TOP-FLIGHT Scottish football is preparing to embrace internal strife for the second time in a decade after the Scottish Premier League revealed yesterday that it wants the ten best clubs in the Scottish Football League to jump ship.

The SPL is ready to invite all ten sides from the Scottish first division to move under its umbrella and form an SPL 2 by 2008 in a bid to stave off a potential financial crisis that threatens full-time football in the middle tier of Scotland’s league set-up. Lex Gold, the chairman of the SPL, yesterday described the move as “seismic” and will meet the governing body, the Scottish Football Association, and the SFL to plan what he hopes will be an amicable divorce.

However, the original creator of the SPL 2 plan, Roger Mitchell, the former chief executive of the SPL, believes that the switch has come too late. Mitchell was the figurehead of the SPL when it set up in 1998, after a revolt led by Celtic and Rangers in which the top clubs quit the SFL after more than a century of membership, to run their own affairs and share in a lucrative television deal with Sky.

Mitchell left the SPL four years ago to return to the business world and is now based in Italy, but the man who struck the £45 million deal with Sky that funded the initial heady days in the Bank of Scotland Premierleague dismissed the SFL as a “desert” for clubs such as Livingston — whose owner, Pearse Flynn, is driving the new split — who are relegated from the top flight. Mitchell said the SFL should only look after “recreational football.”

“My proposal in 1998 was to go direct to SPL 2,” Mitchell said yesterday. “It was for the same reasons that are obvious today — finance. However, when I put it to the SPL clubs they did not have the appetite for it. It was inevitable that it would happen but it is a shame that it has happened too late.

“The clubs do not get any value from the SFL. In the lower divisions, clubs are playing recreational football, not professional football. However, there are clubs in the first division who yo-yo between there and the Premierleague and they should be under some sort of umbrella and be protected. There are about 20 clubs in Scotland that should be full-time and they should be protected and leave the SFL to organise recreational football.

“This move will not solve all the problems of Scottish football but it puts these [first division] clubs in a league that is more modern and professional. Livingston invested a lot of money to get to, and stay in the Premierleague. They do not deserve to go down into a desert.”

Gold adopts a more conciliatory attitude with the SFL but there is little doubt that first division clubs who have dropped down from the Premierleague such as Dundee, Partick Thistle and St Johnstone — who this week announced a loss of more than £400,000 on last season — can see the writing on the wall. The SFL is now without a title sponsor, after the end of its long association with Bell’s Whisky last May, and the lack of television coverage is impacting on their finances.

The SPL is in negotiations with a new sponsor to take over from the Bank of Scotland, who will end their nine-year partnership in May 2007, and that has prompted a nowor-never attitude from the present first division teams.

Gold responded yesterday to Mitchell’s criticism in the delay in setting up SPL 2 by stating that the top-flight clubs have had their own problems over the past three years, notably three administrations and runaway debt that soared to more than £200 million, before the tide started to turn last season when the SPL signed a £54.5 million four-season television contract with Setanta.

“We had to get our own house back in order first,” Gold said. “It has taken us three years and the clubs say that the SPL has never been in better shape. We have record crowds, a record television deal, a high Uefa co-efficiency and our youth set-up is doing well. However, the question of how many full-time clubs Scotland could support has always been on the agenda. The clubs felt that now was the right time to move.

“We believe a top flight of 22 clubs playing in two divisions offers the best opportunity to strengthen and enhance the professional game in Scotland.

“Our clubs are sensitive to the impact a development of this nature could have on the remaining SFL clubs and the opportunity for restructuring below a new top-flight structure could also be addressed. We have, therefore, written to our colleagues in the SFL and the Scottish Football Association to arrange a discussion about the impact of these proposals and how they may best be brought into effect.”