Spiers on Sport: Ladbrokes arrive to spare Scottish football's Teflon Man

With Scottish football in decline in recent years, in large measure due to the liquidation of Rangers FC, few companies had been willing to sponsor the league. And Doncaster has carried the can for it.

This CEO has been routinely trashed and abused, being called everything from "inept" to "incompetent" and worse. The lack of a league title sponsor was forever held up as evidence of Doncaster's inadequacy and, for some, the grounds for his dismissal from his position.

All the while Doncaster has sailed serenely on, well-suited and wearing the close-cropped hairstyle of a latter-day Mod, ever able to beam brightly while all hell was breaking around him.

In a barren period for the Scottish game it has been an inexact science trying to pin down precisely what Doncaster has got wrong, or where he failed. In its stricken state, few large companies wanted to come near Scottish football.

That being said, there has definitely been something of the "Teflon man" about the way Doncaster has prevailed in office. Sometimes it seemed the financial disintegration of the SPFL itself would leave its CEO unscathed and unmarked.

After two sponsor-less years, the Ladbrokes gig which Doncaster has at long last managed to pull off is a relief, though it is hardly a bumper deal.

Ladbrokes are putting up £4m over two years for Scottish football - meaning the game can meet its costs, but will hardly be flush.

I know comparisons are odious, but Barclays currently pay £40m per year to sponsor the Premier League in England - a sum 20 times what the Scottish game will receive. Meanwhile Samsung, Ford, Mastercard and Diageo are all said to be vying for the Barclays/EPL deal when it expires in 2016.

No such jostling has taken place over Scottish football. It is an old story: the Scottish game is wonderful, local, and full of cultural significance and rich narrative. But lucrative it is not.

Some are highlighting the apparent "irony" of a betting firm entering the ring, when there have been well-reported cases recently of professional footballers in Scotland getting into trouble for placing a bet.

Right now the rules are, if a Scottish footballer wants to place a fun bet on a team in Outer Mongolia, he'll have the book thrown at him.

It seems the betting money from Ladbrokes is almost worshipped. But betting itself within the game is deplored.

Yet there is only so far you can take this "contradiction". Such sponsorship deals are essentially for the public to see, not for the players themselves. Booze companies have sponsored football clubs for years - Tennent's, Carling, Magners, you name it - yet drinking is largely forbidden within our stadiums.

No-one need look for consistency as such. The game just wants the money.

So you are off the hook yet again, Mr Doncaster. Rest easy while you can. Another crisis, most surely, will loom.

Also

To be duped once - by Craig Whyte - was bad enough. In fact, it was disastrous.

To be duped a second time - by Charles Green - only rubbed salt into a gaping wound.

I now notice a number of Rangers fans are feeling a bit queasy about the relative inaction of Dave King and co, as a third reputed "saviour" has taken up the Ibrox reigns.

I have no real beef with King. I do not deem him "fit and proper" as the SFA regulations stand, but this is next to irrelevant. Either in the boardroom, or outside it, King is the new Ibrox power.

He does need time, to assess the club, to do a stock-take, and to work out what to do. All of that should be granted. Moreover, right now, King doesn't even know which division Rangers will be playing in next season.

But where exactly is his investment? And how much will it be? And who, in terms of his financial sources, are the key players?

After all that has gone, there is a justified wariness among the Ibrox faithful.