SPL scraps plans for January vote on restructure

The Scottish Premier League has scrapped plans for a vote to introduce a top division of 10 teams.

It intended to push the plans through at a meeting on 17 January but the proposal has now been put on hold.

Dundee United chairman Stephen Thompson, a critic of the scheme, met SPL bosses Neil Doncaster and Ralph Topping at Gleneagles on Saturday.

All 12 clubs were due to vote on the idea at the meeting but no formal resolution has been agreed.

The SPL’s chief executive Doncaster and its chairman Topping had hoped that the clubs would vote in favour of the changes that would be introduced for the season after next.

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The package of reform recommended by an SPL steering group also included a second tier of 10 teams, an earlier start to the season and the return of a winter break.

All of the top flight clubs met at Hampden on 4 January to discuss the proposals, with Topping describing the talks as ‘positive’ and representatives of Aberdeen and St Johnstone suggesting there was a willingness to embrace the 10-10 set-up.

But for a vote to happen a formal resolution needs to be put to clubs 14 days before the meeting and that has not happened.

One SPL chairman told BBC Scotland: “There has been no resolution, so there is nothing to vote on.”

With four clubs – Dundee United, Hearts, Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Kilmarnock now known to be against the changes and St Mirren saying their preference is for a 14-team top league, top flight chairmen are braced for further talks on possible reconstruction.

The meeting will go ahead as scheduled on 17 January and the SPL still hope to thrash out an agreement in principle but there will be no formal vote taken.