Scottish enlightenment
This is a blog for my Partick fans Rob Reid and Andrew Young who come from the west side of Glasgow and aren’t caught in the Celtic/Rangers bifurcation. Partick’s first night of a 6 match battle to get out of the championship and into the Premiership begins tonight.
We remember the pain it gave Reid in a season past, we are sorry that St Johnstone will be in the Championship next season and we hope that Celtic and Rangers fans can behave more reasonably towards each other.
Belgium wonders
This blog would also like to salute Union Saint-Gilloise from Belgium who we know to be supported by Andrew Tarrant who we consider the greatest offshore supporter of Pensions within the Civil Service.
Saint Gilloise is winning the league and if they do we will see them in European competition next year. Detail on the Scottish and Belgian leagues from Byron McKeeby is in comments .
May the success of this Belgium minnow be a comfort to Andrew who I hope to meet at the Great Escape in Brighton later…
Can Andrew Tarrant perhaps explain how the Belgian league works, please?
I think Royale Union Saint-Gilloise still have three games to play, two of which are away from home.
Topping the league table is only half the job – teams then enter the Champions’ Play-offs for a chance to win the title.
As Scotland yet again considers league reconstruction which won’t happen soon enough to save the likes of St Johnstone or guarantee Partick Thistle a promotion, fans say they want a larger league (there were 18 teams in youth, compared with 12 today), while TV and the overpaid bureaucrats at the top of the game up there say they want a smaller league of 10.
In Belgium, league points are halved in the playoffs?
The Belgian league is one of the hardest to understand among the top European leagues. They have three playoff branches and on top of that one is divided into two sub-groups and the third one leads to yet another playoff, this time involving second division teams?
Even the Belgians may be planning to change next season…