TheFarmer

As long as UBIG are declared insolvent before 20th May (very likely), Hearts will have a 17 point deduction and WILL be relegated. The rule changes in the summer made it clear an insolvency event for a parent company is an insolvency event for the club. (England have similar rules, see Coventry and Southampton).

I dislike Dunfermline for numerous reasons and personally won't be going. If any Rangers fan want's to go, then I have no problem with that.

Fuck the police

Id keep the 5 stars above the badge for away tops and third kits. For the home kit from now on it should be large rangers crest only with the 5 stars on the back of the neck or down the side like this seasons kit.

Buzzing for Forfar and Ayr United away next season already!

Farce. The SFA give them a signing ban on over 21 year old's, when they (the SFA) gave us a signing ban on over 18 year old's. It would help if they gave a reason for this discrepancy. Even numerous jurnos were slightly bemused at this today on twitter.

Would prefer Sunderland or Sheffield Wednesday

There are none in the HFL, EosFL or SoSFL Don't know about all the juniors, but none of the 'bigger' junior clubs are.

Its not an official geographical or administrative area, but it is generally defined as in the map above. Generally speaking before 200 year ago those in the lowlands spoke Lowland Scots (Including the Aberdeenshire dialect of Lowland Scots, Doric) and those in the Highlands spoke Scottish Gaelic.

Most of the Highland league teams are based in the North-East Lowlands (Aberdeenshire and Moray) The only teams in the Highland League from the Scottish Highlands are: Wick Academy, Brora Rangers, Clachnacuddin, Fort William and Nairn County (5 out of 18).

Its EKFC that want to move to the SOSFL. EK Thistle are a junior team.

Added a rough map of what the 'Highland' and 'Lowland' regions could be to the OP.

Take my league tables for example. Most current division 3 teams with <500 home crowds would benefit in my opinion from playing more local derbies. Rather than Berwick travelling to Peterhead twice a season and Elgin twice a season, they would be playing teams like Linlithgow Rose, Auchinleck Talbot, Spartans and Dalbeattie Star once a season. There is absolutely no reason that most of the current division three teams with less than 400 or 500 home attendances deserve to be in a national league other than the history of being there. If we set up Scottish football from scratch now, all these teams would be in feeder leagues, and it would be beneficial to most of them being there, with them playing more local games and derbies, with less travelling costs. What reasons are there to keep them in the national system, other than the fact they are already there?

Yeah, When I made the tables up I just added 8 junior teams based on league position into the lowland league. In reality it would be based on facilities.

By the way there has been a lot of work done behind the scenes to get a Lowlands League up and running for next season. So it should happen.

Yeah, the non-league senior teams all seem to be getting lots of SFA/Council/Government funding to upgrade facilities. The problem is that in the 'lowlands' the juniors league are imo quite a bit stronger than the senior leagues, but none of the juniors have facilities to be accepted into this setup unless then spend a lot of money. The 8 junior teams I listed should definitely be in there but few will meet the standards as they currently stand. If this is to work well they'll need to somehow get the juniors on board (A number of juniors have already signalled their intention to join)

So it looks likely they will be implementing a southern version of the highland league for next season, the Lowland Football League (Stupid name imo as most of the HFL teams are actually from the lowlands as well). This lowland league will be made up from teams from the current EOSFL and SOSFL with junior teams with acceptable facilities also allowed to apply (not likely as few of the juniors have anywhere near acceptable facilities, it would be better if they could relax their facility standards for a few years to get the juniors on board). The Lowland and Highland league winners will play off for a place in SFL3 as far as I'm aware at the end of next season if its all up and running. I think this is a great step for Scottish football and hopefully the pyramid can be expanded further in the future to get rid of more glass ceilings.In a few years it would be good if we could put all the Division three teams into these two feeder leagues and only have three 'national' leagues, 42 clubs in the national leagues is far too many, we could end up with two pretty competitive feeder leagues into our national system of 32 clubs, something like: SPFL Premiership - 12 teams SPFL Championship - 10 teams SPFL League One - 10 teams (Also hate the name SPFL, what's wrong with just calling it the Football League or the Scottish Football League?) Lowland League: Spartans FC | Whitehill Welfare FC | Bonnyrigg Rose FC | Edinburgh Area Linlithgow Rose FC | Bo'ness United FC | Dalbeattie Star FC | Annan Athletic FC | Borders Area Berwick Rangers FC | EK Clyde FC | Queens Park FC | Albion Rovers FC | Glasgow Area Pollock FC | Clydebank FC | Stirling Albion FC | Kelty Hearts FC | Stirlingshire/Fife East Stirlingshire FC | Cambuslang Rangers FC | Auchinleck Talbot FC | Ayrshire Lots of good local derbies in there Highland League: Elgin City FC | Forres Mechanics FC | Moray Buckie Thistle FC | Montrose FC | Lochee United FC | Dundee Area Carnoustie Panmure FC | Peterhead FC | Formartine United FC | Cove Rangers FC | Deveronvale FC | Aberdeenshire Turriff United FC | Huntly FC | Inverurie Loco Works FC | Fraserbrough FC | Nairn County FC | Wick Academy FC | Highlands Clachnacuddin FC | Brora Rangers FC | Also lots of good local derbies in there And a rough map of what the 'Highland' and 'Lowland' regions could be, with teams in the intermediate region (Yellow) being able to be swapped leagues to keep the numbers even after relegations/promotions (as they have in England): Yellow region teams in the example above are: 'Highland' League: Montrose, Lochee United, Carnoustie 'Lowland' League: Stirling Albion, Kelty Hearts

The SPL also owes the SFL £3m per season for the next two years.

If this thread turns out true and the RST are indeed about to disband, then I will happily pay £20 to the RCF. But I'm calling bullshit. Are you that confident you're willing to put £20 on it? The RST basing on here gets extremely boring, most people couldn't care less about them.

Embarrassing thread, even for ED's standards

Yes that is how it works in the rest of the SFL. Thats the most likely way they will implement a 4 team play off. Any other way is stupid.

When's the raffle and who can enter?

Treble winners 1963/64 Edit: That's definitely the treble season 63-64, the Cup in the middle was confusing me, its the Scottish Cup without its lid on!

Best away day imo. Would love to see them or Queens Park in division 2 with us, instead of East Fife. Tiny ground and I'd never get a ticket. Selfish bastard loyal.