SCAPEGOAT or bang to rights?

Whatever the facts - and in the Mark Sampson affair these are fiendishly difficult to come by - the Welshman’s dismissal as the England women’s football team manager exposes the dysfunction at the heart of the Football Association.

That the chief executive of the governing body in England should not deem it necessary to avail himself of the full contents of a 2015 safeguarding report into the man appointed to run one of its national teams - until nudged into doing so last week - should beggar belief.

The ongoing issue over what, if anything, of an insensitive nature Sampson said to players Eni Aluko and Drew Spence is separate from the matter over which he has lost his job. But shouldn’t those blips on the radar have piqued Martin Glenn’s curiosity over what went before?

Glenn has said he was unaware until days ago that he was allowed to see the full safeguarding report. Didn’t he even ask the question?

Instead, the way these issues have converged, however independently, is feeding the consumers of conspiracy theory - and they have not been slow to brand Sampson’s sacking over a matter other than the alleged racist comments to Aluko and Spence, as far too convenient.

This view brands his dismissal as an FA (should that stand for Facts Anonymous?) cloak to cover up supposedly botched internal and independent inquiries into the alleged racism.

If the hastily convened third inquiry into alleged racism on Sampson’s part reaches an alternative conclusion to its predecessors, and finds him guilty, the conspiracy theorists will have a field day.

The FA appears ever more like an organisational machine of Heath Robinson vintage.

The name of the aforementioned cartoonist and illustrator has long been a byword for the application of complicated means to solve straightforward problems.

His speciality was drawing spectacular, intricate machines for performing simple tasks.

It is often said that football is a simple game. If so, surely its regulation should be too?

Alas, its regulator - too labyrinthine and cumbersome by half - has created a hell of a mess. Sampson, whatever his shortcomings, is well out of it.