Livingston - Where Next?

Sometimes radio phone-ins can make for depressing listening. Radio Five Live’s shows consist of person after person repeating the blindingly obvious. Real Radio’s are bigot after moron spouting on about the Old Firm. But on Radio Scotland you occasionally get a caller who has a really good and original point to make.

A week or so ago I head a supporter of East Stirlingshire FC commenting on the Third Division promotion race. His point was, in essence, that Livingston were much too good for Division Three. He also reckoned that the nine other Third Division clubs had been punished as a result of Livingston being demoted to their division. With only one automatic promotion place available, it was inevitable that a full-time club who had been preparing for First Division football in the Summer would walk off with the title.

This obviously long-suffering supporter felt that a much more appropriate punishment for Livingston’s financial shenanigans would have been a large points deduction but to have kept them in Division One. The points deduction - perhaps 30 points – should have been enough to ensure that they were relegated. In either scenario the end result, for season 2010/11, would have been to place them in Division Two. The application of a points deduction would not have disadvantaged any other clubs.

I hadn’t thought of this particular slant on the whole sorry affair. It seems a very sensible analysis and to me would have been an appropriate punishment for the West Lothian club.

Last night I watched Livingston and Shire battle it out in a League game. Livingston went into the match in top place, four points ahead of Shire and with a game in hand. Realistically, a win for Livingston would wrap up the title and promotion. That’s exactly what they got, and fully deserved it was too. Full-time coaching and training has given them a shape and flow to their play that Shire could not match. Full time wages means they can attract players that no other club in Division Three could hope to sign.

Livingston will go up ‘on a high’ and should be able to compete in the Second Division without any problem. The difference in quality is not huge – just substitute Arbroath for Montrose, Peterhead for Elgin, Stirling for Stenhousemuir.

However, despite their on-field success this season Livingston have not got the fans flooding back to Almondvale. Fifteen years ago, as they climbed the leagues, they could attract 3-4000 home fans. Last night, for a vital game, there crowd was less than 900 and 100 of them had made the trip from Falkirk. The Second Division is unlikely to be much more attractive, and the medium-term economics of running a full-time operation will be hard to justify.

Renewed talk of an expanded SPL could also have an impact. If any expansion within the next couple of years was based on league position then Livingston would almost certainly be excluded. However, it is quite possible that expansion would be by invitation in which case Livingston might be in. If the SPL clubs went down that route and cherry-picked their new members, then it would be the ultimate slap in the face for the rest of Scottish football.

It is difficult to work out where Livingston’s place in the pecking order of Scottish football should be. They are, in effect, a franchise that was set up in West Lothian in the mid 1990s. The area should be able to support a professional football club but history says otherwise. Bo’ness, Bathgate and Armadale all came and went in the 1930s. If the same rules applied now as did back then, Livingston would also have been consigned to history.

But the world has changed since then and with their excellent facilities Livingston deserve to survive. However, as the caller to Radio Scotland illustrated, there is still a great deal of resentment and ill-feeling towards the club from supporters across the land. Whether that is replicated in board rooms and accountant’s offices is another matter.