Restructuring of British football.

[McBoyd]

The Standard of British football really is getting worse, the Scotland team can't make it to International level competition anymore, England get beaten at the same round every time, Wales and Northern Ireland are terrible too.

We invented the game for christ sake, and we're letting others beat us at it easily.

We need a bigger league, a British league - a more competitive chance for anyone to win it, something new.

Britain should look at restructuring our football game to a similar model of the NFL, as much as I never thought I'd say that, it makes sense in a way.

We could have two Premier leagues, Premier North and Premier South, who then compete against each other for the 'Superbowl' equivalent - this could be achieved here, maybe in a slightly different manner, but you'd win your league every year North or South, and either the two winners play for an additional 'Superbowl' style cup or the top 4/5/6 of each compete in a knock out cup. Of course, not forgetting that you'd already won your league, the additional cup would be a new 'League Cup' replacing the old.

Look at what they have going on in the American Football youth setup too, far outweighs ours; Youth teams that lead to High School football teams, the best players get University Football Team Scholarships that lead to an NFL draft of new players every year for teams to pick from.

There is a wage cap for newly drafted players so that bigger teams can't swoop in with cash incentives to play for them, fairly - the team that came last in the season previous gets first pick, and it moves down in pecking order.

I believe getting scholarships to our Universities for footballing purposes would really help the game, as well as bring some added funding to it. Look at how mad the Americans go for the College Football it's almost as big as the NFL- Glasgow University vs Oxford University anyone? It'd be great to get football fans following the University level footballers, watching the up and coming stars of the future play against fellow Universities.

Wage caps on players in the league, and on a years spending. If Manchester City want to spend their years wage cap on 3 players, let them. This will stop big teams, with funding from billionaires just wiping the park with every other smaller team. The TV Revenue money would be split much more evenly and fairly, and would really boost some of the smaller teams for a fairer league.

Also, goal line technology and video replay calls by the referee or 'judges' would be a decent addition.

I could go on all day about the finer details, but that is the basics of the idea.

Anyones thoughts on the current situation within our footballing game, and what could happen to take it forward in the future? It really has became stale, and Sky pumping more and more into the EPL whilst Scottish Football rots isn't going to make it any better.

We need a more sustainable, fairer league system, rather than billionaires and Billion Pound TV deals to keep it afloat.

[McBoyd]

And yes Boab, Handegg, harhar.

[barcelonabear]

It's an interesting enough idea, however I'm not in favour of across the board salary caps. Instead clubs should be forced to spend no more than a set % of their annual turnover - say 50 or 60%.

[McBoyd]

I like the idea of a British league and replay/goal line technology, but I'm against an NFL drafting of players. As horrible as it sounds, I don't want more equality! I think the system is fine as it is. Man United paying £4m for Nick Powell is a case in point; everyone benefits from that sort of transaction.

As for further ideas, I know it's been hammered on about already, but we would do well to copy a few things off the Germans. Everyone's allowed a couple of beers whilst watching the game, and terracing is still thriving. At the end of the day, it's abou putting a little bit of trust in the fans.

I agree about the standing terracing and beers, but at the same time, can we trust some of the fans? As harsh as it sounds, I was at the Ibrox Disaster Memorial last year and a guy was there absolutely drunk as a skunk, on the way out he was stumbling everywhere, and tripped on himself on the stairs, luckily I grabbed him, or he was going to be flying down them taking down about 10-15 people on the way - it's this sort of fellow that turns up to a Memorial drunk (I was damn annoyed with the guy) that we can't trust.

I know it's not a large percentage of fans, but the odd few will ruin it.

On the other hand, you can have beer at Rugby and it's fine, depends, it'd have to be done in test cases

[McBoyd]

Yeah, it's quite nice sitting at a Glasgow game sipping a Heineken

Well at Borussia Dortmund, you've got a card assigned to you, allowing you 2 beers a game. Any bad behaviour means that your card gets taken away from you for the rest of the season. I think that this is a reasonable enough system, preventing anyone from getting too blitzed.

Sounds smart to me, we could do that for sure.

We might need beer sales in Division 3 to get our ££ up anyhow!