough teams that would enhance the top league,’ said the ex-Dundee manager. ‘A lot of people have said there would be dead rubbers but I believe you can always get something from that, whether it’s introduction of young boys, or a couple of (extra) relegation places and a play-off position.
‘There are ways of trying to find the middle ground. But the most important thing, if it was bigger, I see it being more of an opportunity for young boys to be cut in because maybe it would take away a lot of the fear factor that exists right now.’
Whether McCann was echoing the thoughts of the Ibrox board we can only guess. But there is precious little evidence to suggest any Rangers teamsheet put out over the last five years has had the intent of promoting young Scottish talent.
Anyone watching a Scotland starting XI packed to the hilt with the old reliables being played off the park at Hampden by a Greek side laced with teenage talent will know that these chickens are already coming home to roost for our national side.
When it comes to change for the better, self interest and Kafkaesque voting structures can prove to be difficult opponents, too.
