Alan Archibald, the Thistle manager, last night described the SFA’s disciplinary body and its systems as a “shambles.”
Furthermore, he told the media that his team had simply assumed Ryan Jack would be cleared, and planned accordingly.
“The way it all works, the whole thing, it’s the usual shambles, isn’t it?” Archibald said. “We planned to play against him. He played last week and when we analysed it we just took it that he would be playing.”
Nowhere will you find a more concrete example of how this whole thing is viewed by clubs outside Ibrox.
Since this system was revamped there have been a number of frankly shocking decisions, and clubs know this full well. It sounds a lot like some of them are sick and tired of it, but as with everything else at the SFA the chances of it being reviewed are slim.
Everyone involved in football in Scotland knows this system does not work, and in its early rush to exonerate certain players under the aegis of “not being able to prove intent” it hamstrung itself from the beginning.
And yes, we might well have been the victims (in the case of Scott Brown in particular) of a more robust system … but that system would at least have been consistent.
In their desire to do right by one particular club, the SFA continues to lurch from one disaster to another, like a drunk at a wedding.