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Originally Posted by Novo

Those successful periods from the clubs you have mentioned have only been short term, the last team to break into the top 2 when Rangers and Celtic were in the league together was Hearts and that's because they had money to do it back then and Rudi and Velika. and they still were the 2 most successful clubs in Scotland before the fergie stint at Aberdeen, the old firm is in the top 10 most profitable derbys in the World so it is vital to Scotland, and all those teams you mentioned haven't got the potential to be huge clubs, Butcher left Inverness to go to Hibs in a heartbeat because they have at least some potential as a club with a good fanbase , the problem with Scotland though is that their is not enough investment it hasn't moved on at all, Rangers and Celtic can't really move forward until they are playing in the Prem, neither of them will ever have the money to win the CL in today's world because they aren't making enough, huge clubs with 50,000 a week attendances but no aims that will truly forfill them

Yeah but the reason they've only been short term is because of the stranglehold that the Old Firm have had on the league, and whenever a team has managed to break through there has been a lot of conspiring to make sure that they don't split up that two team relationship at the top of the table. I certainly feel like interest in the SPL has gone up among fans of all the other teams in the league. Aberdeen's a city of over 200,000 people and often pulls in around a quarter of that for really big games, I mean that's a sizable support all things considered. There's not enough investment in other teams so the league just sits and stagnates over time, that's why I feel like Rangers being ejected from the league and having to start at the bottom has been the best thing to happen in years, not because it's fun to laugh at Rangers (well, it is, but that's not why ) but because it's meant that the other teams in the league actually have something to play for and have a chance to build themselves up before Rangers return to the league.