Good man. #onceasaddler… 
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This needs to be considered in context.
Scotland has a population of less than six million- about the same as Yorkshire.
Much of the land north of Dundee/Perth is barely inhabitable, due to the terrain shaped by the last ice age. As such, 50% of the population live within a 30 mile radius of Glasgow. Guess who the majority of them are likely to support. Herein lies the disparity with the rest of the country.
Per capita, Scottish football is actually better attended than English football.
With the fresh impetus of Premier League membership (never going to happen, by the way), and the potential revenues that brings with it, Celtic (in particular) would be getting fresh investors coming at them right, left, & centre. It only took 18 months of decent investment to get Wolves into Europe, and consecutive top 7(I think?) finishes. There’s little doubt in my mind that Celtic would be Champions League regulars in about 3 years.
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They’ve been Champions League regulars for the last 10 years by default and have usually exited by the end of the group stage if not before.
I’m not sure if you’ve deliberately missed my point, or it wasn’t clear.
They would be Champions League regulars by finishing in the Top 4 of the English Premier League, if they were in it. The quality of players they would need to do this, and be able to attract by the aforementioned fresh impetus PL membership would afford them, would make them a greater force at CL level. Their support levels would sustain this. I don’t agree with the Brighton away argument. Every Ulster Loyalist I know who lives in England has a strong affinity for Rangers. Every English-born Roman Catholic I know who likes football has Celtic as at least their second team. They’d be sorted for a generation.
I feel that particularly as Walsall fans, having had jibes of “tinpot… no fans… can’t even get out of the lower leagues” forever, from those with no insight about the proximity of Villa/Wolves and their overspill areas, and Bonser and the rent, we should be used to being a bit more discerning about geographical and socio-economic- and cultural-variables, and our ideas a bit more nuanced than “Scottish football… MegaLOLZ!”
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Yep. Celtic has a huge diaspora to call on too.
I think we’ll see a European league one day, which Celtic would be part of.
Whether the European league would be a closed shop, like the NFL, and what it would mean for the likes of Walsall, I’m not sure.
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I don’t mind Scottish football. Much more relatable for us as Walsall fans than the Premier League.
When crowds were allowed, some of the atmospheres in the televised games when Rangers or Celtic travelled to a smaller team were brilliant.
I’ve never fully understood the attraction of a European Super League for those clubs that always seem to want to be part of it.
They are always the usual suspects based on being relatively big fishes in small ponds and historically winning many trophies along the way. If you stick them all in one league (assuming that they no longer play in their respective national leagues) with only that 1 trophy a season to play for so say 15 of the 16 are winning nothing year after year, then to me it would become as dull and pointless as the current Champions League group stages, but over a much longer period each season.
I’m sure Celtic/Rangers/PSG etc fans and the like would still rather watch them beating the other teams in their national leagues building to an aim of challenging for those league titles rather than what IMO would become playing each other in gloried euro friendlies when after a few early season defeats it becomes clear that teams near the bottom at that point have no chance of challenging at the top of a Euro league and become like a Burnley or Brighton just playing to stay in it to keep the cash flowing in it.
Maybe because I have no interest in any particular Prem team but I just dont see who would want to watch it regularly either.
We’ll have away games in Andorra, San Marino & Liechtenstein.
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It would be for the money, not for winning trophies.
Football would just be something to fill in the gaps between the ad breaks.
Why would Edinburgh be a draw for him ?
He moved from Fulham to Fullbrook .
I know which one I’d prefer.
Never been to Edinburgh then?
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I’m with Kevlar on this one. Been to Edinburgh loads of times including having worked there, not a fan. Has a very articicial feel about it, everywhere you go you get ripped off, much prefer Glasgow or any of the main cities in the north of England for a city break, especially as the latter can be tied in with a Saddlers away trip.
I have been to Largs which isn’t far from Glasgow, one thing that i did find funny was the accent of the Indian restaurant owners, it sounds more like Mexican 
Little did I know as we skipped away from Bootham Crescent in 1999 that it would be my last York away at that ground.
Was simply the best away trip with the proximity of the ground to the city centre what made it.
The new ground is 3 miles out - north east I think, so falling out of one of York’s many splendid pubs and doing a five minute stroll to the ground has gone forever. Slightly heartbreaking - or like the Merson era - a shambles. 
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Lamentable…shall we?..as there’s nowt else to do.
I miss you
York away
The perfect curves of a Tetley glass
Such fine booze
On the banks of the Ouse
Where I could talk to the statue of Constantine
To the amusement of tourists
Who don’t know what it means
To peer through the gloom of dodgy floodlights
With a bacon butty on a Tuesday night
Bought from the café on the corner of the street
Where Bootham Crescent and the Railway meet
Haunted hostelries
Cathedral of dreams
Open air latrines
When will we be together again?
With my little woolly hat and my donkey jacket
That hang forlorn in the upstairs attic
Pie stained
A moment of excitement captured in gravy
Outliving the power of human memory
I miss you York away
Your brass ash trays and wooden tables
Narrow streets and weathered cobbles
Like the Hibbitt era
A shambles.
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The bit about talking to the statue in front of tourists is actually true by the way!
But it wasn’t a York game, it was the Sunday away play-off semi at Stoke.
There were works on the railway and the only way I could get to the game was to go to York, then Manchester, overshooting Stoke down to Stafford then back up to Stoke.
This involved being in York at about 8.30 AM with an hour between trains so I wandered around and started looking at the Constantine statue, opened a can and just started talking to it, basically praying for a win later that day. When I looked round there were about a dozen chattering Chinese tourists taking pictures of me as though it was some regular Sunday morning English ritual they’d stumbled across 
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Superb.
Dunno why I’d substituted the Hibbitt and Merson eras!
Merson era was a shambles too
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