Has SFA chief just put Clare Whyte’s foot in it?

SFA CEO Ian Maxwell has finally spoken up on the ongoing Compliance Officer fiasco, and in the true spirit of Scottish football has attempted to bog his statement down with as many big words and formal jargon as is possible to deflect attention from the content.

However, the key part of Maxwell’s comment is the following:

“Contrary to opinion, the Compliance Officer does not offer any judgement on any incident. To reiterate: the Compliance Officer does not decide what action is taken, she simply refers unseen incidents for consideration in line with the terms of the Protocol.”

Where do we even begin with this – first off, no one, to our knowledge, ever strictly accused Clare Whyte of making judgement calls on incidents – and yet now we know that she does.

Why? Because Maxwell, in his wisdom, just confirmed she does – ‘refers unseen incidents’ is the exact same as using her judgement to make a call on what is and isn’t referred to the panel.

No one ever alleged that any compliance officer, be it Whyte, Lunny or anyone else before them made the direct subjective call over incidents – only that certain incidents were brought to their attention and they then decided whether or not those incidents would be passed to a panel. Not the outcome, just the due process.

Now Maxwell has admitted that her job is to refer unseen incidents – no mention of delegating this task to others, but that Whyte’s direct action is to pick and choose the incidents which get picked up and the ones which don’t.

And while most of the top six have had rancour with the process this season, the lack of any bans or citations for Celtic players has been notable.

All since the changes. Changes Maxwell appears to be denying.

Is Scottish football the worst-run ‘first world’ FA around? We think so.