It's a rare, perhaps unique, occurrence this weather to feel any pity for the men who run the Football Association of Ireland, but such was the criticism from some quarters yesterday of the announcement by chief executive John Delaney that the FAI would, in the wake of Steve Staunton's departure, appoint an outside expert to advise them on who should be the next Republic of Ireland manager, they might have been entitled to declare: "Damned if we do, damned if we don't".

"This is where the next crisis starts, this is the beginning of the next comedy show," said Eamon Dunphy on RTÉ's Champions League programme last night when the FAI's search for a world-class-manager-seeking guru was up for discussion.

Mark Lawrenson, meanwhile, accused the FAI of "passing the buck".

Delaney, David Blood and Michael Cody, the trinity responsible for what ultimately proved to be the calamitous decision to appoint Staunton to the job in January of last year, were widely lambasted for taking upon themselves a judgment they appeared not to be qualified to make. Once bitten . . .

"It's best to leave it to others this time, professional people who are involved in the game, steeped in the game," said Delaney.

"I think by moving to a process where we will appoint people who are vested in the game in a professional capacity to make the next appointment, it is recognition that that's the way forward for the association at this stage."

Was this an acknowledgement that the decision about who to appoint should be made by football professionals, rather than FAI administrators?

"That's a fair point, yes," said Delaney.

Who, then, will the FAI choose to advise them?

Well, John Giles, for one, has ruled himself out of contention, citing a conflict of interests.

"I wouldn't be able to do it because of the work that I do in the media, particularly on this programme," he said on RTÉ.

"I would be totally compromised. If I helped pick a new manager and then I was on this programme criticising the manager people would rightly say 'what are you criticising him for, you helped pick him?'.

"Liam (Brady) would be the same, Eamon (Dunphy) would be the same, it would be a very, very difficult position."

If every other former Irish international who now works in the media follows Giles' "conflict of interests" concerns that would rule out Brady, Lawrenson, Ray Houghton, Frank Stapleton, John Aldridge, Andy Townsend, Tony Cascarino, Ronnie Whelan, Jim Beglin, Denis Irwin, John Anderson and the Spanish-based Michael Robinson, to name but a few - and some on that list, including Stapleton, Aldridge and Whelan, have, in the past, expressed an interest in taking the job themselves.

One former international who no longer works in the media, largely because he has his hands full being chairman of Sunderland, has been suggested as a possible advisor to the FAI, although it's unlikely that Niall Quinn would put his own manager's name in the hat.

The home-grown options, then, for the FAI appear to be limited, if they want to avoid media men, or, if Brady suggested last night, they are wary of choosing someone "who has a vested interest".

The search for the guru could, then, well prove even trickier than the search for Staunton's successor himself.

The "non-Irish" route may turn out to be the solution to both.