By Chick Young BBC Scotland football correspondent

It's madness, you know. A world of insanity. Dark and dangerous work where only the slightly deranged would seek employment.

And yet, as surely as night follows day, for every football management job that becomes available there will be a queue as long as the M8 of suitable cases for treatment wanting to lay their neck under the guillotine.

The one certainty in the business is that one day you will be sacked.

Sitting in your office chewing over you next formation and the chairman will be on the phone. "Have you got a minute?"

A minute to clear your desk and hand back the keys to the club car more like.

It was always like this. Certainly in my time. I can remember David White, who had done a fantastic job for Clyde in the sixties, being appointed manager at Rangers.

The "great White hope" the newspaper headlines of the time proclaimed in a not-so-clever sort of way.

What the hell does Paul Lambert think he is doing agreeing to take over at Livingston?

But within weeks they had re-tagged him "the Boy David," a nudge-nudge, wink-wink reference to his lack of experience.

Most of the criticism came from the former Rangers player and Kilmarnock manager Willie Waddell who had resigned from the coaching business to take up sports writing.

In the end White was bumped by Rangers. No prizes for guessing who took over. Waddell went back to football management from my side of the business.

Not that I would ever be offered, but there is no chance of me quitting writing and broadcasting for a wee taste of football management. There are fewer bullets to dodge behind a keyboard and a microphone.

Meanwhile technical areas are minefields. I've earned a crust for almost four decades drivelling on about Scottish football and I have reported on countless victims of desperate directors and churlish chairman who would think nothing of laying out the sacrificial manager just to save their own skin.

But it is something I have never quite accepted. The game can be evil sometimes. Just ask John Robertson.

Robertson was not the man Hearts wanted to take them forward

The former manager of Hearts met his fate with all the compassion of a Chicago garage on St Valentine's Day.

They are even, heaven help us, questioning if Sir Alex Ferguson is the right man for Manchester United. And you know what? They will get him in the end.

The casualty rate has become jaw droppingly alarming. There is hardly a club in the Premier Division that has not featured in headline speculation this season about the future of its manager.

Hibs and Aberdeen excepted, admittedly, but then Tony Mowbray and Jimmy Calderwood haven't yet been a year in the job. And to be fair big Terry Butcher has wandered the grounds with a halo above his head.

But Hearts lost Craig Levein - who was glad to dig a tunnel - and kicked out John Robertson.

Davie Hay was ushered out the door at two clubs and Ian McCall was binned. Richard Gough left Livingston under mysterious circumstances although that is the traditional way at Almondvale.

There were those who would have sacked Alex McLeish and don't tell me there is a day goes by when the longest-serving manager in the league, Martin O'Neill, isn't psychoanalysed.

The organisers of his farewell party are on round-the-clock alert. So what the hell does Paul Lambert think he is doing agreeing to take over at Livingston, where they have a revolving door on the manager's office door?

Is he really that mad? Go enjoy your millions, Paul. Go back and see your friends in Dortmund or buy a season ticket for Parkhead or Fir Park or Love Street.

Take up golf or bowls. Buy a boat or go hill-walking. Play bingo or join a sewing bee. But don't be daft, son. Don't do it.