The SPL basement battle
In Grangemouth, even the birds cough. But the clearing of throats in nearby Falkirk has nothing to do with the chemical works.
It is a nervous wheeze you hear, deepened by the rapidly lengthening shadow from the Highlands.
Like a child scared of bogeymen, that will be the spectre of Inverness coming to terrorise the Bairns.
It was grim up north for most of the season. Craig Brewster's return was initially welcomed like that of the Prodigal Son. But, in the end, the supporters cast him out like an orphan in the storm.
Fans can be fickle, but this lot, it seems, had a point. And now, in territory where once they cursed a Butcher from England, they laud big Tel.
If he asked them to forgive the Duke of Cumberland and explained that Culloden Moor was just a wee misunderstanding by his countryman all these years ago, he might just get away with it.
Inverness Caledoninan Thistle were my pre-season forecast to be relegated. I just thought they had lost a little of their Highlands swagger.
Maybe privately, I was fed up staring at the rear end of caravans on the A9.
But, in any case, I saw little to the turn of year and beyond that suggested I had got it spectacularly wrong. And then Terry Butcher arrived.
Or, rather, Butcher and Maurice Malpas arrived.
Theirs is the opposites-attract kind of deal; Big Tel with his propensity to create work for joiners, given as he is to taking dressing-room doors off their hinges, Mo the quiet thinking man with the dry sense of humour.
One with the rousing sense of motivation: the other the shrewd tactician.
Together, they have breathed life into the relegation battle.
They have immersed themselves in the mission, although quite what this is doing for Butcher's attention to the Scotland cause as George Burley's assistant and his ability to watch players is another matter.
I am still ill at ease with that one. But that is to debate another day.
Meanwhile, in Falkirk, they are breathing uneasily.
There is a feeling there that they have been living above their means for some time and that they will have to take a scissors to the cloth they are cutting.
They are shopping in a different market place now and this summer, no matter what division they are in, there will be an exodus of players.
Boss John Hughes has openly admitted that he would mind a crack at a job in England and that hardly makes him a man alone among coaches in Scotland.
But it still added to the cracks in the enamel: you can't help feeling it's not the happiest household in the land.
Not that Falkirk are alone in Caley Thistle's sights. I suspect they smell blood elsewhere and the bottom six - which will embrace the two of them, St Mirren, Kilmarnock and two from Hamilton, Motherwell and Hibs - will be a hell of dogfight after the split.
In fact, here's the truth: I have not been enamoured by the quality of the game in Scotland this season.
The measure is our embarrassing assault in Europe.
It has not been sweet on the eye and the few moments of genuine pleasure have been glimpses of sunshine in darkened skies.
But its salvation is yet to come, a climax to a season that may go to its dying breath for the championship itself and, now, in that battle to beat the drop.
And, indeed, in the No Man's Land of the league's middle ground where the battle for Europe could be equally intense.
Good; if you're going to watch average stuff, at least make it competitively average. I think we may at least have achieved that.
"Tell them who you are and what you are about," they said. To be honest, there are days when I struggle to remember myself. Forty years toiling at the coalface of football journalism does that to you. But I have reason to believe that I have reached the heady heights of the title of Football Correspondent of BBC Scotland which gives me a renown, in Scottish terms, of somewhere between Alex Salmond and the deep fried Mars Bar.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~01~RS~)
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Ah, Chick, you're no historian, are you? You make it sound as though Culloden was Scotland vs England when, in truth, plenty of lowland Scots fought with Cumberland against the Highlanders.
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surely it is time for the SPL re-re-revamp to kick in and relegate the bottom 10 SPL sides. Leaving Rangers to play Celtic 36 times per year in the league on top of the customary 2 cup competitions.
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Or just let Celtic and Rangers join the EPL and expand it to 22 teams (it's possible, it used to be 24! Also it's not the sole preserve of English teams - Cardiff and Swansea could well be playing in it next season!)
An Old Firm-less SPL could well be more interesting and less predictable.
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as bazalinhio pointed out, you clearly don't know your history Chick.
and whilst the relegation battle is mildly interesting, wouldnt the battle for 3rd and 4th be a more interesting and topical this week? Especially with the New Firm derby just past.
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Once again you're miles wide of the mark, Chick. You obstinately refused to discuss the rangers financial crisis when it was the only thing worth talking about in Scottish football, and now you ignore the SPL2 fiasco. Instead we get the titanic battle of... Inverness vs. Falkirk?
So, once you've finished your Rangers fiscal reprt for next week, how about some commentary on the nonsensical SPL2?
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Mo Malpas a 'shrewd tactician'? Do me a favour! Alex Ferguson is a shrewd tactician; Lord Wellington was a shred tactician. Credit to Maurice, he's a decent fella but he is no shrewd tactician. There does seem to be a strange alchemy at work when the two thoroughly ordinary coaches that are Malpas and Butcher combine, as was demonstrated at Motherwell, but it's a more complex formula than a motivational/tactical combination. Were Swindon under Malpas typically unmotivated? Were Coventry City, Sydney FC, and Brentford under Butcher usually tactically naive?
You are due credit for focusing on the non-OF sides again this week but again, there are four leagues in the Scottish set-up. The latest murmurings on SPL2 might have been worth discussion. Even today's revelation - you might even call it an exclusive - that the SFL is considering allowing Celtic to field a 'B' side in the third division, and that the SPL will be scrapping the reserve league, would have been more worthy of debate.
Also, you've mis-spelt 'Caledonian' at the beginning of the seventh paragraph.
C+ at best, Chick.
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Chick, I think this is one of the best pieces you have ever written. You take a lot of stick on here but the above prose is very good indeed. It flows, good metaphors, striking imagery, and the content's not half bad either.
Keep it up good man.
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Sure it will be interesting, indeed. But at the same time, the ultimate goal for half the table should not merely be survival, with another 4 fighting over the scraps, and the same 2 teams always fighting for the title.
How do you fix this though, who can say? Wage caps, enforcing teams to play a minimum number of under 21's, tossing in golf style handicaps? (last was a joke). Somehow the field needs to be evened, otherwise the Scottish game will never move forward and forever be caught in this same soulless limbo.
I am just not sure the people in power to bring change have the strength or the will to really shake things up and try something too different though. Much easier to settle for things being the way they always have been, with minor tweaks.
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Good blog Chick. I must admit I also tipped caley Thistle for the drop myself. However the arrival of Terry Butcher and Maurice Malpas has only encourage their players to go and enjoy their football agin. there is no doubt in my mind that Brewster had to go. He had lost his spark.
With big Tel coming in he has not only put confidence into the players again, but the signings of Richie Foran and Eric Odhiambo have been revelations. Now I can only see one order of the bottom three come the end of the season:
10th- Inverness CT
11th- Kilmarnock
12th- Falkirk
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Have to disagree with people who criticise Chick's choice of subject matter...SPL2 and Rangers' financial crisis are getting extremely boring to hear about and its good to see some attention drawn to the lower end of the league where there is a quality dogfight going on.
I think its good that Chick doesn't always go for the most predictable subject, which will usually have plenty of media coverage anyway.
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Chick, you question Terry's committment to the Scotland job. Surely even you can see that watching different teams on the park each week is probably more productive than sitting in the Setanta studio's.
And maybe one day soon a player from Inverness will be noticed as having international potential. Something press people would never see being as you's can't see past the OF
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Who puts orphans out in storms? Oh, and stop saying coalface all the time.
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best-written blog on here by some distance.
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Chick I am so fed up of you and the other members of the press telling me how my team Falkirk has been punching above there weight for years now, this is rubbish we were a established mid table team in the past and there is no reason we should not be at this level now. And although JH has been a good manager in the past he arrived at his sell buy date at the end of last season if not the year before. His loan signing apart from Stokes and Duffy have been a total waste of money as the on loan players have been no better than what we had. He has purchased players and retained others e.g Cregg, Bullen, and this will be controversially Laptley (last year and this year). During the last 2 seasons when we were safe from relegation what did he do, he played players who were leaving instead of giving the youth a chance. The manager is liked by you and you’re like because he will always give you that funny bit during the interview that makes your day well believe it or not it DOSE NOT make the supporters day. JH will accept the plaudits when we do well but blames the players when it goes wrong, but he is the manager and it is his job to change things. JH has only plan A and never a plan B, the team has no spirit or fight at present and this is down to the management team if they cannot improve they should move out NOW and give us a chance of survival this season. When Inverness was looking for a manager Archie Knox was quoted this would be a great move if the Falkirk board could entice him to Falkirk. I do not believe the FFC board are up for a change and therefore have almost certainly doomed us to the lower division and heaven knows when we would get out of that. The only bright spot is our youth where we have some promise which could be seen by the inclusion of 5 players at the recent under 21 get together but how many of these were down to call offs from others? So to round this up we need a change and we need it NOW.
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Where does it say in any guise that Culloden was Scotland vs. England?
I really cannot understand the desperate need that some people have to try showing off some superiority of... what? Knowledge of history? Cultural understanding? Ability to *write*? It's horribly prevalent on the BBC Football boards. You people are almost never happy.
The piece refers purely to the bloke who was in charge of what - for simplicity's sake - I will call the "English" forces. Sure, there were Scots and Welsh and Irish and French and Japanese and Africans and Norwegians and Americans there too - oh! how culturally diverse we are; oh! how wonderful it is to pick at teeny little things that *haven't even been said* to display superiority; oh! how clever we must be! - but they are not being referred to. Let's learn to look at what's said before posting some drivel about its historical inaccuracy, shall we?
And Pele_Duarte, gimme a break. Your post started off interesting. Your point that 'shrewd tactician' may not actually be applicable to Mo Malpas. Points for that. But to then complain that there are other things worth writing about - has it ever occurred to you that no one person can write about everything at once and that if the article you're reading is not about SPL2/the current global economic crisis/pigeons and their migratory habits (which being the topic you actually want to read about) that you can in fact *read something else*?!
Sheesh! This place sometimes makes me ashamed to be British.
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I'm not usually one to defend Chick Young but nowhere does he state the Battle of Culloden was the whole of Scotland against the English.
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#13 in relation to Gavin Strachan's blog from last week,
"Are you Chick Young in disguise?"
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I don't know why you're all getting hung up on the battle to stay up, when the best competition is the battle to come up from the 1st Divison. This league is by far the most competitive in Scotland and rarely gets a mention, except when SPL2 is being discussed (yet again!!).
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How to improve the scottish game? Well, with the SPL2 looking like it might just get the go-ahead, and the SPL clubs getting to put there B teams in the lowere league, why not re-structure the whole thing?
Add the top 4 from 1st Division into the SPL and everyone in the 2nd moves into the 1st. Two leagues of 16.
SPL B teams can go into the 3rd division (now the 2nd... or 1st or SPL3 depending what the powers that be decide to call them!) and there you have it.
This would hopefully mean that not every game means life or death to a club and they can therefore try and pass the ball a bit and work on their skill - making our homegrown youth players better technically and improving our national team.
Alternatively, keep the status-quo and give Motherwell some grass seeds to plant. This will at least allow football to be played on a proper grass pitch and not a muddy mess!!
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Not such a bad blog, Chick.
The SPL has been far from vintage yet we have uncertain Champions, a battle for third, a relegation battle and even if you like a battle to make the top six before the split.
(Imagine if you had talked about Rangers' finances the abuse you would have got for being only interested in * apply appropriate epithet.)
Any EPL fans who may have strayed onto your blog should note the comparison with their own self-styled "best league in the world" which itself has been very poor this year but is still being lauded for producing a twelve team relegation battle.
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A good blog Chick ... I'm afraid the Bairns lack the solidity and heart for a relegation battle. Put simply: you cannot hope to stay up if you give away cheap goals and are wasteful in front of the oppostion goal. To compound these major flaws it is obvious that Falkirk cannot/ will not kill a game by playing possession football.
I hope that that the Bairns stay up because they have tried to play attractive daring football in the past but to thrive in the SPL you need to compete for the ball and have a solid defence.
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Doug Scott - well said. The 1st Division should get far more media coverage than it does. The attendances at the matches in that League, though sometimes comparable with lower SPL sides, might be improved too. But the battle for the First Division Championship is going to be a cracker, no doubt about it.
Chick, decent article. I agree with some others' points: its easy to be critical about the technicalities of an article. But your point is a good one. And as a Killie fan, whose club (don't forget) took 10 points from its first four games this season), I am becoming more concerned by the week!!
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What, another Scotland coach putting club duties first? And everyone taking it as the way it is? No, that can't be.
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derekthegrumpycleric, as a Celtic fan I'm alarmed to hear that "you cannot hope to stay up if you give away cheap goals and are wasteful in front of the opposition goal."
From the last 16 in Europe to relegation candidates in just a year... crivvens!
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does anyone know how carl finnegan is doing at Falkirk??
i know he scored the other week but is he actually any good??
if someone could let me know that would be great. its just he used to play with my younger brother years ago and i thought he was pants but Newcastle somehow signed him and then i know he went onto Falkirk.
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a brutally honest blog. bravo
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Chick, I bet you're relieved that St Mirren collected so many points of the December period, or they would be struggling.
The whole of West Fife is crossing our fingers that Falkirk come down and are replaced by Dunfermline!!
PARS fan!
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Good blog this week Chick.
I think Falkirk are perhaps stagnating because of the lack of a 3rd stand which would increase revenue.
Perhaps you could do a blog on the 'pyramidal league structure' that we are always hearing about.
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Get a grip why is the media going on about Falkirk going down. It's not long ago the your team, sorry your 2nd team, St Mirren were propping up the table. Get off Falkirk's back. Over the last few year we have given a chance to more young players than any other team in the SPL. Every club of our size goes through this type of spell and I have no doubt we will come through it
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Carl is just back from a long injury but has been one of the best players over the last 2 games. If he stays fit and he gets to start each game he maybe the difference between staying up or relegation.
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El_Don - you shouldn't be ashamed to be British. It's embarrassing enough that you appear to be an Aberdeen fan...
Points taken, and fairly made. We all have our opinion, and you're as entitled to yours as I am to mine. However, several of the messages above - and in weeks previous - express frustration that the focus of these columns has been split between the SPL and the national side. Whereas there have previously been worthy topics discussed, and the weight of support and interest is naturally biased towards these areas, the lower leagues are being completely ignored. The SPL2 and Celtic B team debate would have been ideal entry points into even a summary of what's happening across the other divisions but, again, nothing. It smacks of elitism and a lack of any journalistic nous in sniffing out stories in the lower leagues. Look at Paul Fletcher's blog for a demonstration of variety and investigative effort. Week in, week out, Chic regurgitates opinion from the redtops and litters his piece with mind-bogglingly inane cliches to distract the reader from the alarming truth that he's not actually adding anything to the debate.
The other BBC sports bloggers may be directed to cover specific areas, but Chick has to cover Scottish football, and quite simply, he isn't. I'm not asking for everything at once, but in 20 odd posts he hasn't really covered anything outside of the top flight or the national side. Is it really that much to ask?
The reason I am so militant about this is that I no longer live in Scotland, so I look to sources such as this for discourse related to something I miss greatly. There's no doubt that whatever Chick writes about, there's always going to be some idiot who gives him stick. If you look back through the blogs, I have noted my appreciation where his work has been of great interest to me.
Your conclusion would no doubt be to stop reading the blog if it annoys me that much which is fair enough, but it misses the point. If Chick's responsibility is to write about Scottish football, he should simply just get on and do it, and not focus on a small but popular section in order to sell papers because that's not what the blog's for.
I concur that the historical nit-picking is a little over the top, but what's the problem with being correct? Should we just let it go because it's a facetious comment in a football blog? It's arguable, but those people raising their point have an opinion as well.
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Why do people constantly critisise Chick?
Should we not be praising him for talking about something other than the old firm unlike other journalists!
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
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Chick, I enjoy your columns online and in print every week. I'm normally one of your strongest supporters and don't have much time for the small-minded and ignorance-fuelled bile that a lot of (particularly OF fans) cast towards you.
But I have to take issue with you on your description of Malpas as a “shrewd tactician". Malpas has been a disaster as a manager wherever he's been. Look at his record at Fir Park and Swindon (wassit?). Awful. The guy was very good player and is a decent coach. But that’s all.
When will you (and other Scottish journos) start calling it like it is, when assessing football managers? If a manager’s record is pants, then for goodness sake, come out and say so.
Okay, as a writer/pundit you need to maintain and nurture your professional working relationships with the key people in the Scottish game. But you also need to give your readers a wee bit more credit. You should stop letting your personal friendships with football managers get in the way of giving an honest, warts-and-all assessment of their performances. Anything else is dishonest journalism. Your readers deserve better.
So, let’s hear you tell it like it is about Mixu and Yogi. Results don’t lie. Neither should journalists.
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I don't think there was a "coalface" this week? Why is that?
"Chick baiting" it's an online sport - "I know, let's go and rip the p*** out of Chick Young".
Never confuse accurate with pedantic.
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