He’s One Of The People Keeping Neil Doncaster In A Job
Neil Doncaster is one of the most hated, distrusted, people in Scottish football.
I can write that with no equivocation at all because I know for a fact I am right.
There is barely a supporter at any club in the land who rates him or thinks a word he says can be relied upon.
It is my contention that he is personally responsible for destroying the commercial viability of the leagues in 2012, that he with-held key information from the member clubs when getting them to sign the last TV deal, that he was a willing and knowing participant in Craig Whyte’s debt dumping plan for Rangers, that he is the co-author of the Five Way Agreement and the source of both the Survival and Victim Myth’s who’s toxic legacy still haunts our game today.
In any other corporate culture that man, so scandalously unfit for office, a moral bankrupt and a coward, would be out on his arse.
Why isn’t he?
Because he has friends.
Because those friends have stood by his side, and at times even in front of him, taking the flak on his behalf.
Because for reasons that are unclear and will forever remain unexplained to we plebs, they think he’s doing something right.
I can only conclude, having sifted the evidence, that his key ally is none other than our own CEO, Peter Lawwell.
And that is as good a reason for binning him as any.
Not only has Lawwell been by his side for several key contract negotiations, but it’s pretty clear that as the most powerful individual in football in Scotland he would have been able to remove the SPFL CEO at a stroke had he wanted it that way.
It’s also clear that Rob Petrie and Lawwell are at the apex of a much larger group, which looks to them for guidance.
Getting the votes would have been no trouble at all.
Equally, they could probably block any move to force Doncaster to quit.
That these men have kept Doncaster in a job can hardly be in dispute, even though some the Englishman’s public statements have been so inflammatory and potentially disastrous – such as when he claimed there was no difference between a CVA and liquidation, and that creditors should be of no concern to football administrators – that his sacking should have been virtually automatic. Yet he stayed. He stays to this day, and as he’s continued in post Lawwell’s influence at the SPFL has grown dramatically at the same time.
One can only conclude that these things are connected.
