Alex Salmond summed it up in a nutshell. You cant have Yin without Yang, Hearts without Hibs, Rangers without Celtic and deprive people of their loyalties. It nearly happened down here with Oldham, Bury and Rochdale all nearly merging! Fans dont want that, they want their own identity!
I would suggest the souness revolution,along with bosman ruined what was a strong scottish game at that time. A league that competed with the best in europe. Scottish clubs abandoned rearing their own scottish talent for foreign players to keep up with rangers spending in 1986 onwards. Some of these foreign players were bang average and within 4 years moving into the 1990s clubs like aberdeen,hearts,celtic and dundee utd could no longer compete with the best in europe. Even rangers with all the millions spent were big failures in europe. Its a real shame that scottish football is dominated by one club these days(celtic),and potentially rangers if they ever sort out their finances. Its been almost 40 years since a club outside glasgow won the league.
Apart from the long term contracts Dundee United's players were on notoriously low basic wages.....but massive performance bonuses, strange how that seemed to encourage them to play better....