FORMER Celtic and Scotland manager Gordon Strachan says that he sympathises with the task facing Neil Doncaster and the SPFL board as they attempt to navigate their way through the coronavirus pandemic.
Scottish football was brought to a halt last month with the 42 SPFL clubs passing a resolution to end the Championship, League One and League Two campaigns with immediate effect a fortnight ago.
However, Scottish football's governing body have faced significant criticism over how the vote was handled. Doncaster allegedly told Aberdeen chairman Dave Cormack that his vote was not required before the deadline, Dundee's vote went missing and the Championship club were then allowed to submit their vote after the rest of the ballot was made public, while Rangers believe that some clubs were strong-armed into voting through the proposal.
Doncaster has been the primary target of the complaints over the voting procedure but Strachan, now technical director at Dundee, has insisted that the SPFL chief executive's integrity is beyond question - and argued that some of the treatment he has recieved is "unfair".
Speaking to the Totally Scottish Football Show podcast, Strachan said: "I’ve took a lot of hard jobs on in my life; pressure jobs, pressure places. I don’t think I would want to be in the SFA or the SPFL just now. I think it really is a horrendous job. I know most of the people there at the top level, especially Neil Doncaster, and I don’t think their integrity can be questioned. Not at all. And I think it’s unfair to do that.
"I did say around two weeks ago that I thought it would get nasty in a wee while but I thought it would get nasty with lawyers and things like that - who’s relegated, who gets into Europe, things like that – but it’s actually gotten nasty very quickly, which it can in Scotland.
"There might be a wee but of friction but media-wise we can make it into a real fight, a real stramash. But I do feel sorry for everybody that’s trying to make a decision at the moment. There are things that we can do later in the years to come, to miss out on this kind of nonsense we’re having just now.
"I do feel sorry for the parties involved. I also feel sorry for the teams that are being relegated even though they still have a chance. It’s a situation that I wouldn’t like to be in."
As the technical director at Dens Park, Strachan has a better understanding than many as to what happened over Dundee's 'missing' vote. While the former Scotland boss stressed that he played no part in the voting process, he reckons there has been a misperception over the conduct of Dundee owner John Nelms. Particularly, Strachan says, the notion that Nelms would be acting as kingmaker in the Premiership.
"Whatever John Nelms wanted to do, I was behind him fully," Strachan said. "What John wanted to do was just relax because we only had 36 hours to make this decision. He was convinced he could get a loan from the SPFL to quell everything, have another seven or 10 days to look at it, and have a look at all the options.
"That’s what John was trying to say to everybody. And he was also trying to protect the people that were getting relegated – probably a wee bit unfairly – to make sure they were getting looked after properly. John just wanted to take a breather, to stand on the ball as they say in the game.
"At that time we were told we couldn’t get a loan, then after the vote is passed it turns out that we could have got a loan from the SPFL. John was right about that.
"I want to remind people that Dundee’s vote makes no difference to how the [top] league has got to finish. People think that the vote was one way or the other but it wasn’t like that. The vote was only for when does the money get paid, and do the Championship and the leagues below finish now.
"That was the only vote. The vote now to see how the Premiership goes, that’s left with the SPFL board. There’s seven of them and one of them is a Rangers director. So when people jumped on saying it was a Celtic or Rangers thing, it wasn’t. It was only a vote for two things."
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