Believe in Better?

Sky TV's marketing catchphrase is currently 'Believe in Better'. The billions of pounds the satellite broadcaster has thrown at English football in the past two decades illustrated this adage to devastating effect at Tynecastle last Thursday evening.

Hearts Europa League qualifying round opponents, Tottenham Hotspur, even without several first team regulars, still had a team full of multi-million pound talent that was simply streets ahead of Hearts who, it has to be said, seemed in awe of their illustrious opponents. It's become something of a cliché that Scottish football lacks the technical ability of the more successful countries but tries to make up for this with fight, determination and an 'up-and-at-'em' attitude. This has worked for Hearts in the past as the likes of Bayern Munich, Vfb Stuttgart, Atletico Madrid and Bologna - who have all lost at Tynecastle in European competition - would testify. Sadly, even this commendable trait was lacking from the Maroons last week. The only good thing from the night was the truly magnificent Hearts support who gave their team tumultuous backing all through the evening - even as the goals were raining in. Hearts fans were hanging on at the end hoping there wouldn't be a sixth goal. Indeed, when the Spurs fans demanded 'we want six' the Hearts support retorted 'we want one...'

The following statistics perhaps highlight why no one should be surprised at the scale of the difference between Hearts and Spurs. Sky TV’s current deal with the Barclay’s FA Premiership is for around £1.3 billion over three seasons.

In Scotland, the current deal with Sky TV and its satellite rival ESPN is worth £65 million - over five seasons. You don’t have to be Einstein to work out why the London side won as easily as they did in Gorgie last week.

Spurs manager Harry Redknapp was moved to say how impressed he was with the Hearts support and 'how fans like these deserve success'. They do, but success has to be measured against reality. Hearts will not win a European trophy and although they may occasionally challenge for the SPL title, reality dictates they will not win it. More than a quarter of a century has passed since a team other than Celtic and Rangers were champions of Scotland - and this was an era before money influenced even the Old Firm.

For clubs like Hearts, ‘success’ is achieving third place in the SPL, getting to a cup final with a half-decent chance of winning it, and the occasional decent result in the Europa League although Scotland’s rapidly diminishing co-efficient in Europe means even qualifying for the group stages of this competition is an achievement in itself.

Despite protestations from Neil Lennon and Ally McCoist - whose Old Firm sides also failed to win their Europa League first leg ties against much weaker opposition than Spurs - the standard of Scottish football is as poor today as it has ever been. Money talks in football like never before and it's clear that thanks to television companies such as Sky the strong are getting even stronger while the weak are facing oblivion. The more successful the Barclays FA Premiership becomes, the more people will subscribe to Sky TV to watch exclusive live matches; thus, the more Sky will throw millions of pounds at clubs to keep it going. English, Spanish and Italian clubs feast at the top table of European football, laden with hugely expensive fine cuts. Scottish football doesn't get near the top table to feed off the scraps - in fact, it currently doesn't even get in to the dining room.

As impressive as Spurs were last Thursday, they are unlikely to win the Barclays FA Premiership because of the even larger resources of the four or five clubs ahead of them - and this was underlined by Manchester United’s 3-0 win over Harry Redknapp’s team at Old Trafford on Monday. This underlines how the allocation of TV money, along with the extra money it attracts e.g. big investors at Chelsea and Manchester City, has influenced football - and made success less achievable for the majority of clubs.

The top four in England - who qualify for the UEFA Champions League - get a larger slice of the massive FA Premiership cake, because they are on television more than other clubs. The same argument applies on a smaller scale in Scotland where provincial Scottish clubs get a reduced slice of much smaller Scottish cake because the Old Firm are always on the box. The outcry last week that Scottish football is in a bad way was not unexpected but it is so because it does not have the resources to be any better.

Yet, there are some Scottish players doing quite well in the money-laden English league. Charlie Adam at Liverpool and Steven Fletcher at Wolves are cases in point. A quick look at the Scotland side that defeated Denmark the other week tells you the number of players in Head Coach Craig Levein’s thoughts who are plying their trade south of the border. This suggests that there are more problems with the way that Scottish football is managed and coached.

Last year former First Minister Henry McLeish published the recommendations of the Scottish football think tank. Various ideas were discussed including league reconstruction, a pyramid system to enable ambitious non-league clubs to compete for league status, a winter break and a possible merger of Scottish football’s three governing bodies. There were some decent recommendations in Mr McLeish’s report - yet, still nothing has happened

The average football fan can see what needs to be done. Television money needs to be fairly distributed, a larger league where teams play each other twice each season, and a change to the season from August to May to March to December. This would see the close season take place during January and February when the Scottish winter is usually at its most severe. As an added incentive, I would have the League Cup winners play-off against the fourth placed team in the SPL to decide who would play in the following season’s Europa League.

I would also scrap the SPL and SFL and have just one governing body running Scottish football - perhaps a revamped SFA where the Chief Executive makes decisions rather than the plethora of outdated committees we’ve had for decades. The Chief Executive could be part of an elected board that require being re-elected every four years.

The way Tottenham Hotspur dismantled Hearts last week was yet another wake up call for Scottish football. Few Hearts fans expected their team to beat Spurs over two legs although some harboured a vain hope they might win the home leg. That faint hope was cruelly destroyed at Tynecastle last Thursday evening. Nonetheless, hope is all that Scottish football has to cling on to. There is a great line in that classic film The Shawshank Redemptionsays 'hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and good things never die’.

Those of us who love Scottish football and mourn its present state can only cling on to this thought. Or as Sky TV likes to tell everyone - believe in better.

Twitter @Mike1874