Maybe it’s what they call Morton’s Fork – two choices which would yield equally undesirable results.
Then again, maybe it’s Hobson’s Choice – the option between something or nothing.
Either way, the idea that the first thing the newly-born SPFL is going to do is appoint one of the two men who have ruled through the single most embarrassing phase in Scottish football history to take charge of it?
An absolute joke.
When the board meet over the next 48 hours to ask themselves the question, the answer shouldn’t be one or the other, as appears is going to be the case. It should be neither. Hell, they’re not even asking the right question to begin with.
It’s supposed to be a vibrant new dawn. So why not treat it like one?
This is nothing personal against Neil Doncaster or David Longmuir. Contrary to popular belief, as individuals they’re both eminently likeable guys, both have a deep affection for the game, and in any other environment the chances are they’d both prove themselves capable.
But in this one, appointing either would be as pointless as an ashtray on a motorbike.
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For two reasons.
First, as we’ve said here countless times, that the chief executive of a club-run cartel like this is chief of nothing with not a single executive power to his name.
Second, that even if you did need one, the credibility of the pair in question in the eyes of the paying public is shot. They are both tainted by a process which has been handled excruciatingly badly for the best part of two years.
Even if you ARE going to change the remit and give them some control, go out and conduct a proper recruitment process to find the best person available. Same as any other fledgling organisation would.
Don’t just settle for the lesser of two evils.
The truth is though, the clubs are all so self-serving they’re never going to give anyone in the job the tools to actually do it properly. It’s funny, looking at pictures of the Dominos guy walking up the steps at Hampden on Thursday, admit it – your first thought?
How did they even agree on the toppings, right?
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The fact they took 15 hours should have come as no surprise. Everyone knew there were more questions than answers about the set-up they had tried to railroad through.
That the lack of transparency over the figures they’ve fought so hard to keep under wraps for so long should never have satisfied anyone enough to vote for their supposed merger.
But desperation does strange things to otherwise sane men. And in the end, they got there.
Instead of another 15 years of the incompetent leadership we’ve had to endure from the SPL, though, it’s surely time for some rational thought and imagination about how to get it right.
Let’s face it, we’re talking about a league body who are sponsorless and in the midst of a communications crisis while the man paid to bring in sponsors and handle comms is in, er, Melbourne, for a four-day conference. Nice work if you can get it.
What the SPFL need to do is acknowledge their flaws. Recognise the fact that paying a chief exec 200 grand a year is a redundant expense.
They have guys there already, like Iain Blair and David Thomson, who know the nuts and bolts of the running of football inside out.
Appoint a Secretary to oversee the day-to-day. Then take the £200,000 and invest it in something useful like a marketing strategy. Find a professional, or even a group of them, who know what the hell they’re doing.
Because it has shone through over the past few years that we don’t have the faintest idea of how to sell football in this country.
Our efforts at it are pathetic – nonexistent.
We offer a third-rate experience for premium rate prices. And the people who have to buy it, the fans, are sick of being short-changed.
Go and speak to the likes of MLS and the Bundesliga about fan and community engagement, how they put bums on seats and use wide-ranging methods to create a broader family interest in the sport. How they attract giant gobs of corporate cash.
It’s a time for radical ideas, not the same old, same old.
The two guys who were in their jobs were only ever doing what they were asked to do, sure, and they’ve got a living to earn, same as the rest of us.
But have the clubs already forgotten WHY they thought the game had to change in the first place?
If they have, they’ll just be sleepwalking their way back into oblivion instead of taking the opportunity in front of them.