Tweet
A Scottish Premier League meeting to discuss proposals for reconstruction has been postponed as opposition grows against a 10-team top flight.
The general meeting due to be held on Monday has been rescheduled for 4 January because of wintry weather.
Representatives from the 12 member clubs were due to discuss a proposal to create a 10-team league.
But January's meeting is expected to hear fresh proposals for a new play-off system at the top of the table.
Four clubs - Dundee United, Hearts, Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Kilmarnock - also remain to be convinced of the case for a 10-club top league.
And they are understood to want further discussion on league sizes while also exploring new play-off proposals, such as exists in the Eredivisie in the Netherlands.
It appears that Caley Thistle are the latest club to emerge as sceptical of the plans outlined by SPL chief executive Neil Doncaster last week.
One senior Scottish football figure told BBC Scotland: "There is now another club against the proposal.
"Those pushing the 10-club league should not underestimate the rest of us.
"Tomorrow's meeting has been cancelled, but now a bigger debate begins."
A strategic review group - comprising Doncaster, SPL chairman Ralph Topping and representatives from Hibernian, St Mirren, Motherwell, Celtic, Rangers and Aberdeen - set up by the organisation concluded their eight-month schedule of meetings last Sunday.
Their proposal for a two-tier SPL, with 10 teams in each division, and changes to the calendar mirrored the views of former First Minister Henry McLeish, who published a couple of days later the findings of his year-long review on behalf of the Scottish Football Association.
Indeed, McLeish himself had been involved in the discussions, with SPL sources stressing that all top-flight clubs had been in involved at some stage of the discussions to overhaul the whole of Scottish football.
It would mean a 36-match league season and the removal of the split into two sections of six, which has caused numerous controversies due to the anomalies in fixtures, for the final five matches.
The existing one automatic promotion place would be supplemented by play-offs between the ninth-placed team in the top tier and three teams in the second tier.
Those changes would be unlikely to come into force straight away, but a July start date, coupled with a winter break, could be introduced next season ahead of reconstruction.
A 10-2 majority would be required to change the size of the SPL, but league chiefs hope that fears of relegation would be placated by a focus on reducing the gap in revenues that exists between clubs in the top flight and Irn-Bru First Division.
Clubs finishing in the upper echelons of any SPL2 would receive income closer to those in the bottom reaches of the top flight, while the Second and Third Divisions could be regionalised.
The Scottish Football League, which presently administers the senior divisions below the SPL, has been included in the talks, as has the SFA.
However, several clubs - and especially team managers - are known to prefer an increase in the number of clubs in the top flight.
Kilmarnock chairman Michael Johnston told BBC Scotland on Saturday that, although a 10-team top-flight could work, there were other permutations that he thoughtwould work better.
Now, however, the Arctic weather conditions that have decimated the football fixtures for several weeks have delayed the showdown meeting between the different factions within the SPL.
Print Sponsor
Powered by WizardRSS | Work At Home Jobs