Scottish football’s reconstruction saga can very reasonably be called chaotic and even depressing.
Fans are quite rightly bored or exasperated or both with the soap opera that is the proposal to go to a 12-12-18 league structure in time for next season.
This Monday, representatives of all 12 SPL clubs will gather at Hampden to cast their ballots.
An 11-1 vote in favour of the plan is required to proceed but and it’s a gigantic but that looks unlikely to happen.
St Mirren have gone on public record to declare that they will say no, while all the signs are Ross County will do the same.
One thing is surely clear in all this fog.
If the grand redesign does get rejected, a trio of chief executives should consider tendering their resignations.
Neil Doncaster of the SPL, Stewart Regan of the SFA and the SFL’s David Longmuir will each find themselves in an untenable position, with their collective credibility shot to smithereens.
If they can’t lead the game through something like this, then what is the point of their remaining in their posts?
Doncaster is the consummate politician who would leave even top interrogators like Dundee’s finest Eddie Mair struggling to land verbal blows in an interview.
He can talk for Scotland, as the saying goes, but it will be a challenge even for him to waffle his way out of failure this time.
Regan and Longmuir will have to explain themselves, too, with the latter’s recent contributions to the debate, in particular, only serving to confuse and bewilder those who thought he was a paid-up member of the 12-12-18 club.
Scottish football deserves better than this from those it pays big salaries to and if, as seems probable, it is back to the drawing board after Monday then those three should be on their way out of the Hampden exit door.