Grant Russell has a problem. Well, several, in fact. And he'd like to share them with the group.
These are the kinds of problems though that some people don't want to hear. Because, in fact, they are not really his problems at all.
These are problems – well, issues, shall we say - with the way certain aspects of Scottish football are run. Issues with a lack of a clear vision or drive to really sell what is so great about our game. Issues that may prevent the SPFL of delivering on their stated goal of reaching £50m in annual revenue, an eminently achievable one, in his view.
“The Sky deal is £30m per year,” Russell said.
“If you factor in that the new Sky deal is worth around £5m more, and the other packages are worth around £4m more, we are getting quite close to that figure anyway.
“The question should be then not only how do we get to £50m, but how do we get to a stretch target that could take us well beyond that?”
And that's just for starters.
He freely admits he has something of an image problem, too. The former Head of Media at Motherwell, who previously covered Scottish football for STV, is better informed on the issues facing the game here than most, and in a better position therefore to suggest solutions to them.
The trouble is, now working at West Ham and being on the outside looking in, he has cultivated something of a reputation - on social media at least - as someone with a problem for every solution.
That was the accusatory tone of criticism levelled at him this week by the BBC's Chief Sports Writer, Tom English, no less, who - provoked by a tweet of Russell’s - said he was, “Calling out your unending ‘something must be done’ chat, Grant. Substance-free and patronising to clubs who work their balls off every week.”
Shots fired.
So, with him being involved in barnies with high profile figures over the direction of Scottish football, and with his name currently being linked with the vacant CEO position at his old Fir Park stomping ground (more on that later), it seems an opportune time to catch up with Russell, and to offer him a chance to expand upon these topics beyond the character limits - in more senses than one - of the platform formerly known as Twitter.
You wanted the substance? Well, here it is.
Russell says there are three key areas where Scottish football should focus its energies and investment in the coming months and years to ensure it has a prosperous future, and what may be surprising to some who have drawn conclusions from his social media persona, they should be underpinned by positivity.
“One, is to build and define the product,” he said.
“We all anecdotally can describe what Scottish football is. It’s blood and thunder, developing young talent, it is passionate fanbases.
“But what has never been committed to paper is a clear top line, what Scottish football is, for us to then – part two – create a plan to get out there to shout about all the things that make it great.
“Why is that important? Well, if you are able to get out there and tell all these great stories about Scottish football – the community work, the great talent coming through, the fanbases, all the local stories - if you are able to properly articulate that, and actually drive it yourself as a league and as clubs, then it pulls people towards you. Whether that is more fans, or more commercial partners.
“You actually have to create a product that is more than just Celtic and Rangers playing football matches, which is what the TV deal is currently sold as.
“Occasionally, we get some other games, but we don’t create a narrative around the other parts of Scottish football which then make it a product someone wants to pay more money for.”
Not that Russell wants to involve himself in that favourite past time of the match-going supporter, Sky bashing.
“Sky are an exceptional and fundamentally critical broadcast partner that keep the lights on in Scottish football,” he said.
“They are a phenomenal broadcast partner to have. But if a broadcaster comes to us and asks what we are offering, realistically what are we saying to them? That so many thousand people watch Celtic and Rangers every week? That we have the Edinburgh derby and one or two other historic rivalries like the Dundee derby? That’s it, really.
“That’s not a product. There is so much more to Scottish football than that, both on and off the pitch.”
One of the most frequently asked questions in the Scottish game is just why ‘comparable’ leagues can generate more money from their broadcast deals, a query that Russell thinks he can answer by developing this train of thought.
“I’ve been guilty of this in the past myself, and I’ve actually taken a back step and reflected upon it,” he said.
“We have all lined up and said, ‘Scottish football is undervalued, and the domestic TV deal is awful, you get more in Sweden and Belgium’ and all the rest of it.
“Yeah, because they have actually sat down and thought about the question of ‘What is Swedish football? What is Belgian football?’
"We haven't done that."
Centralisation – bringing many key functions under the league’s umbrella - is a key theme of Russell’s thesis on growing revenues for Scottish football. It could help, in his view, in all sorts of areas, from marketing to ticketing, from retail to commercial partnerships and beyond.
“The third part of this is actually doing the work to harness the people who are coming and spending money on it, whether that is fans, TV rights holders or commercial partners,” he said.
“It is absolutely incumbent on the centre – and by that, I mean the league – to generate what that story and what that product is. People are interested in this. People are already spending money on it.
“We have people at the SPFL who are fantastic at their jobs. They are churning out an incredible amount of stuff, but they are not being given a purpose or clear objectives about what they are trying to achieve.
“There is an opportunity here. There are things we could be doing to benefit the league as a whole.”
So where will this leadership come from then within the league body to exploit these opportunities? Does the blame for the current lack of a defined identity for our game fall at the door of SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster, as it invariably seems to on any number of issues?
“Neil Doncaster is absolutely not the problem, he’s just a very convenient punching bag,” Russell said.
“What this league needs, and so many people have been saying it for years, is to have an executive board independent of clubs that sits within the SPFL and are in charge of growing the league. And in turn, the clubs.
“I have been that guy shouting at the clouds when he wasn’t at a club, and then getting the chance to be within a club and wanting to change the world, and who was then hit with this sheer reality of having a lot to do there on a tight budget before even getting to think about the bigger picture.
“But if you look at the SPFL board, it is club reps, who are basically volunteers. It is not their day-to-day job. How do you grow a product where there is not a group of people solely focused on doing it? It’s an impossibility.
“So, what needs to happen is, firstly, define what Scottish football is, set objectives to grow that, then put a core executive team in place of people with different areas of expertise and experience, who are young and energetic and full of ideas to then go on and drive that.”
The problem Russell has found is that, more often than not, the suggestion of hiving off prize money to pay for such centralisation is met with horror from clubs who are running tight ships, and who would prefer to invest even such modest amounts on the football side to help with their short-term aims.
“Back in 2015 when we signed the Ladbrokes deal, we hadn’t had a sponsor for two years,” he said.
“Ladbrokes came along and it was worth £2m a year. I put out a tweet saying we should not give the clubs this money, but we should use it to create something bigger. Whether that is a centralised marketing division, or whatever it may be.
“A high-profile figure in Scottish football called me and told me I was off my head. I just thought, ‘Well you didn’t have it, so why do you now need it?’
“The net difference for the team that came sixth that season was an extra 135 grand. The champions got an extra quarter of a million. I’ve worked at a club, so I’m not naïve. I know that can actually have an impact, but clubs had been budgeting without it.
“If we kept that £2m we could have invested it so that in a few years’ time, we would have been making that £2m and then some by actually doing the things that set us up for medium to long term growth. But we didn’t.
“The Polish league is a great example, they centralised all of these things. So, for example, if you wanted to sign up for Aberdeen’s pay-per-view service, then it would all feed into a central database.
“Why is that important? Well, because firstly, as a league and a club I can then go and market to that person, but there is also the commercial standpoint.
“Take cinch. If they came to the SPFL today, and said ‘Right, we sell used cars, why should we give you money?’ We should be able to as a league say, ‘Well cinch, we have 300,000 people registered on our database who we know own a car.’
“There are people within clubs who desperately want to do these things but can’t afford to. There is an opportunity in Scottish football for the league to say ‘Right, we are going to do this for you’.
“It will save all the clubs upwards of five figures for setting it up, we will have all the stuff in one place, so it’s not only going to save money, but create money in the future. These are simple notions, and we are not doing it.
“Scottish football is in a really prosperous place. It has all these things going for it that with a little investment, could really drive it forward. But knowing Scottish football, my fear is that we will get to January 2028, and we will just be doing the same things.
“We might get more from the TV deal, who knows? And then people will say I was talking nonsense, and that we are thriving and growing. It’s not about that.
“It’s about looking at how much opportunity there is in Scottish football, and recognising that all it would take is a bit of investment in people, a bit of investment in technology, and it could make it so much more and give it a long and prosperous future.”
There are worries currently for fans of one specific part of that Scottish football biosphere over the prospects of a prosperous future, at a club that Russell himself holds dear.
There has been a sense of drift at Motherwell since the departure of former chief executive Alan Burrows almost a year ago now, and fears have even been raised over the viability of its oft-lauded fan ownership model.
With chairman Jim McMahon standing down soon and interim CEO Derek Weir intimating that he too is for the off, there is a renewed sense of urgency to finally find a successor for Burrows, and given his history at the club, Russell’s name is an obvious one to have been put forward.
He is coy around the prospect of taking on the gig, but he struggles to hide his enthusiasm for the project when questioned on the task at hand.
“I have, and always will have a huge affinity with and love for Motherwell,” he said.
“It is a club that does so much right, it has a clear purpose, it does amazing work in the community, they have a passionate and engaged fanbase. There are a lot of good people there really trying hard on very limited means to make it as good as it can be.
“When you are trying to follow Alan Burrows into that job, it’s about finding that candidate who can drive the club forward, and it is a huge opportunity for someone to do that.
“Fan ownership is not a problem, or a barrier to success or even to sustainability. The club is not fan run, it is run by good employees. What the barrier is to any club, whether it is owned by the fans or the richest man in the world, is how the club strategically runs its business day-to-day.
“What I think Motherwell need to clearly define is what do the next five or 10 years look like for the club? Where do we want to take this? And then, who do we want, who fits that profile to take us forward?”
He might struggle to get a reference from Tom English, but whether that could be Russell, remains to be seen.
