So it seems that Martin O’Neill will be staying on as Ireland manager, at least until the next job offer from a mediocre English club arrives to test his loyalty. Maybe by then the FAI will have persuaded O’Neill to sign the contract they claimed to have agreed with him a couple of months ago, so that Ireland will at least be due some compensation if somebody else tries to poach the manager. Then again, given the mass indifference with which the story of O’Neill’s possible departure was greeted by Ireland fans, maybe the phantom contract arrangement suits everybody: the last thing anyone wants to do is deter potential suitors.

Once it became clear last week that Stoke’s number one choice to take over from Mark Hughes was Quique Sánchez Flores, it immediately became complicated for O’Neill to accept any subsequent offer from them. He was supposedly the first choice of Stoke’s elderly chairman, Peter Coates, but not of the younger directors, including Coates’s son John, who have more responsibility in the day-to-day running of the club. He would have been going there as the consolation prize, which would have been difficult for a football man of his standing to accept.