Last night, Alan Stubbs was sacked by St Mirren, another moment that disgraces football by reminding us again what a mercenary, ungrateful, game it is.
Stubbs has barely had the time to unpack his pencils at the club; their decision is nonsensical, the sort that deserves to be rewarded with a short stay in the league.
We are their next opponents.
Stubbs might not have gotten it right on the park – at least in the eyes of his club – but in one sense he made what might prove to be the one of the most important contributions to the Scottish football season. His interview before his team went to Ibrox, where he discussed Morelos’ ban for kicking out at an Aberdeen player being overturned, was a moment of clarity. He got right to the heart of what a lot of us were feeling.
His incredulity at that decision was plain to see. He asked the hacks if it meant that players could now get away with aiming kicks at opposition players. What exactly was the criteria now for what constituted violent conduct? Does anything go?
Allan McGregor already has his defenders in the Scottish media; The Evening Times has allowed Lee McCulloch, an ex-teammate of his, to argue that what the thuggish keeper did was not a red card offence; plainly, this is garbage but with the SFA you just never know.
Almost everyone else agrees that it was a sending off, had the ref seen it; McCulloch’s comments are filtered through the same old blue tint. His article would not have looked out of place on a Sevco blog or fanzine. His argument has no merit whatsoever, and it’s not supposed to.
It’s as biased as they come and I doubt he would deny that himself.
But he’s not the only person coming out with this kind of stuff; Walter Smith has questioned whether it was a foul.
And if you really want a laugh … check out BBC Scotland.
They are questioning whether it was even a kick ….
The media here is a disgrace.
But of course, one never knows what line the SFA will take here.
In their rush not to give Morelos the ban that his conduct richly deserved they have, as Stubbs pointed out, creating not only a grey area but a black and white fall-back for any player who is involved in a similar incident; go in front of the SFA panel and ask them “well if his wasn’t a red card, why is mine?”
Stubbs’ genuine bafflement over that decision will haunt the SFA for a long time to come. In the last couple of seasons, a number of equally astonishing verdicts have come out of hearings involving the Ibrox club, such as the Ryan Jack decision last season, overturning his red against Kilmarnock, where violent conduct was excused because the SFA didn’t believe they could properly establish intent. That was a farcical decision which created its own problems.
The Morelos decision was another.
Whether Allan McGregor’s petulant kick will go down in history the same way remains to be seen; get ready for a fudge on that one.
McGregor was booked later in the match, so don’t rule out a retrospective yellow and a one match ban, whilst not conceding that the offence itself would have merited a sending off.
Today we’ll find out whether kicking a Celtic player is deemed a red card.
Today we’ll see whether you can legitimately send a Sevco player off for anything.