27-08-2016, 01:05
Whatever the motives behind Mercer's attempted takeover of Hibs, the argument he made that without a single bigger club in Edinburgh then it was going to be extremely hard to truly mount a sustained challenge to Celtic and Rangers, and in fairness he was probably correct. Even today their size dwarfs both of the Edinburgh clubs, and however you view that it makes it very hard to truly compete.
Its a similar scenario we have seen in Sheffield a few times, usually when one club or the other is struggling, although it has never gone beyond fan banter and paper talk. As with Edinburgh though, it would never be accepted by the fans, one side would always see it as a "hostile" takeover rather than a full merger!! But like Edinburgh, with a completely unbiased take, the financial benefits of one club rather than two are definitely there. We see nearly 50k fans watch football in Sheffield each week, that would propel the new merged team much higher up the rankings than either of them are now!!
Its a similar scenario we have seen in Sheffield a few times, usually when one club or the other is struggling, although it has never gone beyond fan banter and paper talk. As with Edinburgh though, it would never be accepted by the fans, one side would always see it as a "hostile" takeover rather than a full merger!! But like Edinburgh, with a completely unbiased take, the financial benefits of one club rather than two are definitely there. We see nearly 50k fans watch football in Sheffield each week, that would propel the new merged team much higher up the rankings than either of them are now!!