The McInnes appeal decision is another cowardly SFA fudge.

Last night Derek McInnes had the immediate part of his touchline ban reduced from three matches to two.

The original punishment was a four-match suspension, three to be served immediately and one suspended until the end of the 2026/27 season. Following his appeal, that has now become two matches immediate and two suspended.

The SFA will doubtless present that as some sort of sensible compromise and the Ibrox club will presumably regard the reduction in the immediate punishment as a victory.

I think the whole thing remains a defeat for the disciplinary process, because McInnes’s original punishment could quite reasonably have been stronger given the nature of what he said, and the appeal itself always looked exceptionally weak.

He described the penalty Celtic received at Motherwell as “disgusting”, and the SFA subsequently found him in breach of Rule 72, the rule which prohibits comments about officials which indicate bias or incompetence or impinge on their character. There was very little ambiguity about why his remarks had crossed that line.

Yet what we have ended up with is the strange result of his appeal reducing the immediate pain while increasing the amount hanging over his head. He will miss two matches now, while another two sit suspended until the end of next season and can be activated if he breaches Rule 72 again.

And that is the one part of this farce which I do find amusing. Because nobody who knows anything about Derek McInnes can seriously imagine that there are no circumstances in which he eventually triggers those games.

McInnes likes to complain. He likes to stand on the touchline stamping his feet like a petulant child. He likes to challenge referees, question decisions and construct broader narratives around why things have gone against him. That has been part of his managerial personality for years.

So now he has two matches sitting over him for the rest of this season.

Good luck with that.

In fact, the suspended part of this punishment might ultimately become more interesting than the two games he actually misses now, because if McInnes does breach Rule 72 again, you would assume the two suspended matches become active and that whatever new offence caused them to be triggered would have consequences of its own.

That could become quite a collection.

Personally, I am delighted that McInnes will be back on the touchline by the time Celtic goes to Ibrox. I genuinely mean that.

If McInnes was watching that game from the stand, there is always the danger that his team might play with a little more coherence, a little more freedom and a little less of the frantic energy which seems to follow him everywhere at the moment.

Right now, he looks like a millstone around their neck. He is not solving their problems. He is becoming one of them. Perhaps the biggest one.

And for the moment, at least, the Ibrox club and its support have decided that this is something they are prepared to tolerate.

So yes, I want him there.

I also like the fact that this removes one extremely convenient excuse from him if Celtic goes there and gives his team a hiding. McInnes has always been very good at maximising blame elsewhere when things go badly.

You could almost hear the post-match explanation already: he was prevented from being where his team needed him, the punishment disrupted preparations, the SFA had intervened at an important moment. Not now.

His silky managerial talents will be available in full. Excellent. Let there be no excuses.

But there is another side to this decision which I think deserves much more attention, and that is how referees and those who represent them must view it.

McInnes did not simply say that he disagreed with a decision.

Managers do that every week.

He went much further than that, and the disciplinary rule under which he was charged exists specifically because accusing referees of bias, incompetence or improper behaviour can have consequences far beyond one post-match interview.

There are supporters who genuinely believe the entire game is constructed against them. There are commentators perfectly willing to feed that belief. There are former players and managers who repeatedly imply that individual refereeing decisions form part of some broader pattern.

McInnes has spent much of his career operating around that kind of rhetoric, and when somebody in his position throws fuel onto it, the consequences do not necessarily end when the television interview does.

That is why I used the word dangerous when this originally happened, and I stand by it.

I do not use that word casually.

When a high-profile manager tells an already paranoid audience that something within the refereeing system is fundamentally wrong or unfair, he has a responsibility to understand what some people will do with that message.

We saw the atmosphere which followed that Motherwell game.

McInnes was hardly alone in helping to create it. Large sections of Scottish football commentary completely lost their minds over that penalty, and plenty of people were happy to whip up the mob. But McInnes is not a newspaper columnist or somebody screaming into a phone on social media.

He is a professional football manager.

That carries responsibility, and the SFA can hold him responsible in a way it generally cannot hold journalists responsible for whatever garbage they decide to publish.

That is precisely why Rule 72 exists.

Elliot Watt received an immediate four match ban for less than what McInnes did, while the Ibrox boss emerged from his appeal with only two immediate games and another two suspended. That is exactly the sort of inconsistency which makes disciplinary systems look weak. I would be fascinated to know how the refereeing community feels about it.

I would be fascinated to know what the officials themselves think.

And I would be particularly fascinated to know what those who represent referees think about a punishment being softened after such a high-profile attack on the system they work inside. Something tells me we won’t be treated to an enormous media intervention from them. Funny that.

We have seen organisations representing officials become rather vocal in the past when Celtic has been involved in controversies. I suspect there will be considerably less appetite for public commentary here.

That is Scottish football for you.

The same governing organisation which, only days ago, somehow decided that supporters running onto a pitch in celebration should ultimately result in the same stadium-closure sanction as supporters who came onto a pitch armed and looking to do violence has now produced another decision which looks less like strong governance and more like a compromise designed to make everybody go away.

That is what the SFA does. It fudges. It splits the difference. It searches for a punishment which looks stern enough to defend publicly without ever being quite strong enough to make the underlying point. Then it calls that justice.

This appeal decision feels exactly like that.

The SFA can say McInnes is still punished. The Ibrox club can say its appeal succeeded. McInnes can say one immediate match has disappeared. Everybody gets a little something. Except the disciplinary system itself, which once again looks as if enough noise and pressure can move the line.

And that is the real problem.

McInnes deserved to miss a minimum of two games. I think he deserved to miss more. The nature of the comments, the position he occupied and the atmosphere in which they were made justified a serious punishment.

Instead, we have arrived at this wonderfully Scottish compromise where the immediate sanction has been weakened but the threat hanging over him has been increased. Which brings us to the really entertaining question.

Will Derek McInnes ever actually serve those other two matches while still manager of the Ibrox club? Because given the pressure already surrounding him, that is far from guaranteed.

It is entirely conceivable that McInnes could leave Ibrox before ever triggering the suspended part of the sanction, eventually return to another Scottish club and then manage to activate it there. Imagine that.

Some future employer discovers that one of the inheritances from his glorious Ibrox spell is a couple of touchline bans still waiting in the post.

And I guarantee you something else.

If that happens, some of the same people currently insisting that McInnes should never have been punished at all will suddenly discover that they couldn’t care less about the supposed injustice being inflicted on whatever club employs him next.

For now, though, I am content although I consider the result cowardly.

McInnes misses two matches. Two more are hanging above him. He will be back for Celtic. And I genuinely could not be happier about that. Because if Celtic beats this Ibrox team heavily, I don’t want Derek McInnes sitting in the stand with an excuse. I want him right where he belongs. On the touchline. In full control.

Let everybody see exactly what that looks like. Let him face the wrath of their fans.

Choose The CelticBlog as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.