Greg Clarke’s “unacceptable” comments on Tuesday led to the Football Association chairman quitting his job and yet more questions about diversity at the top of English football.
But could some of the answers come from Championship side Brentford, who want to become “the most inclusive club in the United Kingdom”?
The west London team are already considered outliers in the way they recruit players to out-perform their bigger-spending rivals.
Their data- and science-led recruitment, instigated by owner Matthew Benham, almost took them to the Premier League last season and they are set to make a profit in excess of £50m from the recent sales of Ollie Watkins and Said Benrahma to Aston Villa and West Ham respectively.
That approach is not limited to their playing staff, however, and could serve as a lesson for other clubs and organisations.
In an industry of executives who are often accused of being “pale, male and stale”, Monique Choudhuri – a leadership, recruitment and inclusion expert – sits on the Brentford board.
And in Lorna Falconer, head of football operations, the club has one of the few black women in a position of power across the men’s professional game.
“We come from the basis that human decision-making is flawed and that we all have bias,” says Choudhuri, who joined Brentford three years ago.
“Because we’re so big at using data to inform our decisions on how we pick players, we started to see if we could use data to challenge our own assumptions in the way we ran the club.
“If you have many people from many different backgrounds around the table you are going to get a better competitive advantage because you’re thinking about things from a different point of view.
“If you’re all the same person, all thinking the same, guess what? You’re going to wake up tomorrow and you’re going to all think the same again.”