The news, yesterday, that the SPFL has “elected” Ibrox’s CEO James Bisgrove onto its board leaves one of the levers of Scottish football governance in the hands of someone who not equipped to handle that sort of responsibility.
It is symptomatic of the malaise affecting our game that we have a governance mechanism which guarantees a seat to either our club or theirs regardless of what raging mediocrity or certifiable loony they put up for the role.
Regardless of the humiliating “peace deal” that these the SPFL and Ibrox have cobbled together, Bisgrove was the guy who signed and then withdrew from the Australia contract.
He is the guy whose club is telling the SPFL that their TV deal is a bust but who, as commercial director at Ibrox, wanted to flog everything that wasn’t nailed down, and who signed over 1000 different sponsorship agreements, most of whom weren’t worth what you’d find down the back of a sofa at one of Celtic’s executive lounges.
It’s not that long ago that even Keith Jackson was calling him a joke and openly scorning every single one of those agreements.
This practice, of both sides taking turns to hold a seat, isn’t just stupid, it is fundamentally immoral and the SPFL are fools for allowing it. Why should one of two clubs get an automatic seat? What gives either of them the right?
It shatters any idea that any of this is about merit, and who deserves what. Celtic has a positive force in the game, Ibrox has been a negative one, so it’s not even as if this is a like-for-like swap; the SPFL has handed a seat on its most powerful body to a club which has been openly seeking to destroy the executive for more than two years.
Worse is that it gives the impression that the SPFL’s retreat is now complete, and that we have put Ibrox back at the centre of power, even after the scandalous way they’ve behaved.
This is a dangerous message to send, and especially to their club, and it is one that I suspect all in the game are going to come to sorely regret.
Their club shouldn’t be near the top level of football governance, and I suspect most of the clubs know it. All that “election” did yesterday was remind us how backward the game in this country is, and of course the media celebrated it as if they’re not aware that granting two clubs a guaranteed seat between them is about as corrupt as it gets.