Scotland kicks off facing renewed breakaway threat

As every divorce lawyer knows, rows tend to reach a peak when finances are low. Money could not be tighter for the Scottish Premier League right now, so the decibel level is high.

A new season is supposed to represent a fresh start, but the SPL kick-off today is simply a 90-minute truce in a bitter relationship that seems to be heading for the rocks. The SPL is in danger of breaking up, as two incompatible sides wonder how they ever joined together in the first place.

Forget new strips, it is old arguments which herald the campaign. Ten clubs handed in their letter of resignation to the SPL on Thursday, in a piece of brinkmanship – which would take effect in 2004 – designed to curb the excessive power of Celtic and Rangers off the pitch.

The Old Firm have dominated life on the pitch for decades, but when the SPL was set up in 1998 it was supposed to be a brave new world of equality for Scotland's top teams, who broke away from the Scottish League to create their venture. A £48m four-season contract with Sky Sports underwrote the optimism, but now the money has gone and the division between haves and have-nots has returned.

The "rebel" 10 say power and greed are at the root of the split. They want to change the 11-1 voting structure which allows the Glasgow rivals to band together, as they did four months ago to scupper the proposed in-house pay-per-view channel, SPL TV.

A simple 8-4, two-thirds, majority is the aim of the 10 along with an equal share of television revenue: the Old Firm took 40 per cent of the Sky deal and have settled for slightly less from the £18m two-year contract with the BBC, which has replaced it.

No amount, though, would really satisfy Celtic and Rangers. The television pot has always been too small, regardless of who paid for it. Each earned £3m a season from Sky, a fraction of English Premiership sides such as Southampton with less box-office appeal, which is why they have spent their energy over the last two years pursuing a move to Europe – the Atlantic League was the concept of similar partners in the Netherlands, such as Ajax, and Benfica in Portugal – or England.

The ill-starred courtship of the Nationwide League is ironic, given that Sky took the money it had saved for a deal with the SPL and gave it to the English First Division, but it was only the ITV Digital riches that turned the heads of the Old Firm, who realised they would make more money if they agreed their own separate deals. Two clubs who each have turnovers in excess of £60m, despite the trickle of television cash, can have little in common with the "rebel" 10, whose revenue barely adds up to the same sum. Never has this been more true.

The SPL set the pace for European football's over-heated economy. Fuelled by Sky's cash, wage bills soared as teams tried to compete with the Old Firm. Hearts, who won the Scottish Cup in 1998 and came close to the title itself, took drastic action a year ago after losses of £8m in just two years by slashing the wage bill, as did Aberdeen. The boom was over and bust was just around the corner in the shape of Motherwell, who spent 97 per cent of their turnover on salaries.

Their millionaire owner John Boyle, who lost £11m from his own pocket, put the club into receivership in April and the administrator tore up the contracts of 19 players. The total debt of the SPL is estimated to be £140m.

Not surprisingly, transfers – outside of the Old Firm – are now a thing of the past. "Moves that once cost between £50,000 and £300,000 have disappeared this summer," said the Dundee United manager, Alex Smith. "It's either a Bosman, or a Rio Ferdinand, but nothing in between." Smith has shaved £1.4m off the Tannadice wage bill since taking over two seasons ago and his chairman, Jim McLean, admits culpability. "Maybe we did not consider what would happen when it came to the end of the Sky TV deal," McLean stated yesterday.

McLean knows the gulf between Glasgow and the rest has grown wider. "The other 10 have finally realised that they can't compete financially with the Old Firm, nor spend more than they are taking in," he said.

Even Rangers are not immune from the harsh new climate. Though the £6m paid to Barcelona for Mikel Arteta was the largest transfer, it was a fraction of previous summer spending sprees. Alex McLeish cannot buy again until he sells. Tore Andre Flo is the prime candidate, but not at the record £12m fee which remains a monument to how even the richest can be tricked into keeping up with the neighbours.