Narey's toepoker - a Scottish football blog

SPL January dealings - team by team

2012-02-02T22:22:00.001Z

ABERDEEN
THE BIG STORY
The return of the prodigal son, Russell Anderson, four and a half years after he left the club for Sunderland. The former club captain was released by Derby County in December; the Dons have signed him till the end of the season, though a hamstring injury will prevent him from contributing for a few weeks yet.

UNDER THE RADAR
There's a bit of a Dad's Army feel to the Pittodrie squad now after Anderson (now 33) was joined by former Scotland international midfielder Gavin Rae (now 34), who left Dundee to join his home town club. Craig Brown also brought in two players from his Motherwell days, midfielder Stephen Hughes and defender Mark Reynolds, the latter on loan from Sheffield Wednesday. Little is known about his other signing, young Nigerian forward Daniel Uchechi.

The most notable departure was captain Ricky Foster, after Bristol City paid £250,000for the full-back. Promising youngster Jack Grimmer was poached by Fulham.

STRONGER OR WEAKER?
Dons fans could not be happier that Foster has gone; he burnt his bridges with them after agreeing to a one-year loan at Rangers last season and his performances over the last few months have been poor. Anderson's contributions depend on his fitness, Rae is a short-term fix, and the boss will hope that he can get Reynolds and Hughes back to the level they were playing at a couple of years ago. Overall Aberdeen have a bit more depth at the back, but they still lack creativity, particularly with Rob Milsom out for the season.

CELTIC
THE BIG STORY
For all the rumours, it was a docile window for Celtic. The biggest story was the arrival on loan of Polish striker Pawel Brozek from Trabzonspor - mainly because Rangers apparently wanted him first.

UNDER THE RADAR
Swedish international defender Mikael Lustig signed on a free from Brondby. Young Nigerian Rabiu Ibrahim impressed on a trial after being released by PSV Eindhoven and was given a contract, but he's probably one for the future. I bet Celtic bit Southampton's hand off when they offered £1.5million to sign Jos Hooiveld permanently. Defender Josh Thompson (Chesterfield) and forward Paul Slane (MK Dons) are off south on loan, while young full-back Lewis Toshney is off to Rugby Park for the rest of the season and Badr El Kaddouri returned to Ukraine after his unimpressive spell at Parkhead on loan.

STRONGER OR WEAKER?
Lustig and Brozek are somewhat unknown quantities at the moment - but the important thing for Neil Lennon is that his team haven't been weakened to the extend Rangers have.

DUNDEE UNITED
THE BIG STORY
One young player left - Scott Allan signed for West Brom for £400,000 after rejecting a new contract - but another, forward Johnny Russell, stayed despite Celtic supposedly offering £500,000 plus Danish forward Morten Rasmussen.

UNDER THE RADAR
Irish midfielder Richie Ryan arrived after starring in the Irish League last year with Sligo Rovers, while Slovakian forward Milos Lacny was signed from Sparta Prague on loan to replace Lauri Dalla Valle after the Finn rejected the chance to extend his loan from Fulham. Surprisingly, United declined to cash in on Garry Kenneth, even though the defender is certain to leave when his contract expires this summer.

STRONGER OR WEAKER?
If even one of Ryan or Lacny turns out to be a hit, boss Peter Houston will be laughing. He will certainly be relieved that some of his other promising youngsters did not leave. It's unclear whether they are better off than they were at the beginning of the month though.

DUNFERMLINE
THE BIG STORY
After the season-ending shoulder injury to Paul Gallacher and the performances in relief by Chris Smith (his blunders which earned Caley Thistle a cup replay and then a tie with Celtic earned us £160,000), it was no surprise that Jim McIntyre brought in ex-Everton keeper Iain Turner on loan from Preston - though Turner has not distinguished himself so far either...

UNDER THE RADAR
McIntyre's other solution to keeping the Pars up appears to be bringing in defensive midfielders - former Aberdeen skipper Mark Kerr returns to Scotland after a spell in Greece, while Kyle Hutton arrived from Rangers on loan. Another bluenose, full back Jordan McMillan, signed permanently after Jason Thomson returned to Hearts. This probably won't improve the defence as much as getting rid of John Potter (on loan to Queen of the South) will. Reserve striker Pat Clarke also dropped down a division, joining Raith on loan. Veteran Craig Easton will leave when his short term contract expires.

STRONGER OR WEAKER?
The goalkeeper situation could relegate Dunfermline, unless Turner finds form. No strikers were brought in, and I'm not convinced that the current options (Andy Barrowman, Andy Kirk and Liam Buchanan) are enough to keep them up.

HEARTS
THE BIG STORY
So much for the mass exodus! In the end the sale of Eggert Jonsson to Wolves for a rather generous £200,000 allowed Romanov to pay the players and give Rudi Skacel a contract extension till the end of the season. No new players were brought in though.

UNDER THE RADAR
After he went on strike over the wages issue, it wasn't surprising that Ryan Stevenson signed for Ipswich for £50,000. John Sutton, out of favour with boss Paulo Sergio, will move on loan to Australia's Central Coast Mariners if international clearance is given. Third-string goalie Janos Balogh was let go, as was Calum Elliot; the latter signed for Lithuanians Zalgiris Vilnius, who aren't the team owned by Romanov. A few other young players, including Robert Ogleby and Conrad Balatoni, were released as well.

STRONGER OR WEAKER?
Most Hearts fans will be relieved at how the squad looks, considering the rumours of the previous few months. Whilst there were no reinforcements brought in, the Tynecastle club still have the talent and depth to be considered the favourites to finish third.

HIBERNIAN
THE BIG STORY
There was much embarrassment for Rangers (and amusement for everyone else) when their Honduran trialist midfielder Jorge Claros chose to sign on loan for Hibernian instead. Not content with the team, manager Pat Fenlon seems to have decided to loan an entire new one - in came defenders George Francomb (Norwich), James McPake (Coventry) and Matt Doherty (Wolves), midfielder Tom Soares (Stoke) and striker Roy O'Donovan (Coventry).

UNDER THE RADAR
I think we know what Pat Fenlon thinks of the signings his predecessor, Colin Calderwood, made - he punted most of them during the window. Junior Agogo is a-gone-gone (couldn't resist it, sorry), as are Matt Thornhill, Akpo Sodje and Victor Palsson. Michael Hart, a John Hughes signing, is offski too. It's easy to forget that, at the beginning of the month, Hibs signed Irish forward Eoin Doyle, while on deadline day they also brought in Pa Saikou Kujabi, 'the Gambian Roberto Carlos', apparently. Draw your own conclusions.

STRONGER OR WEAKER?
Whilst the Hibees have shifted a lot of dead wood, integrating eight new players is going to take a bit of time...which they don't really have, given that they are locked in a relegation battle. I can't help remembering that Calderwood tried a similar stunt last January, and look how that went...

INVERNESS
THE BIG STORY
ICT's failure to convince on-loan Wolves midfielder David Davis to stay at the club beyond January was a huge disappointment; the young Englishman was in outstanding form and it is galling that he chose to return south to join Chesterfield (bottom of League One) rather than stay in the Highlands.

UNDER THE RADAR
Another Wolves youngster, striker Sam Winnall, has joined up on loan for the rest of the season, as has 6ft 4in centre back Steve Williams from Bradford. Meanwhile, not being content with just one Gregory Tade, Terry Butcher has brought in another French player of exactly the same style - Claude Gnakpa, of Walsall. Oft-injured winger Aiden Chippendale was shunted back to Huddersfield when his loan spell expired, while it was a shame to find out that young midfielder Lee Cox, whose season has been blighted by injury, had been sold to Swindon Town for £50,000.

STRONGER OR WEAKER?
With so many players out with long-term injuries, the new players at least provide some depth. The team are just a goalscorer away from being real top six challengers - will Winnall be the answer?

KILMARNOCK
THE BIG STORY
Somehow Killie found enough cash down the back of the sofa to sign the manager's son, Dean Shiels, on a permanent deal after his impressive loan spell from Doncaster - a critical move as he has been the star player for the team this season.

UNDER THE RADAR
Shiels also did well to bring Ben Gordon, the Chelsea full-back, in on loan for the second time - Gordon had a successful six months at Rugby Park last season. Veteran centre-back Michael Nelson arrived from Scunthorpe and should provide experience. Another loan player, Celtic's Lewis Toshney, offers another defensive option, while little is known about Belgian forward Dieter Van Tornhout other than that he has an awesome name.

Leaving the club were Swedish defender Billy Berntsson (Hammarby), striker Ben Hutchinson (Mansfield) and defender Patrick Ada. Spanish striker Jorge Galan had his loan spell from Osasuna cut short. Young forward Rory McKenzie was sent out on loan.

STRONGER OR WEAKER?
Nelson's signing should allow Kenny Shiels to push Manuel Pascali back into midfield. Certainly the defence looks stronger. Unless Van Tornhout proves a hit, Kilmarnock will have a real problem up front if top scorer Paul Heffernan gets injured.

MOTHERWELL
THE BIG STORY
Estonian forward Henrik Ojamaa signed on a free transfer and hit the ground running, scoring 4 goals in his first 5 games. Motherwell want to sign him on a long-term deal pronto.

UNDER THE RADAR
A deadline day offer from Blackpool for young forward Jamie Murphy was accepted, but the under-21 international rejected the move. Stephen Hughes failed to impress after returning to the club for a couple of months and was let go; he signed for Aberdeen.

STRONGER OR WEAKER?
I'm pleasantly surprised Stuart McCall was able to hold on to everyone he wanted to keep. Ojamaa adds an extra threat that should keep Well in the fight for third place.

RANGERS
THE BIG STORY
Craig Whyte finally cashed in his prize asset, Nikica Jelavic - and completely failed to find a replacement. Ally McCoist declared at the start of January that he needed to bring players in, but all he got was Swedish under-21 winger Mervan Celik on a free transfer.

UNDER THE RADAR
Despite a lack of options, McCoist has loaned out the likes of John Fleck, Kyle Hutton and Darren Cole. David Weir finally decided it was time to start collecting his pension. Disturbingly, young players Thomas Bendiksen and Jordan McMillan turned down new contracts and moved on.

STRONGER OR WEAKER?
With Steven Naismith out for the rest of the season, McCoist now has to try to win the SPL with David Healy and Kyle Lafferty as his only notable attackers. Whilst quality players like Steve Davis and Allan McGregor have remained, this is as threadbare a Rangers squad as I can remember.

ST JOHNSTONE
THE BIG STORY
I can't help feeling a lot of the 'Rangers for Sandaza' stories were mainly an attempt to unsettle the Spanish striker before the game between the two sides. In the end, Sandaza has agreed to stay till the end of the season, when he'll be able to take his pick of suitors. Jody Morris was linked with a return south, but nothing came of that either.

UNDER THE RADAR
Extending the loan deal of Sandaza's strike partner, Cillian Sheridan, was a real coup. Steve Lomas did a lot of business in the loan market; whilst I'm unsure if Falkirk midfielder Jack Compton is good enough for the SPL, I've no doubt that Derby wideman Lee Croft is (and his other half is a looker too!). Young Celtic striker James Keatings is a highly-rated prospect, while I'd be lying if I claimed to know anything about Tottenham forward Kudos Oyenuga.

Lomas did well to clear the decks a bit; it was no surprise that Willie Gibson's loan spell from Crawley was allowed to expire, while backup strikers Sean Higgins (Ayr on loan), Sam Parkin (Queen of the South) and Stephen Reynolds, and defender Graham Gartland (Shamrock Rovers) came off the wage bill.

STRONGER OR WEAKER?
St. Johnstone seemed to be punching above their weight, but they've not only managed to keep their best players - they've brought in some intriguing loan signings too. A top six place seems assured - can they go any better?

ST MIRREN
THE BIG STORY
Who'd have thought the Buddies would be the biggest spenders of the window north of the border? Their £35,000 purchase of Dougie Imrie from Hamilton was the only transfer fee paid by an SPL club. There was talk of midfielder Kenny McLean leaving, but a fractured collarbone put paid to that, at least for now.

UNDER THE RADAR
Joe McKee was sent back to Burnley after an unsuccessful loan spell, while Dutch defender Ilias Haddad left at the end of his short-term contract. Young forward Jon McShane was loaned out.

STRONGER OR WEAKER?
None of Danny Lennon's best eleven departed during the window. Imrie is a hard-working player who can fulfil a number of roles. This is just as well as there doesn't seem to be too much depth in the squad. A few badly-timed injuries may scupper their top six ambitions.

L.

'Trial by TV' is for the best

2012-01-30T17:06:00.003Z

The SFA's new penchant for 'trial by TV' as the Scottish rags are calling it, underwent a backlash last week.

Unsurprisingly, it came from parties who had been punished; Motherwell, after forward Michael Higdon was given a one match ban for what appeared to be a GIRUY gesture as part of a goal celebration at Tannadice (directed at his own fans), and Hibernian, after BBC Alba cameras picked up Leigh Griffiths giving a middle-finger salute.

Griffiths is a bizarre case. The former Dundee striker, on loan from Wolves, has now picked up three bans for similar actions in the space of only six weeks. First there was a one match ban for giving the GIRUY to Rangers fans at Easter Road who mocked him for losing his footing. The two subsequent offences, which occurred in a cup game at Cowdenbeath (after he scored a goal) and in a home league game against St. Johnstone, were, incredibly, aimed at his own supporters.

Whilst I can easily believe that Hibs fans might turn on their team quite quickly at the moment, considering that they are the biggest under-achievers since Charlie Chaplin entered and failed to win a Charlie Chaplin lookalike contest, I can't help feeling this is a rather sad indictment of Griffiths. It will surely have been noted by his parent club that, if he can't cope with the pressure cooker that is Central Park (Cowdenbeath's ground is better known for it's stock car racing track than it's atmosphere), then he doesn't really stand a chance playing at Molineux or other English Premier League grounds.

I also wonder how far Griffiths has to go before Hibernian and their new manager Pat Fenlon tire of him as well. So far the repeat offending has led to a total of five matches without an important first team player. It would have been quite easy to get shot of him - the decision to extend his loan spell beyond January actually came after the Cowdenbeath incident. Considering the club's problems in recent times with on- and off-field discipline, it would have been an opportunity for the new boss to stamp his authority. Fenlon has so far accumulated only 4 points from 8 league games in the Easter Road hotseat; he badly needs Griffiths to prove that his trust is not misplaced.

As for Higdon, the case was a bit less clear-cut - it has been argued, not without justification, that he often celebrates goals in this manner. What was more disturbing were the comments coming out of Motherwell, whose manager Stuart McCall appeared to imply that whether players were caught or not depended on the affiliations of whoever was editing the match highlights for Sportscene, and whose spokesperson released a statement after the ban was upheld containing lines such as 'We have material concerns about the approach, the informal communication around it and the obvious disproportionate nature of the suspension' and 'We do not believe this process as executed is doing anything other than setting all of us back. The focus is supposed to be on football, more needs to be done to keep the administration of the game on that track'.

You'd think Higdon was being sent to prison by a kangaroo court, not banned slightly harshly for the grand total of one game.

I previously questioned how long Compliance Officer Vincent Lunny's patience would last as the inevitable criticism rained down on him; prior to this he has been slagged off by Rangers (after banning Sone Aluko for diving) while Hearts' Ryan McGowan was suspended retrospectively after a headbutt. On the other hand, it has been used successfully to clear players who have wrongly been sent off - Caley Thistle's Greg Tansey is a case in point. Aberdeen midfielder Peter Pawlett, of course, got both ends of the stick - an unfair red card for a sliding challenge was rescinded...but he got a two match ban for a dive ten minutes earlier that won a penalty.

I'm all for this retrospective stuff. Officials are bound to make mistakes even if they are top drawer (not a description that can be applied to many north of the border). While obviously there has to be a limit - there aren't enough hours in the day to go through every single iffy decision - I'd rather there was some action than none at all. Only time will tell if this becomes a deterrent or not, but certainly I'd like to think that, for example, forwards will think twice about 'simulation' if they know that they will get a subsequent ban, as well as having their reputation damaged.

So, the longer that Mr. Lunny puts up with this - it must seem like a picnic compared to his previous job, which was trying war criminals in The Hague (no, really) - the better. And hopefully clubs will concentrate less on bemoaning the system and more on encouraging their players to show some integrity and to behave like adults.

L.

SPL must tread carefully with Hearts

2012-01-22T23:20:00.004Z

Vladimir Romanov might be regretting his decision to pay his players on time.

Hearts had picked up 13 out of a possible 15 points in the league prior to Saturday's travel to Inverness; it seems that (Ryan Stevenson, who remains 'on strike' over the late wage payments, aside) all the rigmarole surrounding the club had served to stiffen the will of the players, rather than break it. Last week's 5-2 win over St. Mirren, in a match where the Tynecastle side played 80 minutes with ten men, was not a result or performance which suggested a lack of motivation. They lie third in the table.

January was supposed to be a nightmare month, with Romanov flogging any player he could, and an exodus the like of which had not been seen since Moses complained to the Egyptian Pharoah about the working conditions for immigrants. No sign of that so far - only Eggert Jonsson (sold to Wolves for a generous £200,000), Calum Elliot and Janos Balogh have left so far.

The squad finally got the money they were owed last week, and promptly lost 1-0 in the Highlands. Coincidence?

Of course it is. Hearts were far from their best, but they were battling the elements as much as their opponents; the gale force wind might have been in their favour in the second half, but it was so strong that it was as much of a hindrance as an advantage. But one never knows what is going on in Mad Vlad's mind, or what conclusions he might draw from hearing that result, whilst sitting in his castle, drinking human blood...(or at least that's what I imagine he does)

Maybe Ian Black shouldn't ditch the painter-decorator sideline he had going in the lead up to Christmas just yet, in case that February paycheck gets delayed as a result.

Of course, some of you will have, by now, have noted the deliberate mistake in the opening paragraph. The Hearts players were not, by the SPL's definition, paid 'on time'. Romanov claims the club processed the payments on Monday and, for various admin reasons, not all the money arrived in accounts until Tuesday. The subsequent charge handed down of 'failing to behave with the utmost good faith' by the Scottish Premier League can, it seems, be roughly translated as 'taking the f****** piss out of us' and implying that the delay was pre-meditated.

Hard to believe that, in this whole debacle, the SPL could manage to lose some of the moral high ground, but they are doing their best to do so, not least after the BBC's Chick Young appeared to have picked up insider information that the likely penalty when the organization's board meet is an eight point penalty. The fact that this has got out is deeply embarrassing, especially since, as pointed out by Guardian journalist and unashamed Jambo Ewan Murray, the men who will decide Hearts' punishment include representatives of St. Johnstone, Motherwell and Dundee United - who happen to be the three teams directly below them in the league and who therefore stand to benefit most from taking points off the Edinburgh club. It could be comparable to letting Orange, O2 and T-Mobile convene to punish Vodafone for not paying tax...if, of course, Vodafone were actually being punished...

A points deduction seems, to this author, to be a somewhat inappropriate punishment - taking away the fruits of the players' laudable efforts during a difficult time. I'm not saying Romanov and co. should get off Scot-free - a fine might seem counterproductive at a time where there are obviously financial issues, but perhaps a transfer embargo? Preventing the signing of new players for this transfer window, and perhaps even the coming summer, seems like enough of a slap on the wrist.

Considering the fact that the SPL have done little more than bat an eyelid to so many other offences in the past - the constant sectarian singing (a fixture in the away end at both Caley's home games against the Old Firm this season), the claim by the Scotsman that six clubs were late with at least one payment to the taxman in the last year - it would seem incredible, and incredulous, for them to hit Hearts like this.

It has been a week where the back pages in the Scottish rags have been unanimously dediated to events at Tynecastle, which seems staggering considering a much, much bigger story going on just along the road in court in Edinburgh, where the tribunal into Rangers' ongoing tax saga finally concluded. The result, to be announced in approximately six weeks, could of course plunge the Gers into administration.

If Hearts get an eight point deduction for all this, then what on earth would Rangers get in the hypothetical situation that they can't meet a £30million-plus bill to the taxman? One wonders...

L.

Pars in Peril

2012-01-09T17:59:00.002Z

The fourth official held up the board. SIX minutes.

The most surprising thing about the amount of time added on was that no-one in the ground was surprised.

There were no signs of protest from the away dugout; Dunfermline manager Jim McIntyre stood, arms folded, face impassive. He knew as well as anyone that his side had done everything that was possible to slow the game down, waste time, extend stoppages. Entire civilizations have risen and fallen in the time taken to make a single substitution. As early as the 55th minute, his goalkeeper had been given the ball back after an injury stoppage...and promptly refused to pick it up until an opposing player had sprinted fifty yards to hurry him up.

All this might have been excusable had it not been for the fact that it was not at Ibrox or Celtic Park that Dunfermline were clinging onto a precariously 1-0 lead in the fourth round of the Scottish Cup. Rather, it was a Caley Thistle side who had been reduced to ten men for an hour, with the Pars scoring from the free kick that followed Kenny Gillet's red card. Most teams, especially when they already had two strikers on the pitch, and two wingers as well, would have kept the ball, stretched the play, and worn the opposition down. Dunfermline instead stuck nine players behind the ball, and showed no inclination to press for a decisive second goal. They gambled everything on Inverness lacking the ingenuity, or energy, to break them down, but they did not reckon against the footballing gods displaying a rare sense of justice to go to their dark sense of humour.

Four of the six added minutes had elapsed when keeper Chris Smith came out of his area to deal with a long punted clearance from the Caley backline. TV pictures are inconclusive as to whether the ball took a bobble; there is no doubt that Smith's right leg swung so wildly that he might have had his eyes closed. His foot missed its target by more than a few centimetres. Inverness winger Jonny Hayes, closing him down more out of hope than expectation, couldn't believe his luck, tapping into an empty net to earn his team an unlikely replay next week.

If Dunfermline were looking for some solace from a league campaign where, after going unbeaten for their opening four matches, they have picked up just six out of a possible forty-eight, they did not find it. They might not have lost in the Highlands, but its fair to suspect that, once the players had returned to the dressing room, it felt like a defeat.

How things have changed since May, when they were first division champions and returned to the SPL after four seasons in the second tier. They hardly played like Barcelona, but McIntyre had established a philosophy of passing football, and stuck to it even as fans grew impatient over a failure to challenge for promotion in his first two full seasons in charge. Last Spring's success seemed to justify the actions of the manager, and his chairman John Yorkston.

But, in my season preview, I wrote "Dunfermline's problem is that that their squad is based around several players who have SPL experience...but were simply not good enough the last time round". And, so far, they haven't been up to the task this time round either; the exception, goalkeeper Paul Gallacher, will miss the rest of the season with a shoulder injury. His understudy, Smith, proved himself unreliable even before this weekend's match when he punched a corner into his own net in a game against St Johnstone.

The defence has not been helped by the injury that has sidelined centre-back Kevin Rutkiewicz for the entire campaign so far, but even his presence would not alleviate the horrendous lack of pace or mobility in the back line. The midfield, like last season, depends almost entirely on the 35 year old (and increasingly fragile) Martin Hardie for its engine. Most damningly, McIntyre's marquee summer signing, Ross County striker Andy Barrowman, has failed to shed the reputation he acquired during 18 months as Caley Thistle's highest paid player, when he managed only three goals and earned a reputation for being lazy and for shirking a battle. His tap-in from a goalkeeping gaffe on Saturday was, remarkably, his first goal from open play in Inverness; he had scored only a penalty in seventeen games playing at home for Caley Thistle.

Gone is the passing game. Even when a man to the good on Saturday, and with two wingers on the pitch (in fact, David Graham and Joe Cardle might be the club's two outstanding players), there was nothing but long balls up the middle; in the end, there were more hoofs than at the Grand National (I'll get me coat). To go along with that was a deeply cynical edge - the only thing that they have perfected to a tee appears to be the tactical foul. Those hardy supporters who had travelled 150 miles to sit in the away end on a dreich Highland Saturday must have been in need of an intravenous infusion of antidepressants by the end.

And, to cap it all, there appears to be precious little cash to spend in the January window. Chairman Yorkston has already admitted that the club overbudgeted, expecting an average attendance far higher than the current 5300 total. They didn't even have the finance to keep on-loan Hearts full-back Jason Thomson after his deal expired at the beginning of this month. McIntyre needs to get players through the exit door in order to get new faces in, and his success in touting his reserves to first division clubs (and in persuading them to go) might make all the difference.

He also desperately needs his first team to do the job properly when they face Inverness all over again next midweek, in a replay that should never have happened. A win and a cup run might just bring a little bit of confidence back. For, if Dunfermline continue to play like this, they are certs for relegation. And if they continue in their current style, no-one will miss them.

L.

The SPL kids who will flee south in 2012

2012-01-02T16:31:00.004Z

Let's face it, Scottish football is to the rest of the world as Iran is to international politics; a bunch who shout loudly and claim to be far more important and significant than anyone else believes, and, to extend the metaphors, known mainly on the international stage because of a couple of belligerent figureheads who either loved or hated in their own country and who generally cause nothing but trouble.

There's no doubt that the standing of the SPL is diminishing as the years go by. No longer do most young prospects make their living here, unless they are at the Old Firm - and even then they often look to leave the nest as well. More money and fame, as well as the opportunity to test themselves at a higher level, lie over the border. In the last 18 months alone, the likes of James McArthur, Aiden McGeady (who of course went to Russia), Danny Wilson, Leigh Griffiths (now back on loan at Hibs), Craig Bryson, Chris Maguire, Craig Forsyth and David Goodwillie have left for bigger and better things...with varying degrees of success.

As the income of SPL clubs diminishes, the number of young players fleeing south seems likely to only increase. So who are the most likely fledglings to make the move in the next 12 months?

FRASER FYVIE (ABERDEEN)
It's already been nearly two and a half years since this ginger-haired midfielder made his debut at 16, making him Aberdeen's youngest ever player. Fyvie has thankfully showed no ill effects after his return from the cruciate ligament injury that forced him to write off most of the last campaign. Rumours were abound in the summer of a seven figure bid from Fulham; whilst this came to nought, it seems likely that before long the Dons will have to cash in on his precocious talent.

JAMES FORREST (CELTIC)
As Neil Lennon pointed out after Celtic's recent Old Firm win, the remarkable thing about Forrest is his consistency; the 20 year old winger has been a fixture in the team this year, and it's hard to think of a poor performance, sometimes putting veteran teammates to shame. Comparisons with former alumnus Aiden McGeady are inaccurate - Forrest is less about tricks and more about sheer pace - but there's no doubt that he's the best prospect Parkhead has produced since the Irish international. His only weakness is a dependence on his right foot. He's the best young Scotsman in goodness knows how long, and I wonder if the SPL is too small a pond for his talents to blossom.

ADAM MATTHEWS (CELTIC)
I'm cheating slightly here, as Matthews was brought north from Cardiff City only last summer and is not quite a prospect in the same manner as the others on this list. But the right back has established himself as first choice over more experienced colleagues, and even at 19 is a Welsh international; in fact he was one of the Celtic players contacted over potential availability for the GB Olympic team. Good defensively, and with a good enough crossing foot that he often takes corner kicks, Matthews has already been linked with Everton and Fulham, among others.

SCOTT ALLAN (DUNDEE UNITED)
By the time you read this Allan may already be over the border; West Bromwich Albion are looking to complete a £400,000 deal for the under 21 international. We haven't seen that much of him in the Arabs' first team, partly because he was dropped for rejecting a new deal and demanding £1,600 a week (in SPL terms, this is a lot of money!). But his performances in an attacking midfield role attracted interest from plenty of clubs, and it seems someone will be willing to meet his wage demands.

JOHNNY RUSSELL (DUNDEE UNITED)
Could Russell follow in the footsteps of former teammate David Goodwillie, whom United sold to Blackburn for £2.5m in August? Recently at Inverness he came off the bench early in the second half with the team 2-0 down, and scored twice as United came back to win. But he was only a sub that day because of inconsistent performances in previous games. A forward who has the speed to play wide as well, Russell scored against both Celtic and Rangers last season, proving he is not overawed by big occasions. A little more maturity could see him go a long way.

SCOTT ROBINSON (HEARTS)
Robinson had largely disappeared off the radar after making his debut as a 16 year old in April 2008, when he became the SPL's youngest ever player. Initially used as a striker, his diminutive 5ft 7in frame may be one reason why he has dropped deeper; he has in the last couple of months established himself in the middle of the park at Tynecastle where he has the engine, bite and skill to make him a real prospect as an all-round midfielder. At 19, you can't help feeling there is plenty of improvement yet to come as well, and he's likely to get plenty of first-team action as his club look to get rid of their more experienced earners.

LIAM KELLY (KILMARNOCK)
There has been plenty of upheaval in the Killie midfield over the last year or so, but Kelly, an under 21 international, remains pencilled in on the teamsheet. Last year he was often found drifting in the from the right flank, but the departures of Bryson, Taouil and Eremenko mean he is now often to be found right in the thick of the action. A deeper position on the pitch means he has yet to score this term, but his 8 goals last season prove that he can be a threat going forward too.

JAMIE MURPHY (MOTHERWELL)
The big surprise about Murphy is that he hasn't left Motherwell before now. This season, his team's use of Michael Higdon as target-man and fulcrum has seen the 22 year old forward playing more of a wide role, and as a result his goals tally is only a mediocre six so far this term. But Murphy showed last season the damage he can do with his pace and assured finishing; just think of the sumptuous solo goal he scored in the Scottish Cup semi against St. Johnstone. He's not going to get much better staying in the SPL, so expect a move to at least a Championship side in either January or the summer.

GREGG WYLDE (RANGERS)
Wide midfielder Wylde has easily outstripped the stagnating John Fleck to become the best of Rangers' young players, though he still lacks consistency; too often his final ball is, well, a bit wild. But his pace is blistering and he has a good grasp of his defensive duties for one so young. Rangers' potential financial problems might mean Wylde becomes a first choice on the left flank for years to come, or it might mean they are obliged to cash in on his potential.

KENNY MCLEAN (ST MIRREN)
McLean has been the figurehead of manager Danny Lennon's push to make St. Mirren more of a creative passing team; after some rough experiences last season he has exploded in form in this campaign, adding a goal threat to his midfield play. His assurance on the ball has already brought comparisons with Barry Ferguson. Talk is that Burnley have offered £350,000 for the Buddies' prize asset; with McLean under contract till 2014, expect them to hold out for a much bigger fee.

It'll be interesting to see how many of these I'm correct about. Given the accuracies of my blogs in 2011, I'm betting on between zero and one...

L.

No respite soon for McCoist

2011-12-29T21:59:00.002Z

On its own, this week's Old Firm defeat was nothing for Rangers manager Ally McCoist to lose much sleep over.

He is bound to be a bit miffed at his side's failure to exert any pressure in the second half; the fact is that for the 40 minutes after Joe Ledley, that well known aerial predator, scored what transpired to be the winning goal Celtic saw out the game with little discomfort. On the other hand, the visitors created several chances in the opening period at Parkhead, including Carlos Bocanegra kneeing the ball over the bar from 2 yards, and of course they would have led had Sone Aluko's rear end not prevented the assistant referee from seeing that Lee Wallace's header had crossed the line before Fraser Forster's ape-like hand clawed it out of danger. Much like the encounter between the two sides in September, there was ultimately little to choose between them, and home advantage was probably the decisive factor.

But, though he continues to exude charisma and calm in his dealings with the press, McCoist is bound to be worried. Celtic might have won nine games in a row, but the main reason they have recovered from being 15 points behind (with two games in hand, mind you) to leading the SPL is that Rangers have won only three of their last seven games - form that, by Old Firm standards, is practically apocalyptic. It would be grossly unfair if the Rangers support were to display mass hysteria should their team drop points at home to Motherwell on Monday, but anything other than a win will go down about as well in Govan as a Buckfast embargo.

What must concern Coisty above all else is what January might bring to Ibrox; for the events of the coming month may have ramifications for both Rangers and Scottish football that stretch well beyond the 2011-12 campaign. He is not going to get a blank cheque book to reinforce the squad; the best he can hope for is some cheap signings, which have as much chance of being duds (a la Ortiz, Bedoya and McKay) as gems (Bocanegra). If the only way to buy new players is to shed Nikica Jelavic for a tidy sum, then I'd suggest, considering the loss of Steven Naismith to a gammy knee for the rest of the season, that he keep his Croat target man and muddle on with what he has. Jelavic, for this writer, is the most talented player in the Scottish game at the current time.

But there's a good chance Jelavic will be offski, whether McCoist likes it or not. Whilst rumours of Liverpool interest at the end of August have subsequently proven frivolous, Roy Hodgson was in the audience in midweek, eyeing the striker up for West Bromwich Albion. I suspect a figure of around £8 million would cause owner Gregg Whyte's eyes to flash up pound signs like a Looney Tunes cartoon character.

That, of course, is not just because that sum would be good business; Rangers' big, whopping mega tax case goes to tribunal on 15th January, I believe. I'll spare my regular readers the tedium of me going through it again, but the long and short of it is that if the Gers lose, they will have to pay up some ridiculous figure of between £20 million and £50 million; even the conservative estimate would force them into administration, closely followed by a fire sale of the likes of Jelavic, Allan McGregor, Steven Davis, and just about anyone with two good legs (so not David Weir then). Points deduction or not, the club could have to face the immediate future with a threadbare squad of young players and, barring the rescue of a sugar daddy, it's possible that the balance could be tipped heavily in favour of Celtic for years to come; Old Firm fans might look at the early nineties, when Celtic narrowly avoided bankruptcy and Rangers won nine-in-a-row with next to no challenge from their neighbours, for some idea of what I mean.

Anyway, Ally McCoist has enough to worry about in the here and now. His expanding waist-line already leads one to wonder whether he deals with the current stresses through comfort eating; if January is a bad month - on or off the field - then there might not be a pie to be found in Ibrox.

L.

Villa won't tolerate McLeish tedium

2011-12-18T18:46:00.003Z

Alex McLeish is a bit like marmite.

No, I don't mean he is brown and sticky, or that he is only good for spreading on toast. I mean that you either love him or you hate him.

I think that Aston Villa fans are currently tending towards the latter feeling.

On the face of it, Villa are not doing particularly badly. At the time of writing, they lie tenth in the Premier League. Given that the cardiac-challenged Gerard Houllier's single season at the club saw the club finish ninth (albeit only after a very good finish to the campaign under his assistant Gary McAllister), and that the most realistic target for the team, on their budget, is battling for seventh, it doesn't look like McLeish is doing too bad a job.

On the face of it.

In reality, the Villa Park faithful appear to be losing patience already. The only reason why McLeish's players didn't leave the pitch to a cacophony of boos after their defeat by Liverpool this weekend was that the majority of fans had long since left in order to find something to do which would reduce the urge to slit their wrists. Villa were absolutely rotten; they conceded two early goals at corner kicks - something that would have been unthinkable when Martin O'Neill was in charge - and never looked like getting back into the game. In attack, they looked about as dangerous as the common cold.

There were some mitigating circumstances on this occasion; namely the absence of Darren Bent through injury and Gabriel Agbonlahor through suspension. But this doesn't excuse the fact that Villa have managed only 18 goals in 16 league games, including just 10 at home. This, along with 2 wins in the last 9 matches, means that McLeish's honeymoon period is long over. They are closer to the relegation zone than to Newcastle in seventh.

To an extent, the lack of flair and extravagant attacking play has not exactly come as a surprise. The former Aberdeen and Scotland centre-half has made his name in recent years mainly through setting up his sides to be well organized and difficult to break down, while relying on only one or two creative players, or on set-pieces, to provide goals at the other end. This achieved him some spectacular successes, particularly as Scotland boss, where he nearly qualified for Euro 2008 out of a group with France, Italy and Ukraine (I know Jesus could walk on water, but I don't think he could have coached a side to beat the Franch home and away).

And of course he managed to win the Carling Cup last year with Birmingham with an against-the-odds victory against Arsenal. This success may or may not be cancelled out by the fact that the Blues ended up being relegated a few months later. But the season before, he guided City to a comfortable mid-table finish based on a solid 4-5-1 and a backline that gave up goals to opponents in the same way that Philip Green gives up earnings to the tax man.

But his achievements with Scotland and Birmingham were made by getting the underdog to punch above its weight (argh, mixing metaphors!). Aston Villa is a different proposition; a side who were always battling in the top six under Martin O'Neill only a few years ago. They might have cut their cloth since then, having cashed in on James Milner, Stewart Downing and Ashley Young, but they have enough clout that they splashed out on Darren Bent last January. Certainly the supporters, rightly or wrongly, expect results, and some goals thrown in as well.

What they have instead is Emile Heskey huffing and puffing, and Charles N'Zogbia, McLeish's marquee signing, looking like the N'Zogbia that sulked his way out of Newcastle, rather than the one who at times carried Wigan on his back.

It's worth remembering that, for all his titles at Ibrox, McLeish's '1-0 is worth as many points as 3-0' philosophy left him far less popular at Rangers than you might expect a manager who won two league titles, two Scottish Cups and three League Cups. As soon as results went awry domestically, the fans turned against him, even though he simultaneously guided the Gers past the group stage of the Champions League for the first time - not to be sneezed at, considering the most dangerous forward he had available was Peter Lovenkrands.

Big Eck's current situation begins to remind me of Sam Allardyce's brief and ill-fated time in the Newcastle hotseat. When Big Sam was dismissed midway through the season, he left a team in mid-table who appeared in no danger of relegation, though well adrift of the teams chasing a European place. Certainly, they were no worse than under this predecessors, Graeme Souness and Glenn Roeder. But Allardyce's attempts to rebuild the team from the back resulted in a side that only scored 11 goals in his last 12 games in charge. The only thing supporters hate more than losing a game is losing a really boring game, and when form dipped, there was no goodwill coming from the stands.

For when the fans turn against you, you are doomed. Allardyce was. McLeish isn't yet. But if Villa continue to produce tedious displays under his direction, he could find himself out of a job before long.

L.

Chris Hogg reminds us footballers are human beings

2011-12-15T19:32:00.003Z

I've been musing this week about why it is that there has been so little sympathy shown towards the Hearts players who haven't been getting paid.

I think it's because, to the average fan, footballers appear to be such an aloof bunch, detached from the real world. Some of that is down to the fact that the greatest, most famous players are seen only on a television screen by the majority, making their drama no more real than Eastenders - of course, it could be argued that most soap opera characters seem far less fictional than Mario Balotelli.

Some of that aloofness, however, also comes from the fact that some footballers earn vast wealth which allows them to live a lifestyle which is far beyond what you and me will ever experience. The fact that, even when earning in a week what many people make in a decade is not enough to make some of those prima donnas happy (I'm looking at you, Carlos Tevez) means there is not a lot of sympathy to be had for those players who are going through difficult times. This may be why there has been a lack of obvious public support for the Hearts players squad. Several of these guys will have weekly paycheques that reach four figures, but the story in The Sun that midfielder Ian Black is working part-time as a painter-decorator to pay the bills certainly raised my eyebrows.

So whilst we lose no sleep at all over the plights of the Tevez's of this world (although, bearing in mind the recent passing of Gary Speed, we should perhaps be more mindful of the rumours that Tevez is suffering from depression), those further down football's food chain are, in reality, not a huge amount different from you and I.

A recent and startling example of this is Caley Thistle defender Chris Hogg.

Englishman Hogg is a solid enough centre-back; he was good enough to be captain of Hibernian for a few years, but I would assume his move to Inverness last January, after he fell out of favour at Easter Road, saw a drop in income; certainly it would be fair to argue he was moving to a smaller club. After his initial six month deal expired, he went on trial with Middlesbrough and Crewe initially rather than sign a new deal in the Highlands; some fans took offence to that but you can hardly blame a player for being ambitious. Anyway, no other offer was forthcoming and he re-signed for us in August. This season he has been, by a distance, our best defender...though frankly I would look good in a back line tht included the accident-prone likes of David Proctor and Roman Golobart. At the age of 26, a good campaign would put him in decent stead to start moving back up in the world again.

Then, on Saturday, his teammate David Davis tripped a Dundee United player, who promptly collided with Hogg. When the physio calls for a stretcher before he's even tried to move the player, you know it's a bad injury.

Hogg's anterior cruciate ligament, plus both medial and collateral ligaments, are wrecked. Terry Butcher called it "one of the worst knee injuries we've seen". The inference is clear; Hogg is certainly out for the season, perhaps longer, perhaps forever. His knee joint is a wreck.

The player's response is quite remarkable; this week Hogg has started his own blog, named 'The Fightback'. He is quick to admit that he sees it as self-therapy, but already he has documented meticulously the events following his injury. As a medical professional who has worked at the hospital at Inverness (and who knows some of the people involved in his treatment and rehab), I can easily relate to his experiences there; what is more startling is his willingness to reveal his own emotions and fears, his concerns for his family and his future.

It might not read like Dickens, but it's a damn sight more interesting than most of the stuff I write on my blog. At the moment, Chris Hogg is opening his life up for the rest of the world to take a peek. And it is a good reminder that, even if the Rooneys, Balotellis and Tevez's of this world are very different people from you and me, most footballers are just like us, with the same stresses and supports that we have. So, if you've got a moment, have a look at http://chrishoggthefightback.blogspot.com/ and check out his story.

Get well soon, Hoggy.

L.

Where do Hearts go from here?

2011-12-11T23:14:00.002Z

I wonder how many Hearts players watched the recent strikes by public sector workers and thought 'I wish I could do that.'

There have been plenty of moments during the ownership of Vladimir Romanov where Hearts have looked a step away from a catastrophe, but alarm bells were ringing when the players received their October wage packet nearly three weeks late. They are due their December pay cheque this week; each player has received a £1,000 payment in lieu of their November wages so far.

No wonder form is suffering on the pitch, with only one win in seven matches. They lie fifth in the league, but only two points above the team in eighth. They are closer to bottom-placed Dunfermline than they are to third-placed Motherwell.

Romanov's motives, as ever, are difficult to interpret. On the one hand, the current economic climate makes it reasonable to wonder about his personal financial situation and that of his bank, UKIO Bankas, especially when the other major bank in Lithuania was recently taken over by the government. On the other hand, Romanov has been happy to invest in his Lithuanian basketball team, so he must have at least some pocket change to spare.

A more likely explanation is that he is simply fed up of pouring money into Tynecastle's black hole. For all his questionable decision-making during his seven years at the club, Romanov has pumped, according to some estimates, around £20 million into Hearts. And bear in mind that before his arrival, Hearts were effectively insolvent and on the brink of selling Tynecastle. Aside from his first full season in Scottish football, when George Burley's team briefly looked like becoming the first non-Glaswegian champions of the SPL era, Hearts have not been close to challenging the Old Firm. And the prospect of doing so becomes bleaker for every year that passes.

Whilst the wage bill is probably nowhere near where it was five years ago, when some players were on weekly wages reaching five figures, it's not unreasonable to assume Hearts have the third highest budget in the country. They certainly have a bloated squad that needs trimming. But the intention appears to be to cut down the entire forest, not just the dead wood.

According to this weekend's Scotland On Sunday, the players can walk on 14 January if they are not paid by then. But that won't pay the bills. Bear in mind that these are not English Premier League players with vast wealth. A few of the more seasoned pros are bound to have some cash in the bank, you'd think. But, like anyone else in life, these guys will have families to support, mortgage payments, car payments...and, of course, Christmas too.

But the SFA and the SPL won't lift a finger until players make individual complaints against their club. The players, of course, are wary of how their volatile paymaster could punish them for speaking out openly. It seems that there is no escape for the squad for at least another month, unless Romanov loosens the purse strings.

THE POSSIBLE OUTCOMES

Romanov sells
Romanov wants out, and if Hearts could find new owners then this is the best solution for everyone. But the asking price stands at £50 million, and I can't see anyone offering even a fraction of that for a club who have no obvious prospect of doing better than third in the league without significant investment.

The players get paid
Doesn't seem likely somehow, though you never know with Romanov. Even if he loosens the purse-strings, what's to say that future wages won't be late?

The players walk
This appears a likely outcome right now. The younger players have been getting their wages during all of this, and presumably they would be integrated into the team. It's fair to assume they would struggle, and would slump down the table. But would Romanov really care?

ANY SELLABLE ASSETS?

If only Hearts had sold Andrew Driver two years ago, when his stock was through the roof and allegedly offers of £3 million were rejected. His subsequent injury record would surely discourage anyone from risking anything more than a nominal fee.

Goalkeeper Marian Kello has been the most consistent player of the last couple of seasons, but his contract is up this summer. Winger David Templeton was electric at times last season but his form has been erratic during 2011.

The Bosman signings of last summer - Danny Grainger, Jamie Hamill, John Sutton and Mehdi Taouil, have not done enough to suggest they are worth paying a transfer fee for.

Hearts' biggest problem is the presence of highly-paid players who are either injured long-term or who can't make the team - Darren Barr, Suso Santana, Kevin Kyle and Calum Elliot stand out. But no-one else wants them either.

L.

Aluko case is doomed to fail

2011-12-06T21:47:00.002Z

It doesn't help the public image when the SFA's new Compliance Officer, Vincent Lunny, is referred to on Sky Sports News as "Vincent Loony".

I assume it was an unfortunate autocue error, though since the same channel called Caley Thistle's goalscoring midfielder Andrew Shinnie "Andy Shiny" on Saturday, I'm inclined to wonder whether there is a smartass in the studio.

For the record, Lunny has a fairly impressive legal background, including working in war crimes prosecutions at The Hague. Why he would give that up to deal with Scottish football's problems, on a full-time basis, is beyond me.

His career change sees him go from prosecuting Slobodan Milosevic, to prosecuting Sone Aluko.

For Aluko is the main focus of the Scottish football press this week - it's a slow news week - after a rather naff dive at Ibrox on Saturday which conned Steve Conroy into awarding a penalty to Rangers (soft penalties to the Old Firm?! Where have we heard that before?). Conroy's reputation has not been helped by the comments of former SPL ref Kenny Clark, who described the contact by Dunfermline's Gary Mason on Aluko as "not enough to cause a man to spill his pint in the pub".

A fat lot of good this does Dunfermline; the resultant spot-kick conversion from Nikica Jelavic was the decisive goal in a 2-1 Rangers victory when a point would have given the Pars a welcome bonus in their relegation battle. But the SFA appears keen to make up for their official's horrendous blunder; Aluko has been charged with "simulation", and threatened with a two match ban. Which seems a little odd, considering that, if the referee had done his job properly, the former Aberdeen winger would have been shown a yellow card.

When the case is heard on Thursday, expect it to be thrown out.

It matters not that Aluko clearly cheated; there is already precedent this season, when the SFA tried to meet out the same punishment to Hibs' Garry O'Connor when he won a penalty against St. Johnstone with an epic 6.0, 6.0, 6.0 effort. TV pictures showed quite clearly that there was no foul, and, to further fuel the fire, O'Connor's own assistant boss Billy Brown admitted on Sportscene that it was a dive. Yet, when Hibernian challenged the ban, the SFA gave in faster than an Italian on the North African front in 1940. O'Connor escaped a ban, a fine, and even a retrospective yellow card. He got off scot-free, which is more than he is likely to manage when he appears in court later this year regarding charges of drug possession and fraud.

The problem with "simulation" is proving it, just as UEFA found after they tried to punish Arsenal's Eduardo for a dive in a Champions League game versus Celtic. It's very easy to find a TV angle that shows a slight possibility of contact. The attacking player can also claim that he lost his balance. Take the case of Sunderland's Sebastian Larsson who, this weekend, won a dubious penalty at Molineux (his subsequent miss from twelve yards shows that sometimes, there is justice in football). It was a dive, no doubt about that; the way the Swede puffed out his chest reminded me of a sprinter leaning forward to cut the tape at the finish line. But one TV camera suggested a bit of miniscule, minute contact with the leg of Jody Craddock - who was doing his level best to get out of the way - and I bet, if push came to shove, Larsson would claim that he felt the contact, was put slightly off-balance, and has the right to go down as a consequence

So Aluko will, I think, be exonerated, though you'd like to think his reputation might have taken a hit and, the next time he goes down in the box, the referee might look twice. But whilst I agree with the SFA's attempts to root out diving, I just can't see how they will be able to ban players for multiple matches for what ultimately is a bookable offence.

As for Vincent Lunny, his main role as Compliance Officer is to provide a figurehead to the panel thats make retrospective decisions regarding red card appeals and the like. One hopes he can provide some objectivity; the previous philosophy appears to have consisted simply of 'what the referee says goes' - so that if the referee looks at it on TV and refuses to change his decision, the appeal gets thrown out. This is a big deal for a club like Caley Thistle when each appeal costs £1,000 a time, and even more so when very disputable red cards such as Chris Hogg's against Motherwell for denying a goalscoring opportunity are upheld without even the slightest debate.

So I'd like to see Lunny do well; there is a real opportunity to make a significant impact on the Scottish game here. Unfortunately, there is also a real opportunity here for him to become a hate figure of Rangers or Celtic fans (or somehow, like journalist Graham Spiers, a hate figure for both). I can't help feeling that even a lawyer like Lunny will be unable to untangle the bureaucracy involved, and that he'll be dealing with a few smashed windows once Old Firm fans find out where he lives. I'll be surprised if he lasts a year in the post. But I hope I'm wrong.

L.

Celtic visit leaves a bitter taste

2011-11-21T17:06:00.004Z

The fairytale that was Caley's home game against Celtic will prove a familiar story to those who watch the Scottish Premier League.

Provinical club meets Old Firm team. The Old Firm team struggles to break down the provinicial clubs organized defence early on. The provinical club then threatens to...god forbid...outplay the Old Firm team!

But never fear - over the horizon, on his white stallion, comes the handsome prince, or rather, the referee, to rescue the Old Firm team by awarding either a contentious penalty, or a contentious red card. If he is a true Prince Charming, he will manage to do both at the same time.

On Saturday, Stevie O'Reilly didn't need to come up with a ridiculous spot-kick decision, though had it taken much longer than the sixty-one minutes that Celtic required to break the deadlock, there is little doubt in the mind of the Inverness support that he would have duly obliged. In the end, it transpired that the obscene decision to dismiss Greg Tansey for use of 'an elbow' on Georgios Samaras proved sufficient.

Terry Butcher summed up the incident in one beautiful soundbite - "deadly assault by fingernail". One hopes that, given his apparent knowledge of the human anatomy, Mr O'Reilly's day job is not as an orthopaedic surgeon.

If only it had been a one-off incident, it would be reasonable to dismiss this as a human error, an understandable mistake. But the referee's handling of the match warrants further inspection - two 'handbags moments' during the match, both of which resulted in a yellow for the Caley player and only a long chat for the Celtic player (if one was feeling particularly cruel, they might suggest that Mr O'Reilly was asking the Celtic player for his autograph and phone number), and two gross pieces of time wasting by Celtic players to break up Caley attacks, one of which saw the ball booted 60 yards up the pitch several seconds after a free kick had been awarded.

The bottom line is this: if Samaras had fouled Tansey in the same way, do you think he would have been sent off? As was pointed out by many after this match, anyone who was told 'this match was decided by a controversial refereeing decision' would have very quickly bet their mortgage on Celtic being favoured.

It's worth noting that, though the referees are meant to stay on the pitch after the final whistle had been blown to make sure the players have left the field of play, Mr O'Reilly was off down the tunnel long before any of the Celtic team, walking so briskly that he looked like a man who had just realized he had left the gas on.

Sadly, it's not the first time this has happened to Caley Thistle this season; in August, Euan Norris got Rangers out of a hole by giving a very contentious penalty and sending off Caley's Ross Tokely to boot; just to rub salt into the wound, he awarded a second, even more ridiculous, spot kick later on.

And it's not just us that are suffering. Celtic have not won a league game for two months against a side who have finished with eleven men. Five players have been sent off against them so far in this campaign. Their ratio of fouls to yellow cards is twice as high as any other team (including Rangers) - this suggests Celtic have to commit twice as many fouls to get a yellow card as their opponents. Last year, for all their posturing about bias against them from the Powers That Be, they set a new record for penalties won in a SPL season.

Sadly, the scenario of Saturday is so common that, pre-kickoff, we were all joking in the stands about how, unless Celtic were in front after half an hour, they were bound to get some help from the officials.

The game itself, then, was about as much fun as being punched in the face repeatedly by Rocky Marciano. The whole experience was not enhanced by the usual posturing of the Celtic support, several of whom decided to grace my walk away from Caledonian Stadium after the match with a chorus of pro-IRA chants. They had already disgusted me enough with their bizarre banner 'Our music has survived famine and oppression', which they unfurled at kickoff. I hope there is some sort of subtle meaning to this display that has escaped me - for it seems on the outside to be an attempt to justify the offensive songs that plague so many of their matches.

Besides, judging by the waistlines sported by the majority of the away support, the closest they've come to experiencing a famine was when the local chippy ran out of curry sauce.

If there is any justice in Scottish football, Tansey's red card will be rescinded on appeal, Caley will receive an apology from Stevie O'Reilly (or, failing that, he will be sent to officiate games in Stenhousemuir and Coatbridge for a few weeks), and Georgios Samaras will be fined for clearly feigning injury in order to get a fellow professional sent off.

Sadly, even the first of those is far from probable, given Inverness' prior experience trying to overturn spurious red cards this season.

And yes, for those who are asking, I am still bitter as hell about the whole damn fiasco.

L.

Ross County threaten to double the SPL's Highland quota

2011-11-13T15:40:00.003Z

There's something rather nice about a Scottish footballing weekend where the biggest match doesn't involve the Old Firm, and the inevitable baggage that comes stuck to them like a diseased, festering limpet.

In fact, the biggest match in the country was in, of all places, Dingwall, where Ross County and Falkirk met in a clash between the top two sides in the first division. Whilst there was a bit of stirring beforehand, with the two managers slagging each other off to the press, it came as much amusement, at least to this writer, when Derek Adams and Steven Pressley in fact admitted after the game that their 'spat' was more about increasing interest in the game than about managerial mind-games.

It at least partly worked; more than four thousand souls pitched up to Victoria Park, an attendance that certainly bettered crowds at SPL matches at St. Johnstone, St. Mirren, Dunfermline, Kilmarnock and Inverness (Ross County's local rivals of course) this season. And those of us who turned up saw a match which made up for a lack of quality with great intensity and effort, as the home side ran out 3-1 winners. County now find themselves with a sturdy six point cushion at the top of the table. Whilst it wasn't necessarily a good advert for an expanded SPL - my father and I agreed that, aside from former Caley Thistle stalwart Grant Munro in the home defence, there wasn't a single player on the pitch who would obviously be capable of stepping up a level - it certainly indicated that Scotland's second tier is perfectly capable of putting on a good show, even if the cost of a terracing ticket was a rather steep £14.

The result has also, of course, seriously raised the possibility of County winning promotion to the SPL and, if Caley Thistle were to stay up this year (by no means a sure thing), the top division would contain two Highland teams for the 2011/12 season. Considering there weren't any Highland teams in the whole of the Scottish Football League 18 years ago, that would be no mean feat.

It could also have significant implications. Whilst claims from Caley Thistle fans - and, on occasion, from manager Terry Butcher - that streamlining the SPL to ten teams is an attempt to keep ICT out of the top league and reduce the travelling for everyone else is surely paranoia, there is no doubt that teams do not particularly enjoy jaunting up the A9 a couple of times a season as it is. The idea that this burden could be doubled will probably not enamour the other SPL sides.

In contrast, it would potentially have mutual benefits for Caley and County. For one thing, four derbies a season would pretty much guarantee four capacity crowds - something that would only otherwise happen when the Gruesome Twosome were in town. That would be of fair significance; certainly the likely attendance for next weekend's Caley-Celtic game will be double the number who turned up for the previous home match against Motherwell. So that's a decent increase in gate receipts, no question.

The other interesting factor is that, in terms of decision-making on the future of the SPL, Inverness and Ross County will surely have identical interests, giving them, in effect, a small voting bloc. It would, for one thing, surely mean that there would be no reduction in the size of the division to ten teams whilst both those sides competed in it.

The Scottish football map has certainly changed a bit since 1974, when Inverness Thistle were denied entry to the league in favour of an engineer works team called Ferranti Thistle - the voting clubs were so desperate to avoid the extra travelling north that they elected a club from Edinburgh (which already had two teams), whose ground was not up to standard, and who were not allowed to play under the Ferranti title due to league rules banning the use of a sponsor's name. Ferranti ended up having to move to Meadowbank, and use that name, in order to compete (they are, of course, now Livingston).

In 1994, the Scottish football league finally made up for that scandalous decision by bringing in both Caley Thistle and County - and I wonder if a few chairmen at the top clubs might be regretting that move if, next season, one-sixth of the Scottish Premier League is based more than a hundred miles north of Perth?

L.

Kenny's Kilmarnock Kalamity

2011-11-08T20:02:00.002Z

Ah, this blog never fails to make me look like a moron.

Last week, I wrote extensively about how Caley Thistle's recent form left me fearing relegation almost as much as I fear salad. And so they only promptly go and welly six past Kilmarnock. In Kilmarnock. I've been to three of Inverness' away games this season, all of which they lost, with only one measly goal to show for it. So forgive me for not fancying a 400 mile round trip to Rugby Park. My parents went...and were rewarded with a BBC Alba clip where my mother could be seen clapping wildly and grinning like a maniac.

Ah, my mum. She promised me a phone call at half-time to tell me how the game is going; I often oblige her with the same if I'm at a game and she's not. My telephone analysis is generally a ten minute monologue with lines such as 'the extra man in midfield is causing problems' or '(insert name) is running the channels well', or, almost inevitably 'David Proctor is having a shocker again'.

Mum? 'We're doing all right today. We'll win.' That's it? 'Yup. Bye.' Considering we were away from home, the score was 1-1 at the time and we'd been behind for most of the game up to that point, I felt somewhat unimpressed. I should have known better than to doubt her; Caley romped to a win far more comfortable than 6-3 suggests. Say what you like about her punditry, but Mum is clearly far superior to Alan Shearer. Even though last year she screamed for a referee to punish an opposing player's foul with 'a ticket'.

Anyway, the moral of this story is that, whenever I write anything negative about a player or team, they instantly hit a rich vein of form, and whenever I scribble something bullish, that player or team instantly dips faster than the Italian economy. So, dear reader, I expect you are asking yourself 'which team will he punish/bless (delete as applicable) with a blogpost this week?'. Actually, I suspect you are asking yourself 'when will he get to the bloody point?'

Alas for Hibs fans, I didn't get round to writing about their wretched defeat to Dunfermline in time to save Colin Calderwood from the sack. CC was ditched just before a club AGM where chairman Rod Petrie was set to be met by an angry mob waving scythes and pitchforks. Coincidentally, Calderwood's successor, John Hughes, was sacked just about a year ago...just before just before a club AGM where chairman Rod Petrie was set to be met by an angry mob waving scythes and pitchforks.

You can't say that Calderwood wasn't backed by his chairman - several signings, including Garry O'Connor, a six figure transfer budget which was wasted on Ross County's Martin Scott, and an opportunity to completely revamp the side. The results never came; just 12 wins in 49 games, and only 42 points in 44 SPL matches. It makes Petrie's decision to stop Calderwood from leaving to become assistant at Nottingham Forest in the summer even more ridiculous than it seemed at the time; instead of £300,000 in compensation, Petrie now has to pay him off.

So in the last five years we have seen the Easter Road dugout welcome John Collins, Mixu Paatelainen, John Hughes and Colin Calderwood. All appeared to be young managers with fresh ideas, all set to go places and take the team with them. All have had their reputations utterly wrecked. Only big Mixu, with his wonderful efforts at Kilmarnock last season, has bounced back.

And it is Kilmarnock I want to focus on.

For all has not been well since Mixu departed in the Spring to become manager of his native Finland. His assistant, Northern Irishman Kenny Shiels, was, unsurprisingly, installed as caretaker for the remainder of the campaign. In the summer he was given the job permanently, a decision which seemed based more on his promise to continue the brand of pretty passing football promoted by his predecessor, than on results - his 8 matches as caretaker produced a grand total of 4 points and zero wins.

I thought it was a bit odd that Killie chairman Michael Johnston didn't broaden his horizons, but his decision seemed justified after a start to the season which saw Shiels' side go unbeaten for the opening four matches, including a 4-1 demolition of Hibs...though bear in mind that it wasn't quite clear how utterly brutal Hibs were at this point. Since then, Kilmarnock have slid down the table, with only two further wins, and an incredible clash with Celtic where they blew a 3-0 halftime lead at home.

The failure to emulate last season's success is not surprising, really; last year Paatelainen got the results, and the performances, with a side that included creative midfielders Alexei Eremenko (whose loan spell finished in the summer), Craig Bryson (sold to Derby in the summer) and Mehdi Taouil (signed by Hearts in the summer) and, for half a season, Connor Sammon up front (who went to Wigan last January).

Kilmarnock 2010-11

Shiels has none of these players, though he has replaced Sammon's goals with Paul Heffernan, the Irish veteran signed from Sheffield Wednesday, and replaced some of the creativity with the arrival on loan from Doncaster of his own son, Dean Shiels; in fact, Shiels has been in such good form that he is at last becoming better known for his ability than for the fact that he only has one eye (his right eye was blinded in a childhood accident and removed in 2006). But he's been a rare bright spark. And his loan deal ends in January.

Kilmarnock 2011-12

Even with his own son on board, Shiels has now won only 3 out of 22 SPL games as Kilmarnock manager. You thought Calderwood's record was bad? A run to a league cup semi final has at least prevented him from feeling the heat. But on Saturday, as stated earlier, Killie shipped six goals at home to bottom-of-the-table Inverness. If that isn't relegation form, what is?

The gold medal in the sack race was already won in August by Jim Jefferies; Calderwood has scooped the silver. The way things are headed in Ayrshire, it might just be worth a cheeky each-way bet on Kenny Shiels to be the next to go.

Or, true to the traditions of this blog, he might make me look like a complete twit and take his side on an epic unbeaten run...

L.

One crisis to rule them all?

2011-10-31T16:22:00.002Z

As I tweeted previously, supporters of many, if not most, SPL teams could easily declare their team to be in a crisis at the moment. Rangers may be top of the league by some distance, but have the increasingly inevitable prospect of administration hanging over them. Celtic's problems are on the field; they, along with Hibernian (understandably, considering Colin Calderwood's dreadful results in charge) and Dundee United (bizarrely, since it's only 18 months since a cup win and the team finished fourth last season), may be looking for a new manager by the new year. Aberdeen boss Craig Brown is far from safe in his post.

St. Johnstone are already searching for a new man to take charge after Derek McInnes left for Bristol City - it's not unreasonable to expect his successor to struggle to emulate McInnes' success at McDiarmid Park. Dunfermline haven't won a game since 20th August. And as for Hearts...well, 'crisis' appears to be the default situation at the best of times, so a situation where the players aren't being paid probably commands a stronger description.

In fact, the SPL side the furthest away from being 'in crisis' are undoubtedly Motherwell, second in the league. Yet, proving once more that logic does not exist in Scottish football, neutral observers attending their away game at Inverness on Saturday would have been astonished to discover that the away side were the team riding high in the table, rather than rock bottom of the league.

For it is Caley Thistle who prop up the SPL a third of the way through the season, even though they utterly dominated the first 75 minutes against Stuart McCall's team. A 2-1 lead at that point seemed scant reward, yet the last quarter of an hour produced a long-range screamer from 'Well veteran Keith Lasley, a questionable red card for Caley's Chris Hogg and a deflected Tom Hateley free kick. Having created all of three chances in the game, Motherwell drove back south with the three points.

Depressingly, this has become fairly standard fare for supporters in Inverness. So far this season, Caley have proven that they couldn't hold onto a lead if it was attached to the collar of a newborn kitten.

In addition to the Motherwell game, they have conceded late equalizers against Dunfermline (twice) and Hearts; in addition, they managed to lose a late winner to Hibs in a game where Caley passed up so many opportunities that there might have been a forcefield around the opposing goal. These five matches have produced just three points; they might have produced fifteen. In fact, in one of our rare victories, against St. Mirren, the Buddies had a last-gasp equalizer disallowed for offside...incorrectly.

The Motherwell game, therefore, follows a rather disturbing pattern for the current campaign - when Inverness play well, they are still quite capable of failing to win. As for when they don't play well...well, you can guess.

I blogged in the summer about my excitement about the new direction the club was taking, bringing in younger players from south of the border and looking to play was two wingers. The latter plan has largely gone out of the window because of necessity; Aaron Doran, signed from Blackburn, dislocated his shoulder at the end of August, whilst his fellow Irish wideman, Jonny Hayes, sustained a similar injury three days before. Hayes made his return to the squad against Motherwell.

The decision to exchange experience for youth has so far proved to be folly; how Caley fans have reminsiced about the solidity of former captain Grant Munro, who has excelled since leaving the club and crossing the Kessock Bridge to sign for Ross County. In his absence, Caley have so far deployed ten different defenders this season. For the Motherwell game, Terry Butcher made three changes to the back four, which could not be less settled if itching powder was poured into their shorts pre-match. The squad cries out for older heads; what it has is only two outfield players over the age of 27. It is fair to say that the lack of experience is a contributor to the failure to see out games.

The summer signings have proven to largely be a disappointment, with the possible exceptions of forward Gregory Tade, who has scored four goals, and midfielder David Davis (on loan from Wolves). That's two out of twelve new arrivals (not counting Tom Aldred, a loan signing from Watford who returned to his parent club in August after failing to cement a regular place). With so many new players, Butcher has no budget to strengthen the squad in January unless some of the on-loan players move on.

And to cap it all, Doran and Hayes are not the only ones to have been on the treatment table. More than once this season the substitutes' bench has not been full. Arguably the best player brought in, Welsh international midfielder Owain Tudur Jones, broke his foot in only his third match. Another staple in the centre of the park, Lee Cox, has only just overcome a long-term groin problem. Niggling knocks here and there seem to have left the team short of at least five names for every game so far.

In short, it feels like everything is going wrong for Inverness Caledonian Thistle this season, and so they have only nine points from their opening thirteen games. The hope is that, once everyone is fit, the results will come. But Caley's next three games are Kilmarnock away, Celtic at home and Hearts away. It's realistic to think that, at the end of November, things will be even worse than they are now. Butcher, like Billy Reid at Hamilton last year, can sleep soundly in the knowledge that he has built up enough credit with his previous successes that his job is not in any immediate danger. But, even at this early stage of the campaign, I would say that, if you have a spare fiver, putting it on Caley Thistle being relegated from the SPL would seem a decent bet.

L.

Could playoffs revitalise the SPL?

2011-10-20T12:20:00.000+01:00

I took umbrage this week at a tweet from @ryankeaney, who had suggested that the way to revitalise Scottish football might be through a playoff system, such as that used in the Australian A-League. The poor chap was very polite about the whole thing, especially in light of my whinging that he wanted to use Scotland 'as a testing ground'.

As is sadly the case for a lot of Scots, the natural response to a radical idea proposed by an outsider, particularly an Englishman, is automatically met with antipathy, as if every single person on the other side of the border is potentially the reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher.

For all the talk of reform, it is clear that Scottish football in general, and the Scottish Premier League in particular, have the same attitude to new ideas as American oil tycoons have to renewable energy. So I bet a proposal such as the introduction of end-of-season playoffs would go down like the proverbial lead balloon.

But is it such a bad idea?

My passion for American Football (which is called football despite the fact the ball is rarely touched by feet) makes me maybe a little more open to the idea of playoffs - it is not often that the Super Bowl is contested between the two teams had the best record in the regular season. There's no doubt it adds considerable interest and excitement to proceedings - both towards the end of the regular season as teams battle it out to get a playoff place, and during the playoffs themselves. The reward for a better regular season record is home advantage in the playoff matches, so there is less incentive for the top teams to take their feet off the gas after a playoff place has been earned.

It doesn't always feel right though; for example, in 2007 the New England Patriots were clearly the dominant team, winning all 16 regular season games and two playoff games as well...only to lose the Super Bowl final (and the chance to become the first team to win all 19 games in a season) to the New York Giants, who had only barely managed to make the playoffs in the first place.

The idea that the team who tops the SPL at the end of the league season might not win the league title doesn't sit all that easily with me, though maybe that's just because I'm set in my ways. However, the biggest objection to having a playoff competition is plain to see - this season Rangers could well stride away and win the title by more than 10 points; is it fair they could lose the title, and possibly a Champions League place, as a result of a one off match at the end of the season?

Rangers would say no; perhaps the likes of Hearts and Motherwell, who can't compete with the Old Firm over the course of a full campaign, might be more receptive to this prospect.

As far as I can tell, the most prominent football leagues in the world to use this system to decide their champion are Australia's A-League (as mentioned above), and Major League Soccer in the USA; these countries traditionally use playoffs in other sports too, so there is far less resistance to that sort of set up.

The A-League is the one most comparable to the SPL - whereas MLS has teams split into separate conferences, the A-League has 10 teams who play each other three times in the main season for a total of 27 games; the top six enter the playoffs. Interestingly the best two teams in the league season play each other at the start of the playoffs - the winner qualifies for the final and also gets home advantage. The loser of this tie ends up playing the winner of a knockout tournament between the other four teams for the right to play in the final. So there is certainly motivation to finish in the top two in the league.

It's quite a clever structure, I think, and one that could be introduced quite easily to an SPL with a 'top six' mentality already. It certainly improves the chances of a side outside the Old Firm winning it all...and potentially nicking a Champions League spot as well. But, aside from the rather spurious argument that playoffs are against our football tradition - so is diving, but that doesn't stop Scottish players doing it left right and centre - the main reason why playoffs are a non-starter is that it threatens the Old Firm's duopoly on being the only teams who can contest for the title. The idea of St. Johnstone finishing sixth in the table and stringing together a couple of shock results at Celtic Park and Ibrox to win the league and qualify for Europe would probably dislosge what's left of Craig Whyte's stomach contents.

So in this author's opinion, this plan will never happen. But it's a shame it will never be up for consideration, for it has some good points. So thanks to @ryankeaney, for making me open my mind a teensy bit.

L.

Neil Lennon is doomed

2011-10-17T18:13:00.002+01:00

Celtic's already desperate SPL title hopes were salvaged thanks to a manager called Lennon this weekend. I'm not talking about Neil, who saw his Hoops side dice with disaster in Kilmarnock by impersonating Craig Levein's Scotland in Alicante and giving their opponents a three goal start before bothering to turn up. Instead it was St. Mirren coach Danny Lennon, and the late equalizer by veteran Steven Thompson at Ibrox that kept the gap between the Old Firm at 10 points, with Rangers having played a game extra.

It was actually St. Mirren who ended the reign of Tony Mowbray at Celtic Park by humping them 4-0 in Paisley, and had Killie held on to their three goal half time lead at Rugby Park, it's reasonable to speculate that Lennon's nineteen month reign at the club might have been at an end. Defeat in France against Rennes on Thursday, which would effectively mean Europa League elimination, and then a failure to beat Aberdeen at Celtic Park three days later, could be the final nail in the coffin.

Lennon must at least be relieved that the next league match is not against a gritty, determined opponent, but against a Dons side who have avoided league defeat at Celtic Park only once in seven years and who shipped 21 goals in 5 matches against Lennon's side last season.

But the first encounter between Celtic and Aberdeen this season, at Pittodrie in August, has proven somewhat prophetic of the problems Lennon has faced. Craig Brown's side were in a terrible mess, with a casualty list reminiscent of the Somme and carrying as much threat as a kitten in a paper bag. Yet the visitors toiled against an organized defence, and having failed to find an early breakthrough, showed all the frustration of someone who can't get the lid of a pickle jar. They had completely run out of ideas, and only found a winner thanks to a catastrophic blunder from Aberdeen captain Ricky Foster (I remember my father shouting "he should be shot for that!" at the television) that gifted Anthony Stokes a goal.

That game was also the first sign of something else that has become apparent this season; Kris Commons, who was in irresistible form in the second half of the season, has regressed dramatically; an unkind (and accurate) person would say that regression is inversely proportional with his waist circumference. Without that spark, Celtic are hugely lacking a creative spark in the final third and are finding it immensely difficult to break down organized defences. And the frustration builds up quickly, resulting in moments such as Commons' sending off at Tynecastle for a stupid, reckless challenge.

The problems up front, though, pale in comparison to what's happening at the other end of the pitch; someone said of the Scotland team recently that they had 'constipation at the front and diarrhoea at the back' but this applies to Celtic too. The backline is just an absolute shambles, aside from goalkeeper Fraser Forster, and has appeared so ever since the highly rated left back Emilio Izaguirre broke his ankle. The Honduran's replacement, Badr El Kaddouri, is enduring such a difficult settling-in period that it seems certain his loan deal will not be extended beyond January. On the other side, Lennon appears determined to keep playing the raw Welshman Adam Matthews, even despite Mark Wilson's solidity last season.

But the biggest concern lies in the centre of the defence, where there has been so much slapstick that it would have been cut from a Naked Gun film for being too farcical for belief. And at the heart of this has been Daniel Majstorovic, the Kojak-alike Swede who last year provided experience and leadership, but who this season has been as reliable as a used British Leyland car. The only explanation for his continued presence in the side is surely the injuries that prevented anyone else from being consistently available - though, out of his multiple partners in crime this season, Glenn Loovens has looked like Majstorovic with a huge blonde wig and Kelvin Wilson appears to still be getting over the shock of finding the SPL is not a doddle compared to the Championship. At Kilmarnock, Charlie Mulgrew was the tweedle-dum to Majstorovic's tweedle-dee; Mulgrew has played at left-back, left-midfield and centre-midfield for Celtic this year, and played exactly like what he was - a player out of position.

So Celtic can't defend, and can't attack. They have no Plan B for when matches become difficult. Lennon's own actions - criticizing players in post-match interviews, his touchline tantrums - do not, at least from the outside, seem a good way to foster a strong team spirit, though the Kilmarnock comeback suggests there is still a bit of pride there. But, after more than a year and a half of Neil Lennon, and investment in the playing squad which far outweighs that at Ibrox, Celtic appear to be roughly back where they were after Tony Mowbray's Paisley humiliation.

For me, Neil Lennon's demise as Celtic manager is now inevitable. I just can't see how he is going to turn around this team. As I tweeted after the Hearts defeat, the only way Rangers will not win the SPL title is by getting a points deduction for entering administration.

The question is whether he will last until the next Old Firm at Celtic Park at the end of December. I don't think he will. And I'm relishing the thought of him coming back up to Inverness in a month's time, even though we're bottom of the league...it would be somewhat apt if it was Caley Thistle who once more etched their name into the Celtic history books.

L.

The secret diary of Craig Levein, aged 46 and three quarters

2011-10-12T18:47:00.005+01:00

Saturday 8th October

It's the big game in Liechtenstein tonight. I've been preparing meticulously for this game, watching video footage of each of the opposing players. The Swiss third division is of very high quality, I'm telling you.

The pre-match press conference was full of the usual stupid questions. "How difficult will this game be for Scotland?" asked one hack. "Of course it will be tough", I replied, scratching my sexy beard, "they have no fewer than six full-time players in their team."

Another moronic journalist (aren't they all?) chimes in with "Did you consider Ross McCormack, the Championship's top scorer who is in top form, for a call up? Or Garry O'Connor, who has ten goals this season with Hibernian?". "What good reason could you possibly give me for picking them?", I retort. All the journalists look puzzled. Quite right too. What a stupid question.

I'd much rather have Craig Mackail-Smith than McCormack or O'Connor. For a start, he clearly hasn't washed his hair in months, so his personal hygiene is on the same level as mine. He doesn't have a sexy beard, though.

Since the captain, Darren, had tonsillitis, I had to sit the squad down and explain my tactical plan for his absence. "Right," I said, "with no Darren I think that we'll have to change from 4-5-1." The players' eyes lit up. "Steven, James, you guys aren't playing as midfielders tonight", I told them to their obvious delight. "You're going to be extra full backs". Steven Naismith smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand, which Peter Houston tells me is a Weegie expression of assent.

Thankfully though, Darren's antibiotics kicked in, and he told me he could play. I was delighted, but admitted I was feeling uneasy about playing the all out attacking 4-5-1 system. "Are you sure we shouldn't go back to 4-6-0?" I asked Darren. "They have SIX full-time players".

Sunday 9th October

That was a hairy experience in Vaduz. Initially the stewards wouldn't even let me into the dugout until Stewart Regan from the SFA came down and explained who I was. "Sorry Craig", Stewart said, "but they thought you were a hobo trying to sneak in."

"Why on earth did they think that?" I asked, stroking my sexy beard. Stewart gave me a long hard look, and then sighed. "I've no idea", he said.

Early in the game I whistled Stevie Naismith to the touchline to pass on some instructions. For some reason, he asked me "Got any Bucky?" before looking embarrassed and muttering "sorry, boss, didn't realise that was you".

We won 1-0 in the end. I know Craig Mackail-Smith scored, but I'm convinced we would have done better without playing a striker. At the end I shouted for Stevie and James to go and play as extra full-backs, but they clearly couldn't hear me over the huge crowd noise. Luckily we hung on.

After the game, Jim Spence from the BBC interviewed me and asked if I felt we should have won by more goals. "Listen," I said, feeling exasperated, "they had SIX full-time players! What do you expect?" He looked puzzled. Quite right too.

Monday 10th October

Journalists keep asking me if I wish I'd done anything different during the qualifying campaign. Of course I do - I completely regret my tactical plan for the game in Prague. The bottom line is that 4-6-0 was the wrong idea - if only I'd played more defenders, we'd have won that game. Easily. As for the return game? If only I'd made Christophe Berra stay behind after training for extra diving practice. It's done the world of good for Stevie Naismith.

People keep whinging about the other games, too. But Lithuania are a great team. Vladimir Romanov wouldn't own and pay all these players if they weren't any good now, would he? So a 0-0 in Kaunas and a 1-0 in Hampden are great results, really. And remember, we wouldn't have won at Hampden if I hadn't been clever and placed everyone behind the ball for the last half hour. Some idiot managers would have still kept attacking, just because their team was on top and a second goal seemed inevitable. Not me, though. I think ahead. So when Lithuania started dominating possession and launching high balls into the box, I already had everyone back defending.

I really should get more credit for these smashing ideas. But I'm confident that the football history books will recognise my achievement of inventing the position of "extra full back". And Guardiola thought the False Nine was clever. But, then, his beard isn't as sexy as mine.

Tuesday 11th October

Darren, the captain, caught up with me ten minutes before kickoff. "Look, boss, we can't play that formation tonight."

"Don't tell me what I can and can't do, Darren", I replied. "This system gives us the best chance for a result. If you don't agree, I'll drop you to the bench".

"But boss," he persisted, "we're not allowed to play a 16-1-0 formation, even if we wanted to".

He's a sharp boy, Darren, even sharper than me. I didn't have time to pick a new lineup. Thankfully Stewart Regan had a copy of our teamsheet from Saturday, so I just handed that in instead.

"Okay," I told the players in the dressing room. "Here's our new plan. We'll sit off them like they have leprosy, and let them get three goals up, and then we'll attack them. They won't be expecting that!" Stevie hit his forehead with the palm of his hand again. So did Phil, James and Craig, which was surprising. I didn't realise they were weegies as well.

Wednesday 12th October

After the game, I heard Darren talking to a few of the other players. "Are we making any progress, do you think?" One said. "Aye," Darren replied. "The last manager had a problem with the booze. Now we have a manager who only looks like he has a problem with the booze." I'm not sure what he meant, but it's reassuring to know that my captain thinks we are making progress.

This morning, I got out of bed and started the weekly trim of my sexy beard. I looked at my reflection in my mirror. "So, Craig," I said to it, "should I have any regrets about the qualifying campaign?".
"Of course you should", my reflection said. "Those tactics in Prague and in Kaunas, those mediocre performances in the games at Hampden. But you know what you should have done differently".

"That's right". I said. "Next time, I'll pick more defenders. Then we'll be all right".

Matchfixing in the SPL?

2011-10-06T19:56:00.001+01:00

Saying the SPL has had a wee bit of bad press in the last year or so would be like saying that passing a kidney stone is a wee bit sore.

You'd think an alleged matchfixing scandal involving Scotland's top flight might attract more attention. It's a sign of how low the stock of Scottish football has fallen that the arrest of Motherwell midfielder Steve Jennings is not causing larger headlines than it is. Jennings was lifted, along with eight men from Merseyside (where Jennings is originally from) on charges of Conspiracy to Defraud.

Interestingly, one of the blokes from Merseyside is apparently Wayne Rooney's father. Another is Rooney's uncle. Doesn't Wayne give them any pocket money?

Jennings has been a solid, if unspectacular, player for the Well since Jim Gannon took him north from Tranmere Rovers in July 2009 - he has been a fixture in the midfield since then, doing the 'water carrier' job in front of the centre backs. He reminds me very much of former Inverness player Russell Duncan, stuck in a role without glory, where fans rarely notice the intricate positional sense and 'dirty work' being done but constantly seize upon mistakes as a reason why the team doesn't need such a player. Of course, as soon as he's injured/dropped, his absence is quickly apparent as opposing midfielders rampage through the gaping hole that the 'water carrier' would normally be occupying.

Anyway, my point is that many non-Motherwell fans may not even have heard of Jennings - even though he has been a fixture in the team under three managers - Gannon, Craig Brown and Stuart McCall.

This is all to do with a Motherwell-Hearts game at Fir Park last December, shortly after Brown had left for Aberdeen and just before McCall was installed; the home side were under the caretaker management of Gordon Young. Hearts won 2-1. I'm sure I watched the match, and I remember seeing more than a few bizarre decisions from referee Steve O'Reilly, including an incident where, when a Hearts player deliberately encroached and blocked a quick Motherwell free kick from a yard away, the ref insisted no offence had been committed and let play continue!

Jennings was sent off in unusual circumstances late in the game. He had been booked earlier, but seemed to have been given a straight red card by O'Reilly after protesting his decision to turn down a penalty appeal. The official reason was 'foul and abusive language', and it is believed the word "cheat" was used. On the face of it, it could easily have been construed as a young man losing his cool and taking his frustration too far - he certainly wouldn't be the first or the last to have got himself in such hot water.

But it appears that there is more to this. Only a day after the match, the SPL was informed by the bookies Blue Square that numerous bets had been made, both with them and other bookmakers, on a Motherwell player being sent off, including from brand new accounts which seemed to have been created purely to wager on this outcome. This story hit the press at the time, but quickly seemed to disappear. I had assumed nothing had come of these claims, but in fact the investigations have simply continued under the radar. Jennings served a three match ban at the time, but, having received loud public support from his club, has played in several matches since, including last season's Scottish Cup Final. He signed a new contract at Motherwell in the summer.

Let's not get carried away. Innocent till proven guilty and all that. But that's a lot of arrests, and considering it's nearly a year since the incident, it is fair to assume that the police feel they have some evidence to work on. I would certainly assume Jennings is going to be suspended for the time being by Motherwell. Will he play for the club (or anyone else) again? Only time will tell.

But here's some food for thought - could anyone else be trying (and succeeding) to fix Scottish football matches? One thing's for sure - fans are going to be more suspicious about bizarre antics on the pitch. Which makes me think referees could be in for a hard time...

L.

No escape down south for the Old Firm

2011-10-03T18:59:00.005+01:00

The grass is always greener on the other side, the neighbours got a new car that you wanna drive, and when time is running out you wanna stay alive

The lyrics to the Travis song Side might well have been on the mind of troubled Rangers owner Craig Whyte last week, as he stated his intent to find a way to get the club into the English Premier League. It's almost become a tradition up here; every four or five years one or both members of The Gruesome Twosome voice their agitation on missing out on the big bucks available over the other side of Hadrian's Wall, and malign their status as big fish stuck in a pond which is shrinking so quickly that it might now, technically, be a puddle.

Following this comes various rentaquote former players and two-bit pundits turning up in the papers or on Sky Sports News to give their yay or nay opinions...and then after a few weeks the idea transpires to be as much a non-starter as a Hermann Goering appeal against the Nuremburg Trial verdict.

Yet Rangers and Celtic keep coming back pleading to the English top flight, like a geeky bespectacled IT worker on his hands and knees, trying to beg Scarlett Johansson to give him a pity date. You can hardly blame them; they have been left behind to the point that even finishing last in the EPL is worth as much TV and prize money as winning the SPL. But here is why there is no chance of this happening, not for a generation...

THERE'S NOT ENOUGH QUALITY
How times have changed. Rangers in particular took massive advantage of the post-Heysel situation, attracting numerous English internationals north with the lure of European football. Remember the names - Chris Woods, Terry Butcher, Gary Stevens, Graham Roberts, Trevor Francis, Ray Wilkins, Mark Walters, Trevor Steven, Nigel Spackman, Mark Hateley. Oh, and Terry Hurlock, surely the dirtiest player I've ever seen, not so much a Pitbull as a rabid Alsatian.

It's roughly the equivalent of David James, Jamie Carragher, Gareth Barry and Peter Crouch playing north of the border. Hard to imagine now, eh? Yet in 1992-93, the Gers got to within a whisker of a Champions League final, beating English champions Leeds United home and away on the way. Even as late as the end of the last century, with Celtic buoyed by the arrival of Henrik Larsson, there was a case for claiming that both sides were capable of competing at the top of the Premiership.

How time changes.

Below is, in my opinion, the best 11 players from an all-Old Firm team.

How many of these guys, would you say, are good enough to play in the English Premier League? Even with some generosity, I'd say you would only need the fingers of one hand to count them.

Things have deteriorated to the point that, during the summer, Crystal Palace midfielder Neil Danns turned down a move to Ibrox, with the prospects of Champions League football and winning trophies, to sign for another Championship side, Leicester City. Frankly, Rangers and Celtic are now Championship-standard sides, and quite possibly would struggle initially to get out of that dog-eat-dog league. They are a long way from where they would need to be to become an established top division side, and that gap just increases with every passing year.

THE FANS ARE A TURN OFF
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect if one was to ask an English football fan what one word first came to mind when thinking of Old Firm supporters, the answer would be "Manchester."

True, Celtic fans have built up a good reputation with their adventures in Europe, but I can't help feeling that this goodwill has been cancelled out by their rivals and their constant run-ins with UEFA. To be honest, the green-and-white half of Glasgow are hardly the occupiers of the moral high ground, and I'd be interested to see how well songs about the IRA might go down in places such as Birmingham, London and Brighton, or any other places which were bombed during those awful times.

The bottom line is that there is just too much baggage, and too much potential for trouble.

WHY WOULD THE PREMIER LEAGUE WANT THEM?
How exactly would any club down south actually gain from having Rangers and Celtic in their league system? Really?

I can't think of any particular reason at all.

The clubs who start every season with at least a bit of concern about being relegated from the top flight - your Boltons and Fulhams - will find their status even more threatened. Thoughts of self-preservation would surely win out here.

Meanwhile, whilst the Manchester clubs and Chelsea are probably out of reach, I would think the rest would fear that, with their fanbases and potential income from their crowds, that sooner or later Rangers and Celtic might be able to establish themselves and even challenge for European places...thus taking away income from these other clubs.

Do the Old Firm actually bring anything positive to the table? They might have bigger grounds and bigger attendances than the Norwichs of this world, but I'm not sure that it's possible for the English Premier League to make more money than it already does from TV deals and the like; I don't think that having the Glasgow clubs on board makes the income pie any bigger, but just means there are two more teams fighting for slices of that pie.

NO CHANCE
It probably is in the interests of Rangers and Celtic to leave Scottish football if they want to increase their incomes. There might even be a case that Scottish football could benefit from their departure (but that's an argument for another day). But when the English Premier League clubs turn around and say "What's in it for us?", the answer at the moment is just "errrr...." And that's not going to win any argument.

L.

If Brown can't save Aberdeen, who can?

2011-09-21T21:25:00.003+01:00

In December 2010, Aberdeen finally got the manager they needed. Mark McGhee's tenure in the Pittodrie hotseat was an utter disaster; not fiery and spectacular like the Hindenburg, but cold, slow and chilling, like the Titanic. With the team looking as likely to win as a gambler who has walked under a ladder and smashed a mirror on his way to the roulette table, it was clear that chairman Stewart Milne needed an experienced, seasoned captain to steady his ailing ship.

Former Scotland manager Craig Brown seemed the perfect fit; Brown had proven that, even having turned 70, he could still fight fires, having turned in results at Motherwell almost immediately after replacing the erratic Jim Gannon. On a tight budget too. Whilst the football was hardly Barcelona, it was not exactly Catenaccio either. And Milne, like many other Scots, no doubt had fond, oak-ageing memories of the fact that Brown's Scotland side, as dour as a Gordon Brown speech, nevertheless was a solid as granite, meticulously organized, and, most importantly, did well (better than his successors, at least).

Brown was the perfect fit for Aberdeen, and Aberdeen was the perfect fit for Brown; the sleeping giant, a club with wonderful tradition and history, a huge but alienated fanbase just waiting to tempted back to the stands. He may be sprightly and healthy, but nevertheless this would surely be his last hurrah at the top level (in Scotland at least), an opportunity to cement his legacy as one of the greatest Scottish coaches of the last twenty years.

Ten months later, Brown's Aberdeen have won only 9 and drawn 7 out of 31 league games. Their opening 8 SPL matches of the new season have produced a solitary win, over Inverness in a game which, even allowing for my bias in favour of their opponents, they did not really deserve to win. I'm pretty sure they were tenth in the league when McGhee was sacked. Their position now? Tenth.

And, following on from his predecessors, Brown has now managed to embarrassingly lose a cup tie to a lower division team; McGhee had Raith Rovers, Calderwood had Dunfermline, Queen of the South (in a semi final after knocking out Celtic in the quarters) and Queen's Park, and now Paw Broon has seen the Dons succumb to East Fife. Having got themselves out of jail, and into extra time, with an injury-time penalty that looked softer than a bowel motion after a curry, they then managed to arse up the shootout.

There was a lot of goodwill in the North-East for Brown when he took charge. Not only has it evaporated, but it has reformed into clouds of apathy that are pouring a shower of derision on him and his side. (Did I try too hard to extend that metaphor? Probably)

The knives aren't out for him yet...there is a feeling that, if Craig Brown can't succeed here, who can? And who would want this poisoned chalice of a job, which appears to curse all coaches so that they take the post as a decent coach with a solid reputation, and leave it with so little credibility that they might as well change their names to 'Gary Megson' by deed poll.

But less than 4,000 turned up for this midweek League Cup humiliation. Less than double that were at the home league match with Kilmarnock last weekend, where Aberdeen showed a rare glimpse of backbone by earning a draw from a 2-0 deficit. These are fans who vote with their feet; as a student I attended a Pittodrie clash with the same opponent on my birthday in 2002, when Ebbe Skovdahl's side were battling it out for third in the table. The attendance was over 15,000, even though the away support consisted of three men and a dog.

You'd be daft to bet against Broonie turning this around. But, whilst the present is bleak for Aberdeen, there has always been optimism for the future. Right now, their current predicament appears to be a purgatory that will never end...unless it is ultimately replaced by the hell of relegation.

L.

The crack about Garry O'Connor

2011-09-14T21:57:00.001+01:00

When I was a kid I used to love imagining that I would be a professional footballer. Sometimes I still do, usually when I see Gary Caldwell playing for Scotland. Even then, just as now, I couldn't understand why a professional footballer, an athlete, wouldn't make the fairly benign (to me) sacrifices required to become the best you can be; a good diet, dedication to fitness, avoidance of illicit substances, keeping dodgy acquaintances at arms length. If you're being paid a five-figure sum every week, it seems like the least that can be expected of you. Some of those who have the potential to be greats embrace it as a way of life; they are those who become Zidane, or Messi, or, for all his chav-like behaviour on the pitch, Wayne Rooney. There are plenty who, as teenagers, seem only a little above ordinary, but who dedicate themselves to becoming the very best they can be. Sadly, there appear to be very few Scots who fall into the latter category (there are, of course, none in the former either). Depressingly, Garry O'Connor instead appears destined for enshrinement in the ranks of the Might Have Beens. O'Connor was good enough to be capped by Scotland as long ago as May 2002, within a month of turning 19. Yes, it was during the Vogts era of the national team, when there were so few credible options up front that a hat trick in Aberdeen's Wednesday afternoon student league had the potential to attract a call up. But still, even as a teenager O'Connor attracted attention, not least because of his burly 6ft 1in frame. Even as a teenager he proved capable of leading the line for Hibs as a lone striker. He had the odd scrape here and there (I'm sure I remember TV evidence being used to retrospectively ban him for violent conduct once) but by 2005-06, under Tony Mowbray and part of a generation that some optimists felt might go on to provide Scotland's backbone for a generation - Steven Whittaker Scott Brown, Kevin Thomson, Derek Riordan - O'Connor did enough to be the first to earn The Big Move. It wasn't just any move; if the £1.6 million fee raised one or two eyebrows, the destination caused rather more jaws to drop; Lokomotiv Moscow. The wrong move? Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but while it is a lazy stereotype to say that British players tend to struggle playing in foreign leagues, it does also seem to be true more often than not. O'Connor started well, scoring on his debut, but he struggled to settle and was in and out of the team. The move didn't seem to do much harm to his career - Birmingham City paid £2.2 million for him just over a year later - and it certainly didn't harm his bank account either, what with a £16,000 weekly wage in Russia, plus, I presume, hefty signing-on fees. But that Birmingham move was all the way back in the summer of 2007. What happened in the four and a bit years since then? Well, you'd have to have hidden under a rock to have missed the revelations on TV this week regarding how O'Connor served a ban in secret after testing positive for cocaine. Sadly, he doesn't appear to have learned his lesson, having been arrested in May in Edinburgh on charges of cocaine possession; last week it emerged that allegations of trying to run away from the police and of having molested a female police officer are part of this case. At the time of the incident he was without a club, and might have considered himself lucky that Hibs offered him the chance to return to Easter Road. After today, when it was revealed he is now facing a charge of fraud related to an insurance claim over an accident involving his £100,000 Ferrari, he must be incredibly relieved that he already has an employer - an employer in such a crisis that they can't afford not to stand by him. And on the pitch? Er...not very much has happened. Nine goals in three and a half years at Birmingham. Only one cap since 2007. A brief resurgence in form since his return to Hibs, which in fact led to calls for an international recall earlier this month...which probably won't be repeated in a hurry. What a waste. O'Connor would never have been a Wayne Rooney, but he could have been good enough to be a good Premier League striker, and certainly good enough to win far more than sixteen caps. I don't know much about the legal system, but I wonder whether he may be at risk of a custodial sentence if he is found guilty on at least one of the above charges. What a waste. Of course, he might not see it that way; there is that well-known anecdote about the bellboy who delivered champagne to George Best's hotel room, and found him entertaining a scantily clad beauty queen with his bed covered in thousands of pounds of casino winnings, who asked 'Where did it all go wrong?'. Maybe, having probably earned enough to set his family up for life, even at the age of 28, Garry O'Connor thinks the same way. L.

Transparency, or just temporary?

2011-09-12T16:03:00.003+01:00

On Friday, Rangers 'withdrew cooperation' from The Herald and its associated newspapers, The Sunday Herald and The Evening Times, after The Herald supposedly ran scaremongering stories over Rangers' finances...in short, claiming there were concerns over the club's solvency.

As I've said before, the PR agency the Ibrox side are employing seems about as suitable for the job as a lioness would be for babysitting infant wildebeest. Various journalists from other newspapers tweeted about this move almost instantly, though few papers and news media reported it. By Saturday afternoon, the BBC reported the leaking of legal documents concerning the upcoming unfair dismissal case of Martin Bain, the former Rangers Chief Executive deposed as part of Craig Whyte's takeover. On Sunday, the front page of the Sunday Mail (sister paper of the Daily Record, a paper accused by many Rangers fans of being biased against the club, yet derided as The Daily Ranger by supporters of other clubs) ran this story.

All the while, Rangers denounced a 'whispering campaign' against them, suggesting that elements in the media have an agenda against them, a charge they have already accused HMRC of over their pursuit of unpaid taxes. They presumably think the same of the Scottish legal profession, given the way those court papers ended up on the net. Yet there has been no talk of legal action against the journalists who have been reporting these stories, and one word that has been conspicuously absent from all these tales of £50 million tax bills and accusations of potential future insolvency - 'deny'.

Those who read this blog (all three of you) will please note that I posted on the subject several months ago, even when the mainstream media (save the BBC's Scottish Economic Editor) seemed to be steering clear of it. The reason is pretty clear - it is easy for those in Govan to issue veiled threats to the press which go along the lines of "report negative stories about us and we'll stop talking to you". It's a powerful threat - for, let's face it, articles about the Old Firm make up, oh, roughly 99% (give or take 1%) of news stories about Scottish football. I doubt I would continue reading The Times if the back page stories were about Aberdeen's defensive frailties or Dundee United's injury strewn forward line (though, if I had any morals, I wouldn't be reading a Murdoch paper anyway...but Graeme Spiers remains the best and most interesting of Scottish hacks).

So now all the gory details of Rangers' financial problems are in the public eye, though, if you knew where to look, you could have found them on the net six months ago. There are enough pro-Celtic journalists out there who seized on the story long before the end of last season. And while even the best of these, such as Phil Mac Ghiolla Bain, put a hugely biased slant on the tale, time has proven their reporting to be accurate.

Not that Celtic are innocent of putting pressure on reporters; Scotland international-turned-pundit Pat Nevin revealed to a Scottish Parliament committee this week how, during the broadcast of this year's Scottish Cup Final, he dared to comment on the very audible singing of pro-IRA chants. The response? Furious complaints by Celtic to the BBC. You would have to search far and wide to find any match report on the Cup Final that mentioned sectarian songs...just as, for example, nobody commented how, at Inverness earlier this season, the entire Rangers end broke into a loud rendition of "You can stick the Virgin Mary up your arse".

The most striking example of this appears to be the infamous assault of Neil Lennon at Tynecastle (though, according to the courts, it wasn't an assault, of course)...a horrific event, obviously, but it apparently escaped the notice of the papers that, following that incident, Celtic fans attacked stewards and pelted the ballboys and girls with missiles; one ballboy was hospitalized.

Hopefully the fact that this tax issue has finally broken into the public domain will encourage Scottish journalists to dare to report on other failings of Rangers and Celtic...and goodness knows there are plenty to choose from.

L.

Levein - the beginning of the end

2011-09-04T16:49:00.002+01:00

The train back from Mount Florida to Glasgow Central station is not usually the place where you expect to hear wit and wisdom. But after Scotland's 2-2 draw with the Czech Republic game, the crowded carriage, for all the alcohol previously consumed, was a fairly subdued place.

At least until someone committed the cardinal sin of breaking wind. "Has somebody farted?" piped up one fan. "Naw", said another, "it's the stench of failure".

Only when we were pulling into Glasgow Central did some random supporter dare to give a view on the game; "Levein will have learned a lesson today." The responses from his mates were fairly predictable - the first was "Aye...that he's s***" and the second was "How many lessons does he need to learn?"

Our nation is infamous for holding grudges and keeping chips on our shoulders, and so the name Kevin Blom will be remembered for a long while north of the border, for he was the incompetent and pathetic referee who decided that Danny Wilson's ball-winning tackle and the subsequent dive by Jan Rezek (the word 'simulation' doesn't seem appropriate here, as Rezek's collapse to the deck looked so fake that it invites ridicule and laughter as much as fury) was worthy of the Czech's equalizing penalty. Three minutes later, he was given the opportunity to right his wrong when Christophe Berra was felled in the box (there wasn't much contact, but those sort of fouls are given more often than not) - instead he chose to compound his errors by booking Berra for diving. Oh, the irony.

Mr. Blom will not be taking his summer holidays in Scotland any time soon, one suspects.

But he provides a useful scapegoat for Craig Levein, who took the opportunity after the match to cry for Blom's demotion (castration and crucifixion would be more popular punishments in the eyes of the Tartan Army) and so dodge some awkward questions about Scotland's performance, not least the facts that Scotland had created nothing in the final third prior to Kenny Miller's opening goal (courtesy of a keeper error) on half-time, the failure of a five man midfield to press the ball or provide anything more than a modicum of support to lone striker Kenny Miller for long periods - at times Miller could have done with semaphore flags to communicate with his teammates, such was his isolation - and the way that the Czechs were allowed to dominate possession as if Hampden Park was their ground, with Tomas Rosicky given acres of space to dictate play in the middle of the pitch.

It was not a vintage Scotland performance, not by a long shot; they were grateful for Milan Baros' horrendous miss from 6 yards in the opening minutes, and for another, less mentioned, oversight by Blom, who failed to give Baros a first half penalty after a reckless challenge from Charlie Adam. But Levein's gameplan for a must-win home match against a Czech Republic side who are barely a shadow of the great team of the early part of the last decade consisted of "ten men behind the ball, and lets see if we can fluke one at the other end". In fact, they nicked two, what with the two outstanding Scots, Kenny Miller and Darren Fletcher, finding the heart and guts to drag Scotland back in front late on before Blom's denouement. Scotland maybe created one more clearcut chance in the entire contest - two goals from three chances is one heck of a return. But they still couldn't win.

Five games into this qualifying campaign, we have just five points. Our only win was the debacle against Liechtenstein, where a 97th minute winner was required. Our only decent performance was in the match we were always going to lose, against World Champions Spain. The other games were a 0-0 draw in Lithuania, where both teams set out with no interest in anything but defending, and, of course, that game in Prague where the boss bet everything on that 4-6-0 strategy which few have forgiven him for.

It's just not good enough. I don't care that friendlies have produced victories over Wales, Northern Ireland and Denmark, for these are not the results that could have dragged us out of the fourth pot for the World Cup qualifying draw. Levein's competitive record shows two fairly typical traits for our national side, the ability to raise our game against illustrious opponents, and our difficulty breaking down minnows. However, Levein has shown an insistence on defensive, safety-first, risk-averse tactics and formations against everybody except Liechtenstein...even though most would say our side is better on paper than both the Czechs and Lithuania.

Scotland's group for the World Cup is a humdinger - Croatia, Serbia, Belgium, Macedonia and Wales. It's a group which you could imagine Scotland getting through from, with a little luck. It's also a group where you could just as easily imagine us finishing bottom. And Levein has had far less bad luck than his predecessor, George Burley; he was burdened with the Iwelumo Miss against Norway, as well as an unfortunate sending off that cost us in the return game, plus some horrendous refereeing away to Holland and a plethora of missed chances against the Dutch at Hampden. Mr. Blom's blunders at Hampden are the first time that fate has conspired against Levein's Scotland team; every other setback has been, frankly, their own damn fault.

Levein has plenty of supporters still behind them? Who else could we get who is better, they say? Many don't like Gordon Strachan, nor would they wind back the clock for Walter Smith. I would jump at having either of them in the Scotland dugout. I would dismiss the memory of Berti Vogts and be open to the appointment of a foreign coach. Frankly, I would even give the bloke who farted on the train a shot at it - I can't see it being much worse, though I suppose we couldn't call him 'a breath of fresh air'.

Still, at least that trip back from the ground made me feel better. As if the comments weren't enough to amuse me, I found myself sitting next to a middle-aged man from Latin America, who, it appeared from my eavesdropping, was Costa Rican. Thank goodness he didn't say it loudly; the last thing a bunch of depressed Scotland supporters needed was to know there was a man from Costa Rica in their midst as a reminder of another great embarrassment.

L.

Why did Scottish clubs suck in Europe?

2011-08-28T14:12:00.004+01:00

Thankfully, ESPN employ minions to go looking for interesting but tricky statistics, such as the one that this is the first time in 53 years of European club competition that all Scottish clubs have been out by the end of August.

By the time they read that out after the Rangers game, I'd already used wikipedia to look back over the last 15 seasons. Had it not been for ESPN's uber-geek, I probably wouldn't have got to bed till about 4am.

It is worth pointing out that, until recent seasons and the expansion of European competitions so that clubs finishing 15th in the Andorran second division qualify for the Europa League (all right, I am exaggerating a smidgen), that, by the time you had played two European ties, it would be mid-October. Still, it is utterly depressing that no Scottish side is left. For one, it harms the image of the league; for another, the schadenfreude I experienced at watching the Old Firm suffer is balanced out that the dread of them having a lot more free midweeks this season and less stress on their squad depth, presumably making them stronger on SPL weekends.

And finally, it damages our co-efficient to the point where getting a Scottish side into the Champions League or Europa League becomes all the more difficult. So how have we fallen so far, so fast, considering that Rangers made it to a UEFA Cup final only three years ago, and Celtic achieved the same in 2003?

Let's look at the individual teams...

RANGERS
Everyone, with some justification, is focusing their ire on the failure to see off Slovenians Maribor. Do they, as current leaders of their domestic league, perhaps deserve more respect than the Scottish press, and indeed the Scottish champions, gave them? Considering only two of their players are current squad members for the Slovenian national team, probably not. Rangers might not have the financial clout of a decade ago, but Maribor certainly didn't find £3million to spend on players this summer.

The main reason Rangers exited the Europa League was profligacy at Ibrox in the second leg, where they missed chance after chance, especially at 0-0, and seemed to hit the panic button too early. Their opponents clearly earmarked Nikica Jelavic as the main threat, and gambled on leaving more space for his strike partner...a shrewd move as, when the heat is on, you can always rely on Kyle Lafferty to mess things up; the Northern Irishman could not have hit a cow's backside with a banjo.

But this latest setback actually seems to have distracted everyone from the bigger crime...the exit from the Champions League qualifiers to Swedes Malmo, where McCoist inexplicably sent out his side for the first leg (at home?!) with the same 5-4-1 formation Walter Smith saved last year for Manchester United and Valencia. Even then, having lost the first leg, they still should have won the tie, only to have two players sent off in Sweden (both for avoidable and stupid straight red offences) and the concession of a late goal.

Why are Rangers out? Poor tactics, poor finishing, poor discipline. All three should concern Ally McCoist, as Rangers have not exactly set the heather alight domestically either.

CELTIC
In terms of recent European catastrophes, defeat to Sion of Switzerland does not really rank up with the hideous losses to Artmedia Bratislava and Utrecht. It's also a trickier one for me to comment on as I didn't see a single second of the two legs, and because they were really up against it after conceding a penalty and red card in the first minute of the return leg.

But, again, there is a huge difference in resources between the two clubs. Yet, for all their quality, Celtic couldn't break their dogged, defensive-minded opponents down in the first leg at Celtic Park, a turgid 0-0 draw (I might not have seen the match, but I've never seen a goalless draw that couldn't be described as turgid, or maybe lacklustre). Neil Lennon's side faced exactly the same problem when they lost to St Johnstone last week, and - until a blunder from Ricky Foster that was worthy of punishment by castration - at Pittodrie earlier in the month.

It is, in fact, Celtic's big achilles heel under the stewardship of Neil Lennon; when the going gets tough, there isn't a plan B, an alternative tactic. Not only that, but when the players turn to the bench to look for guidance and help from a thoughtful, shrewd manager, they instead see a wee naff jumping up and down waving his arms and turning the air around him blue, in a manner more worthy of a street corner outside Celtic Park than the dugout inside it. Walter Smith might have been capable of finding a way to get a result away from home in Europe when both a goal and a man down - Neil Lennon (and indeed Smith's successor at Ibrox) was never going to be able to manage that.

HEARTS
Hearts got the most glamorous tie they could have hoped for, and with the first leg at home, in front of a crowd that have turned the place into a cauldron. When setting up your team, as massive underdogs, would you go for option A, a screen of defensive midfielders and a gameplan designed to frustrate, or option Romanov, two wingers and an attempt to go toe-to-toe with a bunch of international class players?

It's hard to believe that Hearts' new coach, the Portuguese Paulo Sergio, went for such a kamikaze plan without having his arm twisted by the club's Lithuanian owner. Say what you like about a fairly creditable 0-0 in the second leg against a bunch of Tottenham's youth players; this tie was over as a contest within the opening 30 minutes at Tynecastle, at which point Spurs were already three up. It was so bad that Clive Tyldesley actually sounded pitying, the patronising git. When we are down, you either help us up or kick us in the groin, you don't stand over us sounding sympathetic.

That said, Hearts at least managed something that neither of the Old Firm did - they won a match, having disposed of Hungarian also-rans Paksi in a previous round.

DUNDEE UNITED
Of course, the Arabs didn't even last beyond the end of July, dumped out by Slask Wroclav of Poland; this was blamed, as all these early defeats are, on the fact the league season hadn't started and their players weren't match fit. It wasn't a problem for their opponents, whose domestic campaign started a week later than United's. Continental sides seem to be able to cope with early European ties and this 'match-fitness' issue, so why the heck can't we?

I'm not really interested in United's exit though; this week is all about the humiliating defeats for Rangers and Celtic, and the humiliating thumping Hearts got the week before. There may not be as much money or quality available as in the days of Dick Advocaat and Martin O'Neill, but these were still matches that should have been won with something to spare. If the national team don't get the job done against the Czechs this week, Scottish football might well have reached its nadir.

L.

Money money money,would be funny, in the SPL

2011-08-17T19:57:00.003+01:00

Adequate. Dull. Unspectacular.

All adjectives that could be used to describe Rangers' performance in Inverness at the weekend, in a match which the Ibrox side won thanks to two very controversial penalties indeed, the first following what appeared to be a ball-winning challenge, and the second after an innocuous collision which caused Romanian Dorin Goian to execute a curious mid-air triple twist that Jane Torvill would have been proud of.

They are adjectives that, in hindsight, I suspect the Rangers board wishes could be applied to previous tax retuns. Not least after the HMRC sent round the Sheriff Officers last week to serve papers on the club regarding their outstanding (in more than one sense of the word!) £4.2 million tax bill.

Tch, when the debt collectors come round to your average joe, they are skinheads with baseball bats. For a major company, they are balding and carrying briefcases. Same idea though, except for the fact that Ally McCoist's fingers aren't going to get broken. Yet.

This is a bizarre case indeed, which led Rangers to complain of the process of being conducted "in public" and fans supporters to accuse the taxman of "grandstanding"...despite the fact that no news organizations ran with the story until Rangers brought it to their attention with the above statement. Considering the outstanding payments date back eight years, and Rangers have so far failed to pay them despite the fact this became public before the summer, it seems to this observer that HMRC are quite entitled to seek what they believe they are owed; an accountant and a solicitor who I count amongst my friends (the latter despite being a Gers fan) inform me that this is proper procedure, whatever the club say.

The latter summed it all up beautifully for me: "there's not a company in the world that doesn't do everything it can to minimise a tax bill. That's why a good tax lawyer can get paid a fortune. Maybe Rangers should have got a better one."

This whole affair is juicier than a Florida orange. And it's just the beginning; as I mentioned in a previous post, HMRC have a much bigger case which returns to court in November, seeking somewhere in the region of £20 million in unpaid taxes...against Rangers.

And for all the whinging by their PR men about it being plastered all over the media, the papers have been restrained in their coverage of the whole affair. In fact, there has been a feeling of "thou doth protest too much" - I can't believe I got a Shakespeare line into the blog! - about the whole thing.

They aren't the only ones dodging their bills though; Hearts, it transpires, were served a winding-up order last month by HMRC, and finally paid up approximately £250,000 this week. Astoundingly, the media failed to mention this winding-up order until the bill had been paid - though internet message boards had picked up on it, and Rangers' impending Sheriff Officer visit - though that didn't stop accusations of the club's reputation being blackened.

Rich men and huge corporations, having to pay their taxes? Who'd have thought it? Under a Conservative government, surely only the poor should be paying taxes, getting affected by cuts, that sort of thing.

About the only interesting news in Scottish football recently has been surrounding the financial side of the game, and I've been playing the amusing game of 'read between the lines' a lot. Last week also saw the publication of the annual PriceWaterhouseCooper report into SPL finances - though it always runs a year behind, so it covered 2009-10 and so didn't involve Caley Thistle (as we were languishing in the lower leagues/sweeping majestically to promotion - delete as applicable to suit your point of view).

The interesting points to note? As of that season only Hamilton (now relegated) and St Johnstone were debt free. There was an overall profit of £1 million...but only because Hearts and Kilmarnock had £8 million of debt written off. And, as was picked up by everyone, there has been a massive drop in attendances which threatens to cause huge damage to the Scottish Premier League - 600,000 fewer fans attended during the 2009-10 season than during the 2004-05 season, a drop of 16%.

What wasn't picked up by anyone, apart from a very wise head at Caleythistleonline.com who has far too much time on his hands, is that it is not representative of the SPL, not by a distance. Compared to 5 years previously, average attendances at Hearts and Hibs are higher (though not as high as they were 3 years ago), and Dundee United's are stable. Kilmarnock and Motherwell are a little down, but are on an upward trend. Inverness, St. Johnstone and St. Mirren are higher, though the latter two were not in the SPL five years ago. Meanwhile, Celtic's attendances are down 21%. Aberdeen's are down 19% - no surprise considering the mess they were in. Rangers are better but have had the third highest drop off in attendances.

And since Celtic and Rangers' attendances are more than twice that of everyone else, the reason for the vast majority of that drop off - in fact about 60% of that 500,000 total - is fair weather Old Firm fans. Not that you'd know from the SPL's soundbite; "our clubs made a profit...this is incredibly positive" was so far from the truth that I assume they use the same PR firm as Rangers and Hearts do.

The conclusion? For all the Old Firm's whining that they are being held back by weedy provinical clubs, the truth is that they are the ones who are struggling to stay afloat...and they are at risk of drowning the rest of the SPL with them.

L.

McCoist and Romanov - an alternative view

2011-08-06T21:24:00.003+01:00

Yes, I know that recently blog updates have been as sparse as green vegetables on a Scotsman's dinner plate.

Sorry about that. Now and again my attention is distracted away from the busy, unpredictable and stressful world of football, and focused towards the busy, unpredictable and stressful - and rather more important, sadly - world that is known as Real Life.

I'd love to say it won't happen again, but the nature of my day job means that, inevitably, there will continue to be occasional lapses in my blogging. Any association between a lack of new blogposts and Caley Thistle's mediocre start to the season is, of course, purely coincidental...

Anyway, it's not as if I've exactly missed much, is it?

Two big stories have dominated the start of the Scottish football season; firstly, the trials and travails of Ally McCoist, and secondly Hearts' decision to chuck Jim Jefferies.

Let's tackle Tynecastle first. If I was feeling lazy, I would spout out a few paragraphs about how the sacking of Jefferies, and his replacement by Portuguese coach Paulo Sergio, was a scandalous way to treat a decent, dignified man with bags of experience, and how the outrageous, reckless actions of a madman from Eastern Europe who knows nothing about football are damaging one of Scotland's biggest clubs and bringing ridicule onto Scottish football.

Actually, for the record, I am feeling lazy. But I'm not going to write a character assassination of Vladimir Romanov today. For one thing, every other sports hack in the country has already done it, with such similar elements of melodrama, sensationalism, and, frankly, some xenophobia (would a Scottish chairman be treated in such a way? I doubt it) that you would be forgiven for thinking that there was only one football journalist in the entire country, writing under a dozen pseudonyms.

In fact, you could employ similar logic to the McCoist-Rangers saga...where if the press shout "Crisis! Crisis!" loud enough, sooner or later the public will start to believe it (as I discovered to my horror regarding the MMR vaccine debacle a decade ago) and, lo and behold, Rangers fans, who are so volatile at the best of times that they start biting their fingernails to the quick as soon as opponents win a throw-in in their half, will get on the team's back at the slightest provocation. Why? Because the team is in crisis. Everybody says so.

But, for goodness sake, he has been charge for four competitive games, which include a win over St Johnstone and a match in Sweden where, by all accounts, Rangers were the better team even when a man short. Yes, the failure to make the Champions League is a huge blow to the club, but remember Gordon Strachan's start at Celtic? Where they drew 4-4 with Motherwell on opening day (McCoist's Rangers drew with Hears) and got stuffed 5-0 in the Champions League qualifiers by those European behemoths Artmedia Bratislava? Strachan went on to do pretty okay at Celtic Park, I would say.

By all means judge McCoist over, say a fifteen game period - and if Rangers are struggling, then maybe there is a crisis. And, conveniently enough for this piece, Romanov indeed judged his manager over a fifteen game period...and Jim Jefferies' last fifteen games as Hearts boss produced a grand total of one win. Which is pretty appalling, to be honest. My opinion is that the dismissal was still hasty, but it's easy to find Hearts fans who actually agreed with the change of manager.

Look, I'm no fan of Romanov, and I'm certainly no fan of Rangers either. And we should by all means rip the man to shreds over these ridiculous press releases - 'media monkeys' being his latest bizarre comment - but you can't dispute that he has been a pretty successful businessman, and there is no evidence that mismanaging Hearts would be to his financial benefit. And who knows, maybe his logic is that he was aware of a coach who was available and, in Romanov's opinion, more able than his current one, and so why wait before installing him?

To be honest, I'm not sure I totally...or even partly...agree with what I've written above. But doesn't it make a pleasant change from the generic crap that appears in the national rags in response to these sort of events?

L.

The (far from) definitive 2011-12 SPL preview part 3

2011-07-21T14:22:00.004+01:00

Flipping typical - Rangers choose last night to sign Lee Wallace from Hearts, so yesterday's preview was out of date within about four hours.

Anyway, here's the final part of this particular tour de force. My aim was to come up with a season preview which was better than any I've read in the papers in the last week...that was a depressingly easy goal to achieve.

INVERNESS

FIRST TEAM OUTS: Gil Blumenshtein, Stuart Duff, Russell Duncan, Stuart Golabek, Chris Hogg, Chris Innes, Alex MacDonald (end of loan), Roy McBain, Grant Munro, Eric Odhiambo, Adam Rooney, Danni Sanchez
FIRST TEAM INS: Tom Aldred, Aaron Doran, Billy McKay, Josh Meekings, Andrew Shinnie, Gregory Tade, Greg Tansey

PREDICTION: 8th

PROSPECTS: I've no idea, frankly. I'm certain Caley Thistle will bring in at least two or three more players. As described in previous blogs, Terry Butcher appears to have ditched the hardworking veteran backbone of the side in favour of a more swashbuckling approach...but we'll see how well it works. Can Inverness finally make the leap into the Top Six? I say no...but hope I'm wrong as usual.

Squad (* denotes U-21 outfield player - each team must have 3 in their matchday squad)
Goalkeepers: Ryan Esson, Jonny Tuffey
Defenders: Tom Aldred*, Kenny Gillet, Josh Meekings*, David Proctor, Graeme Shinnie*, Ross Tokely
Midfielders: Lee Cox*, Aaron Doran*, Jonny Hayes, Gavin Morrison*, Liam Polworth*, Nick Ross*, Andrew Shinnie, Greg Tansey
Forwards: Richie Foran (capt), Billy McKay, Shane Sutherland*, Gregory Tade

KILMARNOCK

FIRST TEAM OUTS: Kieran Agard (end of loan), Willy Aubameyang, Craig Bryson, Alexei Eremenko (end of loan), Jamie Hamill, Benjamin Laurant, Steven Old, Mohammadou Sissoko (end of loan), Mehdi Taouil, Fraizer Wright
FIRST TEAM INS: Patrick Ada, Danny Buijs, Gary Harkins, Paul Heffernan, Ben Hutchinson, Zdenek Kroca, Danny Racchi

PREDICTION: 10th

PROSPECTS: The jury is out on new boss Kenny Shiels, who failed to win any of his 8 matches as interim boss at the end of last season. His task is all the harder from having lost Bryson, Eremenko, Hamill and Taouil - basically their best four players. The defence particularly looks shaky, while they will rely on Celtic reject Ben Hutchinson and journeyman Paul Heffernan for goals. Expect them to go backwards, possibly into a relegation dogfight.

Squad (* denotes U-21 outfield player - each team must have 3 in their matchday squad)
Goalkeepers: Cameron Bell, Anssi Jaakola, Kyle Letheren
Defenders: Patrick Ada, Billy Berntsson, Tim Clancy, Gary Fisher*, Garry Hay, Zdenek Kroca, Ryan O'Leary, Alex Pursehouse*
Midfielders: Danny Buijs, James Dayton, Scott Evans, James Fowler, Gary Harkins, Liam Kelly*, Manuel Pascali (capt), Danny Racchi, David Silva
Forwards: William Gros*, Paul Heffernan, Ben Hutchinson, Rory McKenzie*

MOTHERWELL

FIRST TEAM OUTS: Esteban Casagolda, Angelis Charalambous, Gavin Gunning (end of loan), Francis Jeffers, Steve Jones (end of loan), Steven Meechan, Maurice Ross, John Sutton
FIRST TEAM INS: Nicky Devlin, Michael Higdon, Nicky Law

PREDICTION: 7th

PROSPECTS: Stuart McCall seems determined to rely on his young players, and needs Michael Higdon to prove an adequate replacement for John Sutton. McCall's knowledge of the English lower leagues has also turned up Nicky Law, while he's held onto Darren Randolph, Jamie Murphy and Chris Humphrey. Another top six finish is certainly possible, though it might be beyond them.

Squad (* denotes U-21 outfield player - each team must have 3 in their matchday squad)
Goalkeepers: Lee Hollis, Darren Randolph
Defenders: Stephen Craigan (capt), Nicky Devlin*, Steven Hammell, Shaun Hutchinson*, Jonathan Page*, Steven Saunders*
Midfielders: Stuart Carswell*, Ross Forbes, Tom Hateley, Chris Humphrey, Stephen Jennings, Keith Lasley, Nicky Law
Forwards: Michael Higdon, Robert McHugh*, Jamie Murphy, Jamie Pollock*, Gary Smith*

RANGERS

FIRST TEAM OUTS: Kyle Bartley (end of loan), El Hadji Diouf (end of loan), Ricky Foster (end of loan), Vladimir Weiss (end of loan), Andrew Shinnie
FIRST TEAM INS: Juanma Ortiz, Lee Wallace

PREDICTION: 2nd

PROSPECTS: As I said about Celtic, you might as well toss a coin to decide who will finish first at the moment. Ally McCoist has been expertly groomed for the manager's job at Ibrox, but he's bound to make a mistake or two along the way. Rangers still need reinforcements, but there's a feeling of 'jam tomorrow' about new owner Craig Whyte. One or two good signings might change that viewpoint, though,

Squad (* denotes U-21 outfield player - each team must have 3 in their matchday squad)
Goalkeepers: Neil Alexander, Allan McGregor
Defenders: Madjid Bougherra, Kirk Broadfoot, Darren Cole*, Jordan McMillan, Sasa Papac, Lee Wallace, David Weir (capt), Steven Whittaker
Midfielders: Steven Davis, Maurice Edu, Kyle Hutton*, Salim Kerkar, Lee McCulloch, Jamie Ness*, Juanma Ortiz, Gregg Wylde*
Forwards: John Fleck*, David Healy, Nikica Jelavic, Kyle Lafferty, Andrew Little, Steven Naismith

ST JOHNSTONE

FIRST TEAM OUTS: Scott Dobie, Michael Duberry, Danny Grainger, Danny Invincibile, Andy Jackson, Peter MacDonald, Arvydas Novikovas (end of loan), Jordan Robertson, Collin Samuel, Graeme Smith, Cleveland Taylor
FIRST TEAM INS: Callum Davidson, Carl Finnigan, Sean Higgins, Alan Mannus, David McCracken, David Robertson, Fraizer Wright

PREDICTION: 9th

PROSPECTS: Can Derek McInnes take Saints any further? He had a huge clearout this summer to try and freshen the side up - though the possible departure of Murray Davidson would be a disaster. If McInnes stays for the season, St J should be fine, though they will fall short of the top half. If he is tempted away, the club will find it hard to find a coach of his calibre,

Squad (* denotes U-21 outfield player - each team must have 3 in their matchday squad)
Goalkeepers: Peter Enckelman, Alan Mannus
Defenders: Steven Anderson, Callum Davidson, Graham Gartland, Dave Mackay, Alan Maybury, David McCracken, Fraser Wright
Midfielders: Jamie Adams, Liam Caddis*, Liam Craig, Murray Davidson, Chris Millar, Kevin Moon, Jody Morris (capt), David Robertson
Forwards: Carl Finnigan, Stevie May*, Sam Parkin

ST MIRREN

FIRST TEAM OUTS: Garry Brady, Patrick Cregg, Craig Dargo, Paul Gallacher, Michael Higdon, Ally Love, Sean Lynch, Jamie McCluskey, Mark McLennan, John Potter, Conor Ramsay, Jure Travner, Gareth Wardlaw
FIRST TEAM INS: Graham Carey, Nigel Hasselbaink, Paul McGowan, Graeme Smith, Gary Teale, Jeroen Tesselaar, Steven Thompson

PREDICTION: 12th

PROSPECTS: Manager Danny Lennon has a year's more experience behind him, but he's taken a big risk that veterans Gary Teale and Steven Thompson still have what it takes. Ex-Celtic midfielder Graham Carey has a sweet left foot and is a shrewd acquisition. But the Buddies looked a shambles for much of last season and it doesn't take a leap of imagination to see them as strugglers this time round. Might this be the year they go down?

Squad (* denotes U-21 outfield player - each team must have 3 in their matchday squad)
Goalkeepers: Craig Samson, Graeme Smith
Defenders: David Barron, Jim Goodwin (capt), Lee Mair, Marc McAusland, Darren McGregor, Jeroen Tesselaar, David Van Zanten
Midfielders: Graham Carey, Mark Lamont*, Jamie McKernon*, Kenny McLean*, Aaron Mooy*, Hugh Murray, Gary Teale, Steven Thomson
Forwards: Nigel Hasselbaink, Paul McGowan, Paul McQuade, Steven Thompson

L.

The (far from) definitive 2011-12 SPL preview part 2

2011-07-19T15:54:00.006+01:00

Here we go, into the nitty-gritty of it all. There's enough data and information here to choke a donkey, I reckon. It also gave me an excuse to muck about with the smashing tools at www.this11.com. The other six teams will come up tomorrow, I hope.

ABERDEEN

FIRST TEAM OUTS: Sone Aluko, Myles Anderson, Nick Blackman (end of loan), Zander Diamond, Domenico Gibson, Hallur Hansson, Paul Hartley, Mark Howard, Dean Jarvis, Chris Maguire, David McNamee, Steven Smith (end of loan), Nikola Vujadinovic (end of loan), Derek Young
FIRST TEAM INS: Kari Arnason, Jason Brown, Chris Clark, David Gonzalez (loan), Youl Mawene, Isaac Osbourne

PREDICTION:5th

PROSPECTS: My predo is based less on the quality of the squad and more on the quality of the coach - if anyone can pull the Dons back into the top six, it's Craig Brown. He stretched his goodwill with the fans a bit by making Ricky Foster captain after the defender returned from a year at Rangers, and the Aberdeen squad still has a few holes in it, especially with the absence of an obvious wide midfielder. If it all goes sour, will Brown be given more leeway than Mark McGhee was?

Squad (* denotes U-21 outfield player - each team must have 3 in their matchday squad)
Goalkeepers: Jason Brown, David Gonzalez, Jamie Langfield
Defenders: Andrew Considine, Ricky Foster (capt), Youl Mawene, Rory McArdle, Clark Robertson*, Joe Shaughnessy*
Midfielders: Kari Arnason, Chris Clark, Yoann Folly, Ryan Fraser*, Fraser Fyvie*, Jack Grimmer*, Ryan Jack*, Nicky Low*, Robert Milson, Isaac Osbourne, Peter Pawlett*
Forwards: Darren Mackie, Josh Magennis*, Mitch Megginson*, Michael Paton, Scott Vernon

CELTIC

FIRST TEAM OUTS: Graham Carey, Ryan Conroy, Fraser Forster (end of loan), Andreas Hinkel, Ben Hutchinson, Freddie Ljungberg, Paul McGowan, Niall McGinn (loan)
FIRST TEAM INS: Adam Matthews, Kelvin Wilson, Victor Wanyama

PREDICTION: 1st

PROSPECTS: There's no doubt in my mind that the Old Firm will come first and second; the question is, in which order? Celtic simply seem to have more depth than their rivals, though it's hard to say if any of their new signings will improve the starting lineup. They still need a goalie, and to hope their top players don't have their heads turned by EPL teams by the end of August.

Squad (* denotes U-21 player - each team must have 3 in their matchday squad)
Goalkeepers: Domenico Cervi, Lukasz Zaluska
Defenders: Cha Du-Ri, Jos Hooiveld, Emilio Izaguirre, Glenn Loovens, Daniel Majstorovic, Adam Matthews*, Charlie Mulgrew, Thomas Rogne*, Lewis Toshney*, Richie Towell*, Kelvin Wilson, Mark Wilson
Midfielders: Scott Brown (capt), Kris Commons, Efrain Juarez, Beram Kayal, Ki Sung-Yong, Joe Ledley, Shaun Maloney, Paddy McCourt, Victor Wanyama
Forwards: James Forrest*, Gary Hooper, Daryl Murphy, Georgios Samaras, Paul Slane*, Anthony Stokes

DUNDEE UNITED

FIRST TEAM OUTS: Prince Buaben, Craig Conway, Darren Dods, Morgaro Gomis, Mihael Kovacevic, David Robertson, Andis Shala, Timothy Van Der Meulen
FIRST TEAM INS: Willo Flood, Gary Mackay-Steven, John Rankin

PREDICTION: 4th

PROSPECTS: Expect another slow start from United, until the distraction of the Europa League is out of the way. They still have plenty of business to do, especially to replace the Gomis-Buaben engine room in midfield, and their top six aspirations may depend on whether David Goodwillie stays for another season.

Squad (* denotes U-21 player - each team must have 3 in their matchday squad)
Goalkeepers: Steve Banks, Dusan Pernis
Defenders: Sean Dillon, Paul Dixon, Barry Douglas, Garry Kenneth, Ross Smith*, Keith Watson
Midfielders: Scott Allan*, Stuart Armstrong*, Willo Flood, Gary Mackay-Steven*, John Rankin, Scott Robertson, Scott Severin, Danny Swanson
Forwards: Jon Daly (capt), Ryan Dow*, David Goodwillie, Johnny Russell*

DUNFERMLINE ATHLETIC

FIRST TEAM OUTS: Kyle Allison, Graham Bayne, Alex Burke, Chris Higgins, Jake Hyde, Neil McGregor, Greg Paterson, Calum Woods
FIRST TEAM INS: Andrew Barrowman, Patrick Boyle, Paul Burns, Paul Gallacher, John Potter, Kevin Rutkiewicz, Jason Thomson (loan)

PREDICTION: 11th

PROSPECTS: As I often trumpet, only one newly promoted team has been relegated from the SPL in a decade, and that was the loathsome Gretna. Dunfermline's problem is that their squad is based around several players who have SPL experience...but were simply not good enough last time round. They will be solid and well organised, but do they have the firepower? I think they will struggle, but survive...just.

Squad (* denotes U-21 player - each team must have 3 in their matchday squad)
Goalkeepers: Paul Gallacher, Chris Smith
Defenders: Patrick Boyle, Andy Dowie, Lee Graham*, Alex Keddie, Austin McCann (capt), John Potter, Kevin Rutkiewicz, Jason Thomson
Midfielders: Steven Bell, Paul Burns, Joe Cardle, Martin Hardie, Gary Mason, Nick Phinn, Ryan Thomson*, Paul Willis*
Forwards: Andy Barrowman, Liam Buchanan, Pat Clarke, David Graham, Andy Kirk, Steven McDougall

HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN

FIRST TEAM OUTS: Ismael Bouzid, Dawid Kucharski, Jamie Mole, Paul Mulrooney, Ruben Palazuelos, Craig Thomson, Jason Thomson (loan)
FIRST TEAM INS: Danny Grainger, Jamie Hamill, John Sutton, Mehdi Taouil

PREDICTION: 3rd

PROSPECTS: Hearts still appear to be much stronger than everyone else, yet miles away from bridging the gap to the gruesome twosome. If they get Andrew Driver and Kevin Kyle fit, they might be able to challenge at the top, but the least we expect is goals from John Sutton and more exciting wingplay from David Templeton. Oh, and more pointless meddling from Vladimir Romanov. At least the distraction Thomson-gate appears to be over and done with.

Squad (* denotes U-21 player - each team must have 3 in their matchday squad)
Goalkeepers: Janos Balogh, Marian Kello, Jamie MacDonald
Defenders: Darren Barr, Danny Grainger, Jamie Hamill, Eggert Jonsson, Lee Wallace, Andy Webster, Marius Zaliukas (capt)
Midfielders: Ian Black, Andrew Driver, Jason Holt*, Ryan McGowan, Adrian Mrowiec, Arvydas Novikovas*, David Obua, Rudi Skacel, Ryan Stevenson, Johnny Stewart*, Suso, Mehdi Taouil
Forwards: Calum Elliot, Stephen Elliott, Gary Glen*, Kevin Kyle, Scott Robinson*, David Smith*, John Sutton, David Templeton

HIBERNIAN

FIRST TEAM OUTS: Kurtis Byrne, Francis Dickoh, Jakub Divis (end of loan), Darryl Duffy (end of loan), Kevin McBride, Kevin McCann, Liam Miller, Colin Nish, John Rankin, Derek Riordan, Graeme Smith, Steven Thicot, Richie Towell (end of loan), Valdas Trakys, Ricardo Vaz Te
FIRST TEAM INS: Garry O'Connor, Sean O'Hanlon, Ivan Sproule

PREDICTION: 6th

PROSPECTS: Huge uncertainty remains regarding the future of boss Colin Calderwood, and that seems to have paralyzed the rebuilding programme at Easter Road; I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that Garry O'Connor should bring quality and goals to the front line. But there's as much chance of them being at the bottom as there is of them making top six - but would you expect anything else from Hibs?

Squad (* denotes U-21 player - each team must have 3 in their matchday squad)
Goalkeepers: Mark Brown, Graham Stack
Defenders: Callum Booth*, Paul Hanlon*, Michael Hart, Ian Murray, Sean O'Hanlon, David Stephens*, Scott Taggart*
Midfielders: Edwin De Graaf, Danny Galbraith*, Lewis Horner*, Victor Palsson*, Martin Scott, Matt Thornhill, David Wotherspoon*
Forwards: Daniel Handling*, Garry O'Connor, Akpo Sodje, Ivan Sproule

Hope your brains haven't exploded. I know mine has.

L.

The (far from) definitive 2011-12 SPL preview part 1

2011-07-19T15:15:00.003+01:00

One overwhelming thought comes to mind as I sit down to hammer out a blogpost previewing the SPL season...

What on earth am I doing trying to write a preview in July?!

The weather gods have not been kind to Scottish football the last couple of seasons - in fact, the only way they could have been crueller would have been to tie it up, soak it in petrol and lop off it's ear to the sound of Stealer's Wheel. Partly because of this, partly because the European Championship follows the climax of the 2011-12 campaign (yeah, right, as if Scotland will be in it, and as if any non-Scottish SPL players will be good enough to play in it), and partly as a chance to get our footie on the telly before the proper football...sorry, the English Premier League...starts, the season starts on 23 July this year.

Kind of. We have a full round of fixtures on opening weekend. But Celtic and Rangers whinged about missing out on glamour friendlies which are worth a fair bit of cash to them, so the league has, as usual, pandered to them, and agreed that any team could defer a fixture in the early stages of the season if they wished. Depressingly, Hibernian also took up this offer, so the second and third weeks of the season will be disrupted while Celtic go play in the Dublin Super Cup (it might have Inter Milan in it, but having the 'tic and a League of Ireland XI hardly makes it even a little bit super), Hibs play a 'glamour' friendly against Sunderland - since when has Sunderland ever been described as glamourous? - and Rangers take on Chelsea.

Forgive this writer for having a little bit of schadenfreude if these sides are hit by a nasty bout of fixture congestion in six months time.

But the early start makes writing a preview mightily difficult, because the transfer window is open for a full 39 days after the first SPL game. Thus, barely anyone - only perhaps Kilmarnock, St. Mirren and the newly promoted Dunfermline - has done all their business. The Old Firm have spent only £1.5 million between them, bringing in a total of four players. They, and everyone else, are biding their time, waiting for free agent players to lower their wage demands, and their aspirations, as the end of August comes closer and the need to find a club and a paycheck becomes more desperate.

I was caught out in impressive style because of this last season, even when the season started in mid-August; having tipped Kilmarnock for the drop, they promptly went and signed Alexei Eremenko and made me look like even more of a plonker than usual. I think they call this complete and utter ineptness with predictions 'Murray Walker syndrome'. Obviously the Old Firm will take the top two places, and Hearts look good value for third, but there's very little to choose between the other nine teams just now, I reckon.

So anything I write in the upcoming two part preview, which I aim to have done before the season starts on Saturday (of course, I can't really call it a preview if I finish it after that, can I?) needs to be taken with not so much a pinch of salt, but a full shaker's worth, with a pepper pot and spice rack alongside. Capiche?

Anyway, for tasters, here's how I think the table will look...

1. Celtic
2. Rangers
3. Hearts
4. Dundee Utd
5. Aberdeen
6. Hibernian
7. Motherwell
8. Inverness
9. St. Johnstone
10. Kilmarnock
11. Dunfermline
12. St Mirren

Thoughts?

L.

Doran leads new Caley philosophy

2011-07-16T13:02:00.005+01:00

Joining up with Inverness Caledonian Thistle's pre-season tour in the south of England hasn't been all plain sailing for winger Aaron Doran; he tweeted his frustration at the difficulty of buying a train ticket to Bath because no-one could understand his Irish accent.

The season before last, Doran was considered enough of a prospect at Blackburn Rovers that he made three first team appearances off the bench for the English Premier League side. But opportunities were scarce last year, and in January 2011 he took the chance to join Caley Thistle on loan for the rest of the season. As a right-footed player cutting in from the left flank - the mirror image of fellow Irishman Jonny Hayes on the opposite side - Doran scored three SPL goals, including an exquisite curling effort at St Johnstone, and showed that, even at the age of 20, he is already more than good enough for the SPL.

So it was a particular delight that, when it became clear there was no future at Blackburn, Doran agreed to make a permanent move to the Highlands, despite the fact that the likes of Aberdeen, Motherwell and St. Johnstone were also interested.

Caley Thistle's transfer policy has been very distinct this summer. Traditionally it has been difficult to attract players to the north of the country, presumably because most folk in the central belt still assume that we done kilts, wear woad on our faces, drink from streams and have only a vague idea of what electricity is. (Depressingly, I'm being only slightly tongue-in-cheek) But those who have been persuaded to give it a go have often stayed; as a consequence the backbone of the side that first won SPL promotion in 2004 under John Robertson (and had been constructed by his predecessor, Steve Paterson) made up most of the squad for the subsequent years.

This summer, with the departures of Russell Duncan, Grant Munro, Stuart Golabek, and Roy McBain, that backbone has but one vertebra left, defender Ross Tokely. The departures of Munro and Duncan, servants for more than a decade and who are still only 30, came as a particular shock. But boss Terry Butcher has made his intentions clear - he wants to bring young players north, from England's lower divisions. Whilst Inverness cannot offer better wages than League One and League Two clubs, Butcher is selling the club as a chance to gain more exposure, especially when playing the Old Firm.

The ultimate advertisement for this claim is Adam Rooney, who after more than 20 goals last season earned himself a deal at Birmingham City reportedly worth up to £10,000 a week. That's five-fold what Caley had offered him to stay. Whether Rooney is good enough to score goals regularly in The Championship is open to debate, but he's earned himself the opportunity, and a huge paypacket, after only one high-scoring SPL season.

Butcher's argument has swayed the likes of Stockport's Greg Tansey and Northampton's Billy McKay. Expect more players from this level to join us over the next few weeks.

It also means a tactical switch, now light years away from the physical, hard-working side which established itself in the SPL in the middle of the last decade; now with Doran, McKay, Hayes and French forward Gregory Tade, Inverness have pace to burn. In fact, the lack of height and physical presence in the squad makes this writer a little nervous - though a big centre-back and a big centre-forward would allay those fears, and could potentially make Caley a team to beat.

The likes of Doran are unlikely to remain here for more than a couple of years - if they are good someone better and wealthier will sign them, and if they aren't then we'll chuck them. So it means an inevitably high turnover of players. But that's likely to be the way of things for Scotland's provincial clubs in the near future. The trick is consistently recognising and signing players who are going to a job.

Let's hope Terry Butcher can pull it off.

L.

Calderwood jilts Hibs for his ex Hughton

2011-07-13T20:27:00.006+01:00

By the time you read this, Hibernian manager Colin Calderwood may no longer be Hibernian manager.

Most likely he will have completed a return south to become assistant to Chris Hughton at Birmingham City, with Hibs potentially netting £400,000 in compensation.

But, even if that deal falls through, it's hard to see Calderwood staying at Easter Road. Some would accuse him of having burned his bridges with the club; at the very least, he has poured the petrol and provided the Zippo lighter for the task.

Whatever happens, it will be a long time before he manages a club again, one suspects. A former Spurs and Scotland international defender, Calderwood looked like quite the up and coming coach after winning League Two with unfashionable Northampton Town, and seemed like the perfect choice to take Nottingham Forest out of the lower league doldrums when he moved to the City Ground in May 2006. But his spell at Forest never quite lived up to the high expectations of the club and it's fans, even when his second season in charge resulted in promotion to The Championship; a lousy start to the following campaign led to his dismissal.

The Hibs job was his first managerial post since then; just a month after leaving Forest he became part of the coaching staff at Newcastle, working under Hughton, and was the logical choice to be assistant manager when Hughton took over the top job at St. James' Park. It appeared he still had hunger and ambition to succeed on his own when he left that role to move to Edinburgh last October, but it seems not; having given up an assistant's job in the Premier League for the SPL, he now wants to unceremoniously ditch his homeland for an assistant's job in The Championship. After only nine months at Hibs.

Granted, the phrase "poisoned chalice" does not quite seem to do justice to the post of Hibernian manager. In a decade since Alex McLeish left to take over at Rangers, only Tony Mowbray has enjoyed sustained success, and he was lucky enough to inherit future internationals Ian Murray, Derek Riordan, Scott Brown, Gary O'Connor, Kevin Thomson and Steven Whittaker from the club's youth setup. Mowbray's successors have each had their struggles - John Collins won the league cup but never won over the dressing room, allegedly after criticising player fitness and stripping off in order to prove he was fitter than the players (in which sense of the word, one wonders). Results declined a bit further under Mixu Paatelainen, who was shown the door after 18 months despite two top six finishes. The big Finn's subsequent spell at Kilmarnock has proven that his Easter Road experience left him far wiser, if also a bit balder. Calderwood's immediate predecessor was Paatelainen's replacement, former Hibs player and Falkirk manager John Hughes, who enjoyed an initial bounce in results which disguised more dressing room problems (recurring theme here), but things deteriorated to the point where some players supposedly just ignored orders to, for example, warm down after matches.

Curiously, Calderwood's number two was Derek Adams, who left his manager's job at Ross County to become Calderwood's number two, despite Calderwood admitting that they had never met. Ironically given current circumstances, Adams returned to his former job in Dingwall at the end of the season.

There is no doubt that the team was at a low ebb when Calderwood took over, and his abysmal start - 2 wins in his first 15 league games and a cup exit to second division Ayr United - can at least partly be blamed on the shambles he inherited. He recognised the need for a total overhaul, moving on well over a dozen first team players, and had at least some reasonable backing from the board - chairman Rod Petrie has funded the return of striker O'Connor to the club, and also provided a six figure transfer budget in January which, bizarrely was spent on Ross County midfielder Martin Scott, presumably on the recommendation of his erstwhile assistant Adams. He hadn't won over the fans yet, but he hadn't completely lost them either. But, less than two weeks before the start of the season, he appears poised to dump them.

If it doesn't work out at St. Andrews', I can't help feeling that few chairman would take a chance on offering him another manager's job. He appears willing to ditch Hibs, having not even come close to fulfilling his mandate, for a job with far less prestige and standing (but presumably a few more zeroes on the paycheque), and at the time which harms his former employer most. If he has put the word "loyal" on his CV, he should probably delete it, along with "humble" and "dedicated" as well.

It appeared impossible that Colin Calderwood could leave Hibernian in an even worse state than when he arrived. But he appears to have managed it. For when the going got tough, Calderwood didn't get going. He left.

L.

The horrors of a football-free summer

2011-07-03T18:18:00.001+01:00

It's got so bad that I missed my usual Monday night seven-a-side to go to Caley Thistle's first pre-season game against local Highland League side Clachnacuddin, played at their Grant Street Park, a ground which makes prisoner-of-war camps seem homely and welcoming.

It's got so bad that I've started recording the Copa America and watching the games in the morning using the fast forward button.

It's got so bad that I'm checking the Sky Sports Transfer Centre ticker multiple times a day, looking for any nugget of transfer news that isn't about Alexis Sanchez or bloody Cesc Fabregas.

Ladies and gentlemen, these summers without World Cups and European Championships are hell.

All right, I exaggerate. They are not hell. Hell would be an eternity spent listening to a neverending duet between Kate Bush and Celine Dion, whilst sitting on a spike, and in the company of a rather unpleasant, and frankly psychotic, girl called Louise who was in my class at University. It's where I'm going if it turns out I was wrong to agree with Richard Dawkins' views on the world.

But they are not pleasant. I try to use other sports to compensate; Super Rugby, Wimbledon tennis, the Tour de France. But it's not the same, nor is it remotely close.

I might be coping better if there was some vaguely interesting happenings north of the border. All the news so far has surrounded either decent players leaving the SPL, or transfer dealings which haven't happened.

Examples of the former: Scotland internationals Chris Maguire (Aberdeen to Derby), Craig Conway (Dundee Utd to Cardiff) and Derek Riordan (left Hibs, with no new club yet); Kilmarnock's best players Craig Bryson (to Derby) and Aleksei Eremenko (end of loan), and Inverness' star striker Adam Rooney (to Birmingham).

Examples of the latter? Well, pretty much every deal involving Rangers, whose new owner Craig Whyte has, so far, completely and utterly failed to put his money where his mouth is. It would be one thing if Rangers were missing out on big name, world class players...but in the last few weeks they have been rejected by the aforementioned Conway, who was offered better wages by Cardiff, Crystal Palace midfielder Neil Danns, who was offered better wages (are you seeing a theme here?) by Leicester, and by relatively unknown Israeli forward Tomer Hemed, who chose Real Mallorca instead; in his case I have no idea of the disparity in wages, but I can think of some reasons why Majorca might be preferable to Glasgow, in particular the presence of the sun and the absence of Buckfast.

These are the Bosman signings new manager Ally McCoist has looked to make. When he has offered transfer fees...Rangers' frugality is again holding them back. A £300,000 offer for Hearts' Scotland international full back Lee Wallace could reasonably be described as derisory; protests out of Ibrox that Dundee Utd's £2million valuation of David Goodwillie was excessive and unrealistic were quickly silenced when it became clear that a few English Championship clubs were willing to meet that fee.

And that's the problem this summer. Rangers, certainly, can't (or won't) compete financially with top-half English Championship teams, and the lure of Champions League football doesn't seem to be making up for that. Celtic have, in contrast, managed to get hold of a couple of young players from that division, though I'm unclear as to just how good Kelvin Wilson (signed from Nottingham Forest) and Adam Matthews (from Cardiff) are. But their transfer policy looks, once again, focused on looking for cheap players from unfashionable leagues, to try and emulate the success that they had last year with Izaguirre and Kayal.

And as for the rest? Well, while Rangers are struggling to lure Championship players, the other sides are trying to tempt guys from League One and League Two with the prospect of playing Rangers and Celtic, and getting to play on TV (Motherwell signing Nicky Law from Rotherham, Inverness signing Greg Tansey from Stockport), and there is of course the traditional return of numerous veterans from years in the English leagues – Steven Thompson and Callum Davidson the obvious examples.

But it's just been sooooooooo boring up till now. And I've got to find some way to survive the last three weeks before the action starts on July 23.

Anyone got any bright ideas? And those of you who are tempted to tell me to get a life, please don't. You won't be helping.

L.

Hearts: Sex, drugs and ranting Romanov

2011-06-26T20:44:00.003+01:00

If Hearts had any sort of PR sense at all, you'd think that someone would have, by now, claimed that the latest barmy statement from their owner Vladimir Romanov was lost in translation.

We're used to, at least a few times a year, some bizarre comments from the Lithuanian about how the Old Firm, referees, the SFA, the mafia, and pretty much everyone except Richard Nixon being out to get him. Hearts are already facing a £100,000 fine for having yet another shocker of a disciplinary record this year - and Romanov is about to be yanked in front of the SFA (again) for slagging them off about it.

But Friday's statement, published on the club website, plumbed new depths in terms of indignity, indecency and, well, pure madness. Here are some choice quotes for you...

"For almost seven years now we have been fighting to shield the club from crooks, criminals and thieves. Many of the top players at the club have felt the bitter results of the swindles that have been carried out"

"Over a short space of time 4 players at our club have been on the wrong end of the law...it can be presumed that each of these cases is not a coincidence, but the result of targeted actions of a mafia"

"What's happening with the club today is not a new thing. For almost seven years, we have been fighting to shield the club from crooks, criminals and thieves"

"Every year Hearts fights to be in the top three, but even last season in the last 1 games of the season it was almost like someone replaced the team with a different one. Whose fault is that? Players? Manager's? Or it is mafia.

"Stealing players, bad games, problems with the law - all of that on top of record SFA fines. Problems are just shifted to another level.

"Mafia are dragging kids into the crime, in order to blackmail and profit on them. It is not possible to separate these people from paedophiles and you don't need to do that. Each year we are forced to fight these maniacs harder and harder.

"We are standing in their way, not letting them manipulate the game of football in the way they want. As such they undermine us in every possible way they can.

"The task of the club is to tear these kids out of hands of criminals."

This last statement is particularly sickening, coming a few days after Hearts defender Craig Thomson was convicted on two counts of indecent behaviour, where he had had "sexual conversations" with, and sent dodgy photos to, two girls aged 12 and 14. Thomson has been put on the sex offenders' register.

The bizarre claims of "paedophiles" trying to damage Hearts is indecent to the point of inducing nausea in this author's stomach, particularly at a time where Hearts have decided, in the face of rather a lot of criticism, not to sack Thomson.

This decision, of course, is due to a genuine belief that he has been punished by the law for his crimes, and a desire to rehabilitate a troubled young man. What do you mean, he's a talented under-21 international who could potentially command a six-figure sum in a few years? What would that have to do with it? You'd have to be a right cynic to claim such a thing.

Should Thomson have been sacked? I have to admit, it's not a black and white issue...although the Scottish tabloid press appear to be demanding nothing short of a lynch mob for him. Hearts already have two other players I can think of who are awaiting a court date; midfielder Ian Black (formerly a favourite of mine at Inverness) and youngster Robert Ogleby, who last month were charged with possession of cocaine - as indeed was former Scotland striker Garry O'Connor, who has recently returned to Hibernian. The Crown Prosecution Service apparently recommends up to a £5,000 fine +/- a 6 month prison sentence - sounds fairly unlikely they will get a custodian sentence.

But should these guys be sacked if they are found guilty drug offences? You couldn't claim they are a danger to others in the same way Thomson is, but they are supposed to set an example. Certainly, I'd be sacked from my job if I was convicted of such a crime. But another former Inverness player, Richie Hart, was found guilty of cocaine possession a few years back and was kept on at the club.

It's a question of where you draw the line, I guess.

The most infamous footballers-cum-criminals in the UK are probably Lee Hughes, who was a £5million striker before a conviction for Causing Death by Dangerous Driving and spending two and a half years in prison, and Marlon King, who Wigan sacked after he was imprisoned for Sexual Assault and Actual Bodily Harm. They had paid £4million for him in January 2008...by which time he had already been in prison for Receiving Stolen Goods, and twelve other convictions, including two for assaults on women. King has just signed a lucrative contract with Birmingham City.

So, in conclusion? The fact that a convicted sex offender, and other criminals, especially violent ones, continue to draw a substantial wage from football clubs, a wage far beyond that of your Average Joe, leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. But, even if Hearts had done the honourable thing, someone else was bound to swallow their moral objections and stick him on their payroll. But I'll say this; if he worked for Tesco, I doubt he'd have kept his employment...and I doubt his boss would have claimed he was the victim of a conspiracy.

L.

McLeish the Villain

2011-06-18T13:48:00.002+01:00

Looking at the McLeish-Villa-Birmingham love triangle from 400 miles north...

What's the problem?
Villa fans (or at least some of the more outspoken ones) appear to be mortally offended by the idea of appointing the manager of their local rivals. Whilst it's hardly Rangers-Celtic territory in terms of animosity between the sets of fans, bear in mind that earlier this season there were ugly scenes at the end of a Carling Cup match between the sides. Meanwhile, Birmingham City are claiming that McLeish resigned and jumped off their sinking ship simply to try to facilitate a smoother move to Villa Park.

Could Villa do better?
We already know that big Eck was not their first choice...or their second...or their third...Rafa Benitez apparently decided it wasn't for him, whilst Roberto Martinez couldn't be tempted away from his bosom buddie Dave Whelan and perennial relegation battles at Wigan. Meanwhile, overtures towards Steve McClaren went down about as well as a hot dog vendor at a vegan summer camp; it seems that English fans remain unconvinced that men who use umbrellas can also be capable football managers, though Dutch side Twente, whom he guided to the Eredivisie title, might disagree (conversely, Wolfsburg would back the umbrella theory wholeheartedly).

The bottom line is that, for all the money splashed on Darren Bent in January, owner Randy Lerner's pockets are no longer as deep as they used to be, and Villa's stock is not what it was 18 months ago. The supporters do appear to be fairly realistic about that; it's not as if they expect Jose Mourinho to walk into the dugout. McLeish might well be the best of what was available - though technically he wasn't available...

Is it a good move for McLeish?
My gut feeling is that he didn't have a bright future at Birmingham - investment from owner Carson Yeung was nowhere near what he had claimed it would be two years ago, and in fact there have been several articles suggesting the club have some significant financial trouble looming on the horizon. Meanwhile a club statement post-relegation stated "The club can confirm that manager Alex McLeish's job is safe but that the board will expect him to lead the side back to the Premier League in the 2011-12 season"...which roughly means "If we don't start the season well then he'll be sacked". The sale of the better players, such as goalie Ben Foster and centre-backs Roger Johnson and Scott Dann, seems inevitable, with the subsequent funds raised unlikely to be available to strengthen the squad.

So he didn't have much job security as it was, to the point where it is rumoured he might accuse City of constructive dismissal; whether he has any more security now is open to debate.

Is he actually a decent manager?
McLeish's trademark is organizing average sides to compete toe-to-toe with much better teams - evidence for this includes his spell as Hibs manager, his Champions League run in 2005-06 with Rangers, and both last season's mid-table finish and this year's Carling Cup triumph with Birmingham. Don't forget Scotland's unbelievable win in Paris either; his tactical setup for that match was pretty much perfect.

There are two obvious concerns about him. The first is the insipid style of play that his Birmingham side played, showing about as much passion for adventure as an agoraphobia sufferer. No doubt the Scot would argue this was a necessity, especially away from home, in order to deal with stronger opponents. The second issue is the fact that he appears to have a huge problem turning a losing team around when results go against him - his final season at Rangers was, domestically, a catastrophe, whilst he appeared incapable of righting the wagon when Birmingham's wheels came off so spectacularly after their Carling Cup win.

What are his chances of success?
Not great - if Gerard Houllier was maligned from the moment he walked into the hotseat, and the fans were antagonized by the mere idea of Steve McClaren, then McLeish is up against it from the word go. He needs a good start to get the boo-boys off his back, a task which will be all the harder if Ashley Young and Stewart Downing leave. But if the football is of poor quality and the results aren't forthcoming then he could be the next recipient of the Roy Hodgson Award for Abysmal Managerial appointments.

Do I think he'll succeed?
No. But let's face it, I never get anything right...

L.

End this pitiful punditry!

2011-06-11T18:28:00.002+01:00

What do you remember most about watching last year's Holland-Uruguay World Cup semi final?

Was it how much the South Americans missed Luis Suarez, suspended for his goalline handball in the quarter final? What about the rare sight of Arjen Robben scoring a headed goal. Or the fact that Dutch hatchetman Mark Van Bommel committed a bazillion fouls, yet escaped a booking until deep in injury time...which he got for kicking the ball away?

For me, it was the absence of inane chat disturbing the background of an entertaining football match. For ITV's co-commentator, Jim Beglin, was absent because of illness, leaving Clive Tyldesley on his lonesome. And thankfully, because even Clive Tyldesley can't talk non-stop for ninety minutes...unless Manchester United are playing...and so there were some lovely long silences to cherish.

Football is by no means unique in its use of ex-players as pundits in the television coverage - just check out rugby, cricket, tennis and formula one to name a few other sports. But these sports have found articulate, interesting, entertaining personalities to sit in the studio or in the commentary box, and appear to have loads to choose from.

Football coverage, in contrast, is characterized by a load of ex-pros who steadfastly refuse to be critical or unpleasant towards the players they are watching (many of whom are contemporaries) and are capable of no more insight than "He ought to have done better there".

Sometimes its the sheer mauling of syntax which does my head in - for example, I find Jamie "the defence, literally, literally fell asleep there. Literally" Redknapp completely unwatchable. Sometimes its the outrageous and poorly hidden bias - check out Redknapp again, ex-Celtic player Andy Walker, and pretty much any studio pundit during an England game for this. And sometimes it's the sheer laziness and lack of effort put in.

The award for the latter goes to none other than Mr. Alan Shearer, whose nuggets this season included "nobody's even heard of Hatem Ben Arfa", the French striker who, prior to joining Newcastle had eight caps for France, significant Champions League experience with Lyon and was the subject of a £8.5m move to Marseille in 2008. This followed on from pieces of useful info from his World Cup campaign, which included "Germany might look to bring on Gomez for his pace". That'll be the 6ft 2in target man Mario Gomez, who has the turning circle of a bus and the pace of a wheelie bin.

It's slightly insulting to know that my licence fee contributes towards his six figure salary, especially as his job description appears to consist of 'smirk at anything Gary Lineker says, and look constipated at any other time'. Though it's not as insulting as my licence fee being spent on Strictly Come Dancing.

There are good pundits out there - the analytical and thoughtful Lee Dixon and the brutally honest Graeme Souness emerged this season as reasons not to change the channel during half time, but the fact that Alan Hansen now seems to be making an active effort to trot out tired cliches on Match Of The Day rather than points of interest seems to suggest that the producers of the programmes feel their target audience has an average IQ in only double figures.

But you don't have to look too far for wisdom regarding the beautiful game...but you won't often find it on British TV. Thankfully, there are still some journalists out there who see more to football than headlines such as ' blasts about something completely inconsequential' or ' in crisis'. Check out the likes of Tim Vickery (the BBC's South American football guru), or Sid Lowe (the absolute authority on La Liga, and a damn entertaining one too). My favourite of all is Jonathan Wilson, author of Inverting The Pyramid, and who is The Man when it comes down to tactics. Wilson is also the editor of the new quarterly publication, The Blizzard, which is worth a shufti if you have the time.

So why not put these folks on the telly? They may or may not be articulate (Lowe has commentated for ESPN, so hopefully he falls in the first category) but they can't be any worse than some of the stuff already on the studio sofas.

Either that, or I'll just have to pray that the latest addition to the Sky stable, Gary Neville, turns out to be bright, thoughtful, impartial and witty.

Some hope.

L.

Analyzing the Old Firm's season

2011-06-04T10:43:00.003+01:00

It feels like, at some point in every season, I believe, briefly, that someone can challenge the Old Firm's dominance of Scottish football. On the pitch, that optimism tends to be more poorly thought-out than the building of nuclear power stations in an earthquake zone (too soon?).

And, apart from a moment in February where Hearts, after upsetting Rangers at Tynecastle, looked like an outside bet to get in on the act (they lost 4-0 at Celtic Park three days later, and that was the end of that), there was never any real doubt over who would finish in the top two positions in the table. The gap between second and third was 29pts, the largest such margin in six seasons. So, whilst the overall standard of the eleven players Rangers and Celtic can put on the park has dropped considerably compared to a decade ago - when the likes of Stefan Klos, Giovanni Van Bronckhorst, Barry Ferguson, Ronald De Boer, Claudio Reyna, Henrik Larsson, Chris Sutton and Stiliyan Petrov were wearing Old Firm colours - the Gruesome Twosome are as far ahead of the rest of the pack as ever.

Of course it was Rangers who prevailed, despite having a squad thinner than an anorexic's waist, and the credit for that has to go to three folk: manager Walter Smith, who managed to keep calm, collected and dignified whilst everything was going off around him (more on that later); striker Nikica Jelavic who, after missing the first half of the season with an ankle problem, hit an explosive streak of form after Christmas and more than made up for Kenny Miller's January departure to Turkey; and Lady Luck, who shielded the Huns from having too lengthy an injury list at any one point.

And it's easy to forget that they gave an excellent account of themselves in the Champions' League as well, giving Manchester United and Valencia a very hard time, and then were unlucky to be eliminated from the Europa League by PSV Eindhoven. Walter Smith's final season as Rangers manager was as successful as any other he has had, and the pressure is on his groomed replacement, Ally McCoist, to hit the ground running.

If you'd told me Rangers would win the title after Celtic stuffed them 3-0 in February, I would have found a mental health officer to sign the other part of the sectioning papers. At that point Neil Lennon had defied doubts about his lack of managerial experience, making up for occasional tactical lapses partly through his spirit and passion, but mostly through a string of excellent buys - Emilio Izaguirre, Beram Kayal and Gary Hooper will go on to much better things, whilst Kris Commons was a shrewd January acquisition, managing 14 goals.

But Celtic ran out of steam, and it's certainly worth debating how much the off-field issues surrounding their coach impacted on the team itself. For the second half of the season was all about the off-field events at Ibrox and Celtic Park. At the former, the issue of sectarianism raised it's ugly head (we're talking Barbara Streisand ugly here, so pretty damn ugly) again, both domestically and abroad, though the Hoops were hardly saints themselves. For the record, on my way to games at the Caledonian Stadium this year, I have heard Rangers fans singing raucously about killing Catholics while publicly downing bottles of Buckfast, and Celtic fans singing raucously about killing protestants while publicly downing cans of Strongbow.

Rangers also had to deal with the protracted, and now completed, takeover bid from Gregg Whyte; there remains some doubt over whether he can put his money where his mouth is. But that was a minor distraction compared with the storm that engulfed Lennon in the second half of the season, and which I've covered at length before. In the end, a promising season for Celtic finished with only a Scottish Cup, though the cult of personality developing in the support at Celtic Park should give Lennon plenty of leeway yet.

So, sadly, from a neutral point of view, it was depressing to see these two sides utterly dominate the league again. If that was bad enough, it was soul-destroying to watch as their off-field antics dominated the headlines and further defiled the already lousy image of Scottish football.

Next season? There are too many uncertainties to be able to say which side of the Old Firm will be stronger. The only certainties in life are, as they say, death, taxes, and that Rangers and Celtic will finish in the top two positions in the SPL.

RANGERS
League: 1st, 93pts
Scottish Cup: 5th round
League Cup: winners

Star man: Miller in the first half of the season, Jelavic in the second. The latter not only scores lots of goals, he has proven he can score them from anywhere.
Waste of space: The Rangers fans (or at least the moronic element) might have hailed El Hadji Diouf as a hero, but he contributed relatively little to the team apart from s**t-stirring in the Old Firm games.

Confirmed first team departures: Kyle Bartley (end of loan), El Hadji Diouf (end of loan), Richard Foster (end of loan), Vladimir Weiss (end of loan) David Healy
Other likely departures: Andrew Little
Needs for next season: A new centre-back to replace David Weir; at least one winger.

CELTIC
League: 2nd, 92pts
Scottish Cup: winners
League Cup: finalists

Star man: Honduran full-back Izaguirre, though his form dipped alarmingly in the final weeks of the season.
Waste of space: Freddie Ljungberg's January signing was a complete waste of time and money, as he made only two starts.

Confirmed first team departures: Fraser Forster (end of loan), Freddie Ljungberg, Ben Hutchinson
Other likely departures: Andreas Hinkel, Efrain Juarez
Needs for next season: A new keeper (unless Forster returns), another centre-back.

L.

Hearts, Dundee Utd...still miles behind

2011-06-01T18:40:00.004+01:00

Somehow, somehow, Hearts, and their fans, appear to have decided that this season was not a success.

Never mind that they came third in the league, always holding a comfortable cushion over the chasing pack. Never mind that they best both halves of the Old Firm on their home ground this season. Never mind that manager Jim Jefferies left me with considerable egg on my face for suggesting that he was an overrated, bumbling oaf.

But they rather limped over the finish line, winning only one of their last twelve games - a shame, as it looked like they might have had a smidgeon of a chance of splitting the Old Firm after a smash-and-grab win over Rangers in February. And their successes on the pitch have been rather overshadowed by that idiot "supporter" whose attempt to punch Neil Lennon would have even put Audley Harrison to shame. Plus Vladimir Romanov has been whinging again, as he still holds the belief that he, a Lithuanian banker (no, that's not a spelling error, I didn't mean to put a 'w' in that word) is better equipped to pick the team than any manager.

Hearts' big problem, the one that kept them well adrift of The Gruesome Twosome, was squad depth, which is more shallow than Ed Miliband's personality...despite having an enormous first team squad (this tells you about the quality of the backups). No side outside the Old Firm, in truth, could afford to lose the likes of Lee Wallace, Andrew Driver and Kevin Kyle for half a season each. So Jefferies has, already, hit the transfer market hard to try and plug the gaps; John Sutton is a Kyle-esque target man and should prove a good acquisition from Motherwell, while Jamie Hamill (Kilmarnock) and Danny Grainger (St Johnstone) both provide competition in the full-back area. Expect at least one other former Killie player (probably Mehdi Taouil, possibly Craig Bryson) to join his old manager at Tynecastle, while the arrival of Zander Diamond from Aberdeen is dependent only on a medical.

It's not a bad gameplan Hearts have - buy up the best players from every other SPL side. Is it enough to displace the Old Firm next year. No chance. But it's nice to dream.

They certainly appear in better nick than their closest challengers for a place on the SPL podium, Dundee United, who couldn't match a 2009-10 season with a 3rd place finish and a cup win but still did pretty well under the unheralded Peter Houston. The Arabs' coach has proven he can motivate his players and that he has tactical flexibility; this summer will test his transfer acumen, for he needs almost an entire midfield to offset the departures of his engine room partnership, Morgaro Gomis and Prince Buaben, and Scotland international winger Craig Conway.

Houston has managed to convince Willo Flood back to the club for the third time, after the diminutive Irishman was released by Middlesbrough, and and appears to have a bit of a thing for midgets as he has also signed John Rankin, anotehr clever midfielder who never really showed his best at Hibernian. On the plus side, highly-rated striker David Goodwillie - I will, never, ever, tire of sniggering at that surname - signed a new contract in the Spring, but this was less out of loyalty and more out of giving him security at a time when he still has a rape charge hanging over him.

The story is that United are yet another SPL team who are obliged to make budget cuts this summer. I just wonder whether Houston can emulate his predecessor, Craig Levein, who picked up Gomis from Cowdenbeath and Buaben from Ajax reserves. But he has to be pleased with his side's campaign, particularly either side of Christmas when Goodwillie peaked in form, and with their sensational 3-2 win at Ibrox on April 2. Keeping up that level of performance is going to be a huge task, though, and barring some amazing signings upset wins over the Old Firm will be rare treats rather than the norm in the years to come. I can envisage Dundee United dropping out of the top six next season. But I've been wrong before. Lots and lots and lots of times.

HEARTS
League: 3rd, 63pts
League Cup: 3rd round
Scottish Cup: 4th round

Star man: Rudi Skacel's return to the club was a surprising success, but this season's star was Slovak keeper Marian Kello.
Waste of space: Defender Darren Barr arrived from Falkirk last summer with a burgeoning reputation and a Scotland cap. Now he only gets in the team as an emergency full-back.

Confirmed first team departures: Dawid Kucharski, Jamie Mole, Paul Mulrooney, Ruben Palazuelos
Other likely departures: Janos Balogh, Calum Elliot, Gary Glen
Needs for next season: If Diamond and Taouil sign, Jefferies can say he has two decent guys at every position. But has he got the cash to improve the squad quality further?

DUNDEE UTD
League: 4th, 61pts
League Cup: quarter finals
Scottish Cup: quarter finals

Star man: David Goodwillie was awesome this season, and will go on to great things if he can avoid trouble with the law.
Waste of space: Mihael Kovacevic, who missed most of the season with a knee injury and then, in his first start, got sent off within 20 minutes against Rangers.

Confirmed first team departures: Prince Buaben, Craig Conway, Darren Dods, Morgaro Gomis, Mihael Kovacevic, David Robertson, Andis Shala
Other likely departures: Barry Douglas
Needs for next season: A dominating centre-half so Scott Severin can be pushed into midfield; a wide player to replace Conway; a defensive midfield player.

L.

Motherwell and Killie - a flash in the pan?

2011-05-22T20:27:00.004+01:00

Have I already used the line "Mixu Paatelainen did more with Kilmarnock than Jesus did with five loaves and two fish" or something along those lines?

I'm far too lazy to check back through previous blogposts to see if I have, but I don't care - I'm so proud of that comparison that I will use it twice. It's my blog, dammit.

But you only have to see how Killie collapsed after big Mixu left to see how much they missed him...or alternately, how caretaker boss Kenny Shiels is to football management what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to reasoned political debate. Killie failed to win any of the eight games under Shiels' direction, which means chairman Michael Johnston will surely go looking for another coach this summer; if nothing else, I'm sure there are a few jakies in the local high street who could go do the job better, and would only need to be paid in bottles of Buckfast.

But, whilst big Mixu was in charge, he got his side playing lovely passing football, with the his fellow Finn, Alexei Eremenko, the conductor-in-chief. When Killie gave Caley a good going over after Christmas, I said at one point "Look at Eremenko strut around like he's the best player on the pitch"; within a few minutes he became clear that he had good reason to do so. Paatelainen also got the best of Moroccan Mehdi Taouil, and turned Irish forward Connor Sammon from a plodding pubteam player into an explosive striker who an English Premier League team felt they could take a punt on in January.

But finding a new coach is just the first of the club's worries; there's no way they can afford to make Eremenko's loan deal permanent. Taouil and another midfielder, Craig Bryson, are likely to move on under a Bosman, while full-back Jamie Hamill appears to have earned a move to Hearts. The team's weak spot was always at the back, but it will be even more vulnerable unless they can sign another on-loan player, defender Momo Sissoko, and convince Scotland squad keeper Cammy Bell to sign a new contract.

In short, Kilmarnock are pretty much back where they were twelve months ago - manager-less, with a thin squad and a lack of quality or depth in the squad. Can they really strike the jackpot again, or was this season just a brief escape from perpetual relegation worries?

The latter, most likely - expect them to be back in the bottom half next year.

I suspect Motherwell might be there too.

When Craig Brown left for Pittodrie in December, taking Well's most potent striker, the on-loan Nick Blackman, with him, not many would have bet on the team making it to the top six, not least when highly-rated centre back Mark Reynolds legged it to Sheffield Wednesday in the transfer window. The appointment as manager of Stuart McCall seemed a bit underwhelming given his rather mediocre record down south with Bradford City, but he steadied the ship nicely and managed to get the results despite playing on a pitch that looked like a scene from The Battle of the Somme. He even guided the team to the cup final, even if they rarely threatened to deny Neil Lennon his moment of glory.

It's just a shame that McCall insists on patrolling the touchline in a tracksuit top and too-short shorts combo.

Dear oh dear. That really should be illegal.

Unlike Kilmarnock, though, Motherwell have a reasonable chance of holding on to most of their squad - though goalkeeper Darren Randolph has gone from being Charlton Athletic reserve to Ireland squad member in a year, while electric but inconsistent winger Chris Humphrey, signed from Shrewsbury two years ago, is being linked with teams ranging from Rangers to Liverpool (no, I can't believe it either). The decision of striker John Sutton to leave for Hearts was a blow though.

But they might get a half-decent fee for Humphrey and, if they do, they could afford to keep Randolph and young forward Jamie Murphy. Couple that with a youth system which seems to solidly produce one or two new first team players a season and McCall has a recipe that could keep Motherwell in the top six; they certainly appear to be in better shape than Kilmarnock are.

MOTHERWELL
League: 6th, 46pts
League Cup: semi final
Scottish Cup: final

Star man: John Sutton had always looked like a journeyman forward until this season, but chose a contract year to take his game to the next level. Sadly for Motherwell, he's signed for Hearts for next season.
Waste of space: Craig Brown didn't make many mistakes in the transfer market, but the signing of the lesser-spotted Spanish striker Esteban Casagolda was one of them - 13 appearances and no goals later, he will almost certainly be on his way.

Confirmed first team departures: Gavin Gunning (end of loan), John Sutton
Other likely departures: Esteban Casagolda, Angelis Charalambous, Francis Jeffers, Steve Jones, Maurice Ross
Needs for next season: A target man and a centre-half to take over from veteran Stephen Craigan.

KILMARNOCK
League: 5th, 49pts
League Cup: quarter final
Scottish Cup: 4th round

Star man: Finn Alexei Eremenko was a breath of fresh air and a class above any other player outside the Old Firm; do not rule out seeing him wearing a Rangers or Celtic shirt next season.
Waste of space: The signing of Willy Aubameyang from Milan in January sounded exotic, but he has made little impact so far. At least he chose not to put his first name on his shirt, unlike in Italy...

Confirmed first team departures: Kieran Agard (end of loan), Alexei Eremenko (end of loan), Jamie Hamill
Other likely departures: Craig Bryson, Mohamadou Sissoko, Mehdi Taouil
Needs for next season: Strikers, and lots of them, plus creative midfield players and a new right back.

L.

Can Caley and St Johnstone take the next step?

2011-05-20T17:49:00.007+01:00

Aww, do I have to talk about St. Johnstone as well?

Oh, all right then.

It works quite well, actually, as Inverness find themselves in roughly the same position as the Perth Saints did twelve months ago - at the end of a successful first season back in the top flight having never flirted with relegation and instead come close to the top six.

Derek McInnes was quite active in last summer's transfer market, bringing several players in from south of the border to try and take his team forward. McInnes remains a bright prospect in the management business, but the last twelve months have not really enhanced his reputation...though they have not damaged it either. But whilst his side were never in danger of the drop, they never got as close to top six status as they came last year. St. Johnstone's biggest problem is in front of goal; their total of 23 in 38 league games exacerbated by a horrendous spell in the early Spring where they scored only once in twelve matches, and that was an own goal.

I suppose you can turn that around and say that their defence deserves praise - they only conceded 43 league goals - but it made for pretty dull football, especially at their own McDiarmid Park, where half their matches had one goal or fewer in them. This wasn't helped by a pitch only slightly less hideous than Motherwell's, but it's unlikely to bring in the fans. McInnes has already acted to correct this, bringing in attacking midfielder David Robertson (Dundee Utd) and striker Sean Higgins (Dundee) for next season. But his watertight defence is likely to lose veteran defender Michael Duberry, best known down south for flattering to deceive at Chelsea and Leeds, but even at 36 a class above your average SPL centre-half.

St. Johnstone's destiny might well depend as much on McInnes' future; he turned down the manager's job at League One Brentford last week, quite possibly because he expects better offers. If (or, more likely, when) he leaves, he will be hard to replace.

There's no such danger of Terry Butcher leaving Inverness; after some bad experiences down south (including at Brentford, actually), he appears to have decided that Inverness is for him, and has started making big statements about the future of the club. He's been backing up these statements with huge decisions too, not least his decision to chuck long-serving players Grant Munro and Russell Duncan, both of whom started more than half our league games this season.

They were part of a successful side too, who showed a willingness to go toe-to-toe with anyone - they beat every team in the league except Hearts and Rangers at least once, but also lost to every team at least once too. A bit of inconsistency and naivety is to be expected following promotion, I guess, and every ICT fan would have been delighted if offered a 7th place finish nine months ago. Whilst hopes of top six evaporated with a nightmare run at the turn of the year, an excellent finish to the campaign (the highlight being the 3-2 win over Celtic, worth the entire season ticket outlay) means that Butcher has the trust of the supporters.

If St Johnstone's immediate future depends on the geographical location of McInnes, Inverness' outlook depends just as much on whether striker Adam Rooney signs a new contract with severtal clubs sniffing around; he will be hard to replace if he goes, and I can't help feeling that offers from Championship clubs might turn his head. But it seems that Caley's plan is to bring in more 'Rooneys', young players from down south who can try and make a name for themselves. It might go horribly wrong, and leave us back where we were when Butcher came in, or it might go wonderfully right and we might emulate the success of Kilmarnock this season.

So can Inverness or St Johnstone push on and become top six sides?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Come on, you didn't expect a straight answer from me, did you?

INVERNESS
League: 7th, 53pts
League Cup: 3rd round
Scottish Cup: quarter final

Star man: Adam Rooney got the plaudits for the goals, but goalkeeper Ryan Esson was supporters player of the year and deservedly so; my biased opinion is that he should be on the brink of a Scotland call-up.
Waste of Space: Young Israeli Gil Blumenshtein was labelled "Blumen-s****" by a fellow supporter within an hour of his debut; he lived up to that label whilst on the pitch, but spent most of the season "blumen"-injured.

Confirmed first team departures: Gil Blumenshtein, Russell Duncan, Stuart Golabek, Chris Hogg, Chris Innes, Alex MacDonald, Roy McBain, Grant Munro, Eric Odhiambo, Danni Sanchez
Other likely departures: Aaron Doran, Adam Rooney
Needs for next season: Probably another striker. Definitely another centre-back and right-back. Is a creative midfielder too much to ask for?

ST JOHNSTONE
League: 8th, 44pts
League Cup: quarter final
Scottish Cup: semi final

Star man: Michael Duberry can't do anything other than head the ball really far, or punt it really far - but he does these things so well!

Waste of Space: Veteran Scott Dobie, a former Scotland international, was supposed to bring experience and guile to the forward line, but he got injured early on and scored only one goal before being offloaded on loan to Bradford City.

Confirmed first team departures: Scott Dobie, Danny Invincibile, Andy Jackson, Peter MacDonald, Arvydas Novikovas, Jordan Robertson, Kevin Rutkiewicz, Collin Samuel, Graeme Smith, Cleveland Taylor
Other likely departures: Michael Duberry, Murray Davidson
Needs for next season: A proven striker and, if Duberry goes, a dominating centre-half.

L.

Accies and St Mirren - the best argument yet for two up, two down

2011-05-15T21:26:00.003+01:00

It sticks in the craw a bit to know that when Caley Thistle were relegated two years ago, and my mum reduced to tears, that our total of 37 points would have been enough to finish tenth this season.

St. Mirren came up to Inverness on boxing day, when we were riding high in fourth, with our last three results having been draws with Celtic, Rangers and Hearts. That success had clearly gone to our heads - the Buddies came up north and outfought and outscrapped us, returning down the A9 with a 2-1 win.

I can't help feeling that we were unlucky to be on the end of that particular St. Mirren performance. Danny Lennon's side didn't win again till the beginning of April, when they beat Hamilton 3-1; even then, they nearly managed to blow the twelve point cushion they had over Accies with a set of abysmal results, so that when they returned to the Highlands the weekend before last they still weren't safe. This time, the elan was sorely missing, and even when Caley had a player sent off they still looked more toothless than a man with scurvy, gingivitis and a penchant for chewing diamonds as they lost 1-0. Thankfully for them, they nicked a win at Pittodrie in their penultimate game in order to stay up.

No team has finished with fewer points and avoided relegation since the SPL expanded to twelve teams in 2000. That's how bad Hamilton have been.

The table doesn't lie. Hamilton didn't win a league game at their own New Douglas Park (would you believe their old ground was called 'Douglas Park'? Original, creative name for the new ground there) until their penultimate match there. Three of their five league victories came in the last month of the season. I'd tipped Billy Reid's side for the drop for both their first two seasons in the top flight, and been left with some egg on my face both times; this year, I predicted they'd come ninth.

What went wrong this time? Well, when they came up in 2008, they could boast James McCarthy (now at Wigan and an Ireland international), James McArthur (now at Wigan and a Scotland international) and Brian Easton (now at Burnley). These three have never been replaced. To cap it all, Reid lost captain and influential midfielder Alex Neil for the season, and another experienced player, Simon Mensing, for a month for taking an illegal dietary supplement.

In previous years, he managed to mould together some gritty veterans with some enterprising young players to make a solid team; this year, his team were, basically, a bit rubbish. No, actually, they were very, very rubbish indeed. They were to the SPL what Hayden Christiansen is to Star Wars - not only were they boring, flat and hopeless, they did their level best to ruin it for everyone else; I can remember seeing them take the ball to the corner flag once to run out the clock on a 1-0 lead...with 15 minutes left. Their keeper, Tomas Cerny, must be the slowest goal kick taker ever...though Hamilton fans maintain that he is just as slow when they are losing as when they are winning.

Billy Reid's one hope is that the youngsters he has blooded this season are up to the task of battling out of division one; he at least has held on to the likes of Neil and Mensing, who should stand out in that league. But it's one heck of a division to get out of...

And as for St. Mirren, they have survived on a shoestring, yet are set to cut their budget even further this summer. Lennon got the job because of what he accomplished with no money at Cowdenbeath, and because he convinced the board he could find quality players in the lower leagues, a claim backed up only by the outstanding Darren McGregor. Whilst the arrival in the top flight of striker Gareth Wardlaw, a postman given his first full-time contract at age 30, seemed romantic, it was also a bit of a waste of a wage. Yet, unless talk of a "community takeover" finally comes to something, Lennon will have to do much more with even less next season. Unless he comes up with a miracle, or his club come up with some cash, the Buddies are overwhelming relegation favourites.

But I said that about Kilmarnock this time last year as well...

ST. MIRREN
League: 11th, 33pts
League Cup: 2nd round
Scottish Cup: quarter final

Star man: striker Michael Higdon got into double figures for goals despite being in a team which carried less offensive threat than a blind hedgehog trapped in a paper bag.
Waste of space: Lennon persisted with on-loan Celtic forward Paul McGowan all season - his crowning achievements were one league goal, an appearance similar to the neds on 'Chewing The Fat' and a threat to a critical Caley fan a fortnight ago to "see me outside after the game".

Confirmed first team departures: Garry Brady, Patrick Cregg, Craig Dargo, Nick Hegarty, Sean Lynch, Jamie McCluskey, John Potter, Gareth Wardlaw
Other likely departures: Michael Higdon, Paul McGowan
Needs for next season: Some good wide players. If Higdon goes, an entirely new forward line as well.

HAMILTON ACCIES
League: 12th, 26pts
League Cup: 2nd round
Scottish Cup: 5th round

Star man: On balance, probably midfielder Dougie Imrie, who has at least been energetic; he is likely to sign for St Johnstone.
Waste of space: I believe Hamilton paid a five-figure fee to Dundee Utd in August for Argentine striker Damian Casalinuovo, who was let go before the end of the season having scored a grand total of zero goals.

Confirmed first team departures: David Buchanan, Mark Carrington, Damian Casalinuovo, David Elebert, Tom Elliott, Grant Evans, Flavio Paixao, James Gibson, Andy Graham, Marco Paixao, Gary McDonald, Sean Murdoch, Gavin Skelton, Aaron Wildig
Other likely departures: Dougie Imrie
Needs for next season: Depends on how good these youngsters are. Several of the squad might actually have found their level following relegation.

L.

Aberdeen and Hibs - the revolution begins...again

2011-05-14T15:22:00.008+01:00

It seems like only a couple of years since Aberdeen and Hibernian were last in this situation - an underwhelming season, new managers, a huge rebuilding job and overhauling of the playing squad required this summer.

Wait a minute - it is only a couple of years. Flashback to May 2009; Aberdeen forced out Jimmy Calderwood despite the fact that the perma-tanned tweedle-dee lookalike had guided the team to five consecutive top six finishes, amid claims, particularly from the supporters, that the club had gone stale. Hibernian, meanwhile, terminated the 18 month reign of Mixu Paatelainen, despite having finished sixth - big Mixu might have had success at Cowdenbeath and in Finnish football, but he was clearly out of his depth at SPL level.

I wonder whether Hibs chairman Rod Petrie lay awake at night during this season, thinking of what Mixu accomplished at Kilmarnock (Jesus might have fed five thousand with five loaves and two fish, but I strongly doubt he could have got 18 goals out of Connor Sammon by January) and wishing that maybe he shouldn't have pulled the trigger so hastily? It had looked like a shrewd move for the first six months, with the side starting the 2009-10 season with a bang under ex-Falkirk boss John Hughes, but the wheels fell off spectacularly in the second half of the campaign; when Hughes got his P45 in October 2010, he had won just four of his last 28 games in charge.

The only surprise about Hughes' exit was that it came before that of Mark McGhee at Pittodrie. McGhee was supposed to take Aberdeen to the next level, whatever the heck that means - in the end he did a good job of trying to take them to the level below. Whilst the nucleus of Calderwood's squad disintegrated faster than the Italian army in 1941, their replacements were, to diplomatically put it, not up to the required standard. Take, for example, Jerel Ifil, the centre-back signed from Swindon who appeared to apply more attention to his afro than his defensive duties.

The Dons finished a lowly ninth last time around, and with the quality of football as turgid as the results McGhee started this season under pressure. Any remaining credibility sunk without trace after he agreed a transfer-deadline day loan swap with Rangers, picking up Lithuanian forward Andrius Velicka in exchange for full-back Ricky Foster. Foster went on to be a solid, unspectacular squad player at Ibrox who even started a few Champions' League games; Velicka started only one game and scored only one goal; it transpired his knee was so dodgy that he couldn't train on the club's artificial training pitch.

Unsurprisingly, he was away by January, a month after Craig Brown had left Motherwell to take over at Pittodrie, and two months after a 9-0 humiliation at Celtic which left McGhee a lame duck. Whilst Brown oversaw a bounce in form, it transpired to be of the "dead cat" variety - at the season's end his 22 league games had produced an unremarkable 28 points. To cap it all, his captain, Paul Hartley, has announced his retirement, while defender Zander Diamond is likely to leave for Hearts and winger Sone Aluko and exciting forward Chris Maguire could move as well. Aberdeen have almost no experience in their squad for next season, bar ex-Colchester striker Scott Vernon, and they have no cash to bring it in. Yet attendances have slumped and Pittodrie has all the atmosphere of a morgue on matchdays. Brown's task is an unenviable one.

At least Brown got some sort of upturn in form when he was appointed; Hughes's successor at Easter Road, Colin Calderwood, looked like a solid appointment on paper having done a solid job at Nottingham Forest and been a coach at Newcastle but, aside from a shock 3-0 win away to Rangers, the first three months were a nightmare. By the time Hibs were shunted out of the cup by Ayr United, the vultures were not only circling, but licking their lips and tying napkins around their necks. Luckily for Calderwood, something finally clicked on the pitch and his side won five straight league games from the start of February, pulling them away from a relegation battle.

But since then it's unclicked again, with only one win in the last ten games of the season. Calderwood has bought himself some time by having shown in January that he has an eye for a player, with young Icelandic midfielder Victor Palsson and journeyman forward Akpo Sodje having looked shrewd buys. But Derek Riordan is set to skedaddle and there's no guarantee the likes of Liam Miller will stay either. And the club have already announced twelve departures from their first team squad.

So expect lots of new faces at these two clubs over the post-season. The goal is clear; anything other than being an established top six side is unacceptable. But they said that two years ago as well; what price that, in the summer of 2013, both teams will have gone back to the drawing board once more?

ABERDEEN
League: 9th, 38 pts
League Cup: semi final
Scottish Cup: semi final

Star man: Chris Maguire - he finally began to fulfil his potential this season. If he leaves Pittodrie expect to see him in the Championship.
Waste of space: Andrius Velicka - not just because he was unfit and goalshy, but because the Dons traded away a good defender in exchange

Confirmed first team departures: Myles Anderson, Nick Blackman, Paul Hartley, Mark Howard, Dean Jarvis, David McNamee, Nikola Vujadinovic, Derek Young
Other likely departures: Sone Aluko, Zander Diamond, Steven Smith
Needs for next season: Pretty much everywhere except midfield, but especially

HIBERNIAN
League: 10th, 37pts
League Cup: third round
Scottish Cup: fourth round
Europa League: third qualifying round

Star player: Derek Riordan - he might be a lazy bum, but when he can be bothered he is one of the most potent players in the country.
Waste of space: Colin Nish - the big forward's confidence has been destroyed by the supporters, and he offered no threat at all this season.

Confirmed first team departures: Kurtis Byrne, Darryl Duffy, Kevin McBride, Kevin McCann, Colin Nish, John Rankin, Graeme Smith, Steven Thicot, Valdas Trakys
Other likely departures: Liam Miller, Derek Riordan, Ricardo Vaz Te
Needs for next season: At least two new forwards, plus some creative midfield players and a new centre-back.

L.

Lennongate - Where do we go from here?

2011-05-12T19:11:00.000+01:00

Just when you thought Scottish football couldn't get dragged any lower, some complete and utter moron attacks Neil Lennon at Tynecastle. The reputation of our domestic game was already just about in the gutter; now it's languishing in a deep, dark Victorian sewer.

My blog on Neil Lennon last week, filled as it was with criticism of his touchline demeanour and garnished with somewhat unflattering pictures of the Celtic manager, might have given readers the impression that I am not particularly fond of him.

Let's just say I wouldn' buy him lunch. In fact, if he was on fire I would probably refrain from urinating on him.

But in the greater scheme of things, Lennon is a wind-up merchant - making provocative comments in interviews, gestures to opposing fans, over-celebrating Celtic's goals. He is the Abanazar of Scottish football - we all boo and hiss (and some shout things that you wouldn't normally hear at the pantomime) but, in the greater scheme of things, it's all part of the show and the entertainment.

So, no, I don't like Neil Lennon very much, and yes, I took great amusement in his antics at Inverness last week. But what went on at Tynecastle was just sickening. Let me put it this way; Neil Lennon is a football manager. That's all he is. He is not a terrorist, nor a mass murderer, nor a corrupt, cruel despot. He is just a football manager. So how on earth can anyone possibly justify, in their own minds, sending death threats, or parcel bombs, or trying to attack him during the game?

Of course, with enough alcohol on board, some people will do anything, and I suspect this was the fuel powering the lunatic Hearts fan who jumped the barriers and went for the Celtic dugout. Hopefully, when it comes to sentencing him, the judge's words will include "throw", "away" and "key".

But it's just another addition to the long list of shameful incidents that have tarnished Scottish football this season. The end of the campaign, the cup final on 22 May, can't come quickly enough. But where do we go from here?

Scottish football faces a summer of reckoning as it is. There has already been a talent drain in recent years from the SPL; over the next few months it will be not so much a drain as a whirlpool. We already know that some of the best players at non-Old Firm clubs - Conway, Gomis and Buaben at Dundee Utd, Riordan at Hibs, Eremenko at Kilmarnock, and possibly Inverness' Rooney and Aberdeen's Maguire - are likely to leave, probably to go south of the border. And it's no surprise; I'm reliably informed that former Caley Thistle midfielder Don Cowie increased his basic wage six times over when he signed for Watford two years ago, so Championship clubs have huge financial clout compared to the SPL. League One might be ahead as well - note how close Derek McInnes came to leaving St Johnstone for Brentford this week.

And as for the Old Firm, Rangers' new owner has been bullish about the funds Ally McCoist will have available, but the club still have a huge HMRC investigation hanging over them. Celtic, meanwhile, will need to fight off suitors of Izaguirre, Hooper and Kayal - will they be able to resist the lure of the English Premier League? Bluntly, you can expect so much wheeling and dealing this summer that you'd think Del Boy Trotter was in charge of some of these clubs.

So where will we be come the end of July, and the start of the 2011-12 season? I've no idea.

But it can't go on like this. Scottish football is haemorrhaging talent, and it's haemorrhaging interest as well. It's turning into World Wrestling Entertainment - a lot of trash talk, a lot of posturing, and most of the fighting is half-hearted and pretend. And like WWE, it's only entertaining to children and to people with IQs in single figures who have no life and are tanked up on substances.

It's not fair, you know; Caley have won four of their last five games and steamed to a creditable 7th place finish, pretty damn good for a side who have just been promoted. Why can't I blog about them instead?

L.

Narey's Toepoker Team of the Year part 2

2011-05-08T16:44:00.003+01:00

See, I told you El Hadji Diouf wouldn't get in. And surely I deserve respect for resisting the temptation to include Caley players?

CENTRAL MIDFIELD: Beram KAYAL (Celtic), Alexei EREMENKO (Kilmarnock)
Honourable mentions: Paul Hartley (Aberdeen), Morgaro Gomis (Dundee United), Rudi Skacel (Hearts)

I don't expect to see Kayal or Eremenko to be in the SPL this year. I've already talked up the Finn previously, and he is the primary (maybe even the only) reason why Killie made into the top six. Kayal, meanwhile, missed most of the first half of the season with injury (and will miss the end of it too) but his combination of skill and industry are attracting interest from south of the border.

WIDE MIDFIELD: Steven NAISMITH (Rangers), David TEMPLETON (Hearts)
Honourable mentions: Craig Conway (Dundee Utd), Jonny Hayes (Inverness), Vladimir Weiss (Rangers)

Ah, it's nice to be able to pick a left sided midfield player this season - thankfully Templeton was awesome before Christmas and has returned to form in the last few weeks. At 21, I think he might have a bright future. After some injury hit seasons, Naismith is finally realising his potential, with goals in the Champions League and for Scotland this year as well as starring for Rangers/

ATTACK: David GOODWILLIE (Dundee United), Nikica JELAVIC (Rangers)
Honourable mentions: Gary Hooper (Celtic), Adam Rooney (Inverness); Michael Higdon (St. Mirren)

Goodwillie was a no-brainer - he has had a wonderful season despite spending much of it with a charge for rape hanging over his head (and chants of "You only score when she's sleeping" at away games). Jelavic has only started half of Rangers' games, but he gets in because he has carried the Gers in the last few months, whereas Gary Hooper's form has dipped a little in the last little while.

So that's the team of the year, then. Feel free to slag it off if you wish, I won't be too offended.

L.

Neil Lennon's antics: helping or hindering Celtic?

2011-05-05T18:18:00.003+01:00

Neil Lennon wasn't even at Celtic when Super Caley went Ballistic eleven years ago.

But "ballistic" seemed an appropriate word to describe the Northern Irishman on Wednesday night, as Celtic's title challenge took an almighty blow.

It was supposed to be so easy; the Hoops were in control of their destiny, one point behind Rangers but with a game in hand and a superior goal difference. They were in top form, with only one league defeat since November. None of their first choice eleven were missing. Meanwhile, as an Inverness fan, I feared the worst - the weekend had seen a timid defeat by Aberdeen, while two days later the club announced the impending departure of ten first team players at the end of the season. Logic dictated that morale would be low and, with little to play for other than pride, motivation would be hard to find. My pre-kickoff prediction was a repeat of the 5-0 thumping Rangers gave Motherwell at Fir Park four days earlier.

Which all goes to show that football is a funny old game. For Caley Thistle buzzed around the pitch like a swarm of hornets, as if they didn't have a care in the world. The 3-2 scoreline, in the end, did not tell the whole story; Celtic's second goal was a last gasp penalty, whilst Caley spurned two gilt-edged chances to extend the lead to 4-1. Centre-half Grant Munro, a local boy who has totted up more than 300 appearances for the club over more than a decade, smashed in a stunning left-footed strike for the second goal...the ultimate two-fingered salute to his manager for announcing only 48 hours before that Munro would not be getting a new contract. A hackneyed Hollywood scriptwriter would have ended the scoring after that, but five minutes later 20 year old forward Shane Sutherland slammed in a volley that nearly broke the far post on the way in to the net. For that goal, and in the build up to Caley's first half opener, Scotland's player of the year, Honduran full back Emilio Izaguirre, was conspicuous by his abysmal positioning.

Celtic's players by contrast looked nervous, disjointed and unhappy from start to finish, but that was nothing on their manager; Lennon is a one-man entertainment show all in himself, fidgeting on the touchline as if a ferret and a mongoose were holding a running battle in his trouser legs. Even the most blatant fouls by his own players would prompt an expletive-filled scream, the trademark snarl, a flapping of arms so frantic that you wouldn't have been surprised if he had risen into the air under his own power. The coup de grace came in the dying moments when Paddy McCourt flung himself to the ground in a desperate attempt to win a second penalty. The referee (a Mr O'Reilly...the jokes write themselves) was not conned, so Lennon ran onto the pitch himself, then turned around, skipped a few steps in a rather camp way (one poster on pie and bovril likened it to "Julian Clary taking a penalty"), then launched an almighty kick at a bunch of defenceless water bottles on the touchline.

Classy.

Though, in his "defence", the Celtic manager seemed to treat his own players with the contempt he saves for the rest of the universe - every misplaced pass was greeted with a bounce and a tantrum. Perhaps this is just the way he coaches. I suspect that, at times, his passion and will-to-win can be a superb motivating tool; it certainly explains why, despite the fact that Celtic lost the league cup final and now have a significant chance of missing out on the SPL title too, the Celtic support have given him messianic status.

But Wednesday evening in Inverness was a time for a cool head, not a hot one. Panic set in for the away side at 3-1 down; the last thing they needed was to look at the touchline and see a human volcano on the brink of exploding. And Lennon's curious decision to leave Georgios Samaras on the bench and replace Gary Hooper with the mediocre Daryl Murphy when chasing the game smacked of a man who was a bit desperate and not thinking completely clearly. It was the move of an inexperienced manager under pressure.

As it stands, Celtic might yet nick the title, but the odds are against them. And if Celtic end the season with only a Scottish Cup to show for it (assuming they do see off Motherwell), with no prospect of the Champions League next season, and having lost out for the title to a Rangers side that has been patchwork and down to the bare bones for months, despite having a vastly stronger squad, will Lennon still be as holy in the eyes of the Celtic faithful then? And does Dermot Desmond give him another year and another transfer budget?

L.

(The team of the year will be continued at some point, I promise!)

Narey's Toepoker SPL Team of the Year, Part 1

2011-04-28T20:18:00.006+01:00

It's that time of year again - the fourth annual Narey's Toepoker team of the year!

Here's a quick reminder of the previous "winners"...

2009/10 - Ruddy (Motherwell), Whittaker (Rangers), Weir (Rangers), Webster (Dundee Utd), Papac (Rangers), Davis (Rangers), Gomis (Dundee Utd), McArthur (Hamilton), Stokes (Hibs), Boyd (Rangers), Goodwillie (Dundee Utd)

2008/09 - Zaluska (Dundee Utd), Hinkel (Celtic), Caldwell (Celtic), Wilkie (Dundee Utd), Papac (Rangers), Brown (Celtic), Aguiar (Hearts), Mendes (Rangers), Driver (Hearts), Boyd (Rangers), McDonald (Celtic)

2007/08 - McGregor (Rangers), Hutton (Rangers), Cuellar (Rangers), Wilkie (Dundee Utd), Naylor (Celtic), Robson (Celtic), Hughes (Motherwell), Ferguson (Rangers), McGeady (Celtic), McDonald (Celtic), Fletcher (Hibs)

So only Lee Wilkie, Scott McDonald, Sasa Papac and Kris Boyd have ever made the lineup twice in the three years; Wilkie has retired, and Boyd and McDonald are down south, so can Papac, Rangers' Bosnian left back, become the first player to make my team of the year three times? Read on to find out.

Or, if you can't be bothered reading on - no, he doesn't.

GOALKEEPER: Marian KELLO (Hearts)
Honourable mentions: Darren Randolph (Motherwell), Allan McGregor (Rangers)

The quality of the SPL may be dropping everywhere else on the pitch, but in goal standards are as high as ever, for me - Celtic's Fraser Forster, Ryan Esson of Inverness and Killie's Cammy Bell were also candidates. Kello shades it - the Lithuanian goalie spent last season warming the bench but has shone this season for Hearts. When his side upset Rangers at Tynecastle a couple of months ago, he looked simply ubeatable. His opposite number that day, McGregor has had another good season, though he made a couple of high-profile Old Firm errors, while Randolph of Motherwell was an excellent find from Charlton Athletic last summer and will go on to better things.

RIGHT BACK: Steven WHITTAKER (Rangers)
Honourable mentions: Mark Wilson (Celtic), Jamie Hammill (Kilmarnock)

Admittedly, since Christmas Whittaker has played more often at centre-back or in centre-midfield than in his preferred position, whilst this season he turned out for Scotland on the opposite flank. But, aside from a shocker in the euro 2012 qualifier with Spain, he has been consistent and solid for Rangers, and over the last 18 months his defending has improved immeasurably. He was a shoo-in for this position, though after several injury-hit years Celtic's Mark Wilson finally looks like the player he was expected to become.

LEFT BACK: Emilio IZAGUIRRE (Celtic)
Honourable mentions: Sasa Papac (Rangers), Paul Dixon (Dundee Utd)

As mentioned above, Papac is pipped this year...by the little Honduran Izaguirre, who may yet end up Player of the Year. He has been sensational, with craft, skill, a good delivery, pace to burn, and yet a solid defensive sense. He cost what, £600,000? Celtic might yet get ten times that much for him this summer. As for the rest, Papac has been solid, and no-one else really stands out - Dixon makes the shortlist having looked decent at left back and centre half for United.

CENTRE BACKS: Daniel MAJSTOROVIC (Celtic), Michael DUBERRY (St Johnstone)
Honourable mentions: Marius Zaliukas (Hearts), Madjid Bougherra (Rangers), Darren McGregor (St. Mirren)

Purists are going to slag me for picking ex-Chelsea and Leeds veteran Duberry, who can't do anything except head the ball miles away and punt the ball miles away. But he does it so well that I'd kill to have him in the Caley back four. As for Majstorovic, he's become Celtic's David Weir - a guy well into his thirties, picked up on a free as a stopgap solution, who has been absolutely sensational. He also has the scariest looking eyebrows in Scottish football. Zaliukas nearly got in, while McGregor of St. Mirren has been wonderful since Xmas, only a year after he was playing for Cowdenbeath.

That's the end of part one. What will the rest of the team be? Has Nikica Jelavic done enough to get in, despite being injured for months? Who will play in the cursed left midfield position (i.e. there wasn't one last year)? Can I spuriously squeeze a Caley Thistle player into the team? And will El Hadji Diouf be picked? (I think you know the answer to the last question)

Stay tuned!

L.

Sammy the Tammy fires Pars back to SPL

2011-04-24T21:30:00.003+01:00

In light of the recent threats made against the life of Neil Lennon, it was perhaps a little tasteless of Dunfermline's mascot, Sammy the Tammy - who appears to be a bear of some sort - to take to the pitch prior to kickoff in the big Fife Derby in a cardboard tank...yes, you read that right...and pretend to machine-gun the away support. That said, anyone who feels offended by a guy in a bear suit walking around in a cardboard box pretending to shoot people with a "gun" made out of toilet roll tubes probably needs a sense of humour transplant.

Anyway, "inspired" by their mascot, the Pars came from behind to beat Raith 2-1, thanks to a second half double from midfielder Martin Hardie, a 35 year old journeyman who spent a few years as a squad player in the SPL with Partick and Dunfermline, before helping fire St. Johnstone to their 2008-09 promotion. His aging legs lacked the oomph for the top division, but a January move to East End Park has paid dividends, and his strikes on Saturday took his goals total to eight.

Hardie symbolizes the potential problem Dunfermline face next season; a squad with next to no top flight experience. I was present when they were relegated in May 2007 away to Inverness; distanced at the bottom from mid-season, they appointed Irishman Stephen Kenny as manager and found enough form to give themselves half-a-chance of staying up (as well as a cup run). Their escape appeared to have gained further momentum when Jim McIntyre volleyed them in front in the first half, and their fans were still celebrating when Caley won a free kick on the edge of the box with 13 minutes left. To the surprise of the home support and the relief of the visiting fans, Canadian left back Richard Hastings, who scored less often than the Elephant Man at a Miss World contest, stepped up...only for his tame effort to go straight through the arms of keeper Dorus De Vries for the equalizer.

Dunfermline collapsed, conceding a late winner to Rory McAllister's deflected strike, and relegation was sealed. A fortnight later Celtic saw them off 1-0 in the cup final, thanks to a goal by Jean-Joel Perrier-Doumbe, a Cameroon full back who did literally nothing else in his Celtic career. There are barely any survivors left on the playing squad from that day; midfielder Gary Mason is back at the club after a spell at St. Mirren, full-back Calum Woods is still present, and McIntyre is now manager, having replaced Kenny in January 2008. But the squad is full of players who have spent their careers in the first division, plus those such as Hardie, top scorer Andy Kirk and defender Kevin Rutkiewicz (on loan from St Johnstone) who have played in the SPL before, and who clearly weren't good enough.

McIntyre has a lot to do to make sure his side emulate their predecessors - only one side in a decade has been immediately relegated the season after winning the first division, and that was the infamous Gretna - but he might need Sammy the Tammy to mow down the opposing players, as well as the fans, in order to give Dunfermline a good chance of staying up.

Still, that can wait; barring two defeats to finish the season, they have the right to enjoy the celebrations first.

L.

Dropping down a division in search of good news

2011-04-22T10:28:00.003+01:00

It would be easy for me to rustle up another blogpost on the main pieces of news from the SPL this week. But it would just be a bit depressing.

First up was another delay in the Rangers takeover saga, which looks increasingly like it could drag on longer than the Middle East peace process.

That was overshadowed by the revelation that the police are investigating an attempt to send nail bombs to Neil Lennon, his outspoken lawyer Paul McBride, and some Scottish MSP who apparently has done nothing wrong other than wear a Celtic top a few weeks ago.

Even amongst the other clubs in the top division, there was scarcely any positive news to be found: Dundee United and Kilmarnock, fourth and fifth in the table respectively, both suffered 4-0 hammerings at home to the Old Firm. United had three players sent off, all for professional fouls, against Rangers (who got three penalties in the process); the referee, Willie Collum had dismissed Aberdeen's Andy Considine in the same circumstances 2 days earlier, against Celtic.

Interesting observation - Collum rhymes with Gollum, which is particularly apt given this official's resemblance to the deranged hobbit from Lord of The Rings. A hobbit might have done a better job officiating at Tannadice; the first red card was a penalty but never a professional foul, the second was a professional foul but was outside the box, and the third was neither a foul nor a true goalscoring opportunity. Collum's incompetence, I would say, was equalled by the pillock who reffed Caley-Hearts last weekend, Crawford Allan; the only explanation for some of his decisions is that he underwent a lobotomy prior to kickoff.

Anyway, it seems like all my blogposts these days are turning into a rant against the Old Firm, the SPL, the SFA, refs, anything to do with the top tier of our league. So this week, I'm going to turn my attention to the most important match in Scotland this weekend.

No, I don't give a stuff about the Old Firm game on Sunday (all right, that's a lie, I'll be watching it as avidly as anyone else). But when was the last time 12,000 people went to a Scottish first division game? That'll be the case at East End Park tomorrow, as Dunfermline meet Raith in what may turn out to be title decider. The prize? Promotion to the SPL, and the relative riches on offer (think of it as the difference between living in the gutter and living in a poorhouse).

There are two matches left after tomorrow; Dunfermline lead Raith by a point, so a home win would give them an almost unassailable advantage. To cap it all, it's a local derby, with Rovers nipping 14 miles along the road from Kirkcaldy. It's a big enough derby that 7,000 attended the earlier meeting between the sides in November, a crowd bigger than many in the SPL. Now, with so much at stake, East End Park is sold out for the first time since god knows when. Neither were given much of a chance 8 months ago, but have taken centre stage as the pre-season favourites stumbled - Dundee got their points deduction, Falkirk have struggled to mount a challenge, and Ross County collapsed after the departure of Derek Adams. So these are the only two horses left.

To be honest, the nostalgic in me would love to see both these teams back in the top flight. Raith haven't been there since 1997; in fact, things got bad enough that they spent a short period in the second division before being revitalized by their current manager, John McGlynn, who has pushed on after a cup semi-final place last season. Dunfermline, meanwhile, were relegated from the SPL in 2007, and have downsized every year since; failure to go up this year will mean further cuts.

Hopefully it will be a great game and a great occasion; goodness knows Scottish football could do with some positive press. Even the first division couldn't produce that earlier this week, after floodlight failure caused the abandonment of Queen of the South's home game with Ross County. One of those things, you would say...except this match was abandoned in March as well, because of floodlight failure too. The original fixture in January was called off with the visitors more than halfway through their 225 mile journey south. And, to cap it all, County, battling against relegation, were 2-0 up on Tuesday night with only 20 minutes to go when play was stopped. It was an expensive night for them in more ways than one.

So next Tuesday they do it all again - if they do manage the full 90 minutes it will mean the sides have completed four league matches, with two abandoned and one postponed, plus the Challenge Cup Final, which was postponed originally as well. You don't have to be mad to watch football in Scotland, but it helps...

L.

Semi-detached from reality

2011-04-17T19:50:00.003+01:00

A lot has been made this week of the English FA's insistance that the FA Cup semi finals be played at Wembley, despite the fact they involved two teams from Manchester, one from Stoke and one from Bolton.

The FA say it provides a rare opportunity for fans to visit the stadium, especially considering it might be a long time before Bolton or Stoke reach another cup semi.

The cynics say that it's all about squeezing as much cash as possible out of the £767 million white elephant (I've been there, and it is an unbelievable venue, but it's still a horrific waste of money), not least as a third of the tickets go to corporate sponsors at the like.

You could make a similar argument for the situation of the Scottish cup semis, both of which are played at Hampden.

But at least in England one match sold out, whilst the other had an attendance of over 75,000. North of the border, Hampden Park played host to 11,920 folk on Saturday, as Motherwell played St. Johnstone, and 30,381 on Sunday for Aberdeen-Celtic.

Hampden has 52,103 seats. This means that all the fans who went to the two games could have been accomodated at the same time, whilst still leaving nearly 10,000 seats empty.

Disturbingly, it appears even Celtic couldn't sell all their tickets for the match. At least they had a support in five figures though; the empty seats were horrendously obvious on Sky's coverage of both matches, but particularly the first.

But Hampden has a contract to host both of those games along with the final, so year after year we see two semi finals in a quarter-full stadium. Those who have been to the ground will be aware that the gently sloped stands, miles away from the pitch, produce an atmosphere equal to that found in a mortuary. Even when it is full.

The teams have a little bit of an incentive to play the games there - the total gate money from both semis is split four ways, so if an Old Firm team is playing (or both are) then you want to squeeze as much cash out of them as possible. But the attendance for the first semi would not have sold out Pittodrie, or Tannadice, or Easter Road, or Tynecastle. In fact, it would not even have sold out Motherwell's own Fir Park. And the supporters know it - the atmosphere is rubbish, the stadium's rubbish and, in the case of Aberdeen and St. Johnstone fans, it's a bit of a drive.

And it's on telly.

So why on earth would you pay £35 for a ticket when, like at Wembley, all the decent seats at the half way line go to sponsors anyway?

It doesn't take someone with the intellectual capacity of a boiled potato (the entrance qualification for a referee in Scotland incidentally, don't get me started on the officials at Caley-Hearts this weekend) to see the solution; if one or both semis involve the Gruesome Twosome, play them at Hampden. If not, pick a geographic location which suits, with a capacity of no more than 20,000, and at least guarantee a proper cup-tie atmosphere. And don't charge ridiculous prices. Then, maybe, supporters will make the effort.

Sadly, it's a sign of the times that this is nowhere near the daftest thing happening in Scottish football at the moment. Nowhere near.

L.

Got a spare £2,500? Why not wrestle a ref?

2011-04-13T14:54:00.004+01:00

What does it take in order to be sued for slander?

Paul McBride QC is probably pretty well qualified to tell us; presumably he feels he could get away with calling the SFA "dishonest" and "biased" this week.

That's right, the fallout from that Old Firm cup replay continues to spread, causing untold damage. It's a bit like Chernobyl but without the radioactive sheep (insert joke about Aberdeen fans here).

As soon as the news of the paltry punishments for Majdid Bougherra (£2,500 fine for manhandling the referee twice) and El Hadji Diouf (£5,000 fine for ignoring a policeman and throwing his shirt into the crowd, and for not leaving the pitch immediately on being sent off) - all right, they are paltry in terms of footballer's wages, I tweeted "Celtic will claim conspiracy again", and I was right.

The trouble is that their grievance is quite understandable, especially considering the other outcome was that Ally McCoist got off scot-free for his part in the touchline spat with Neil Lennon, whilst Lennon got a touchline ban (mind you, since that ban ended up running concurrently with another ban, Lennon didn't actually have to sit in the stand for any extra games. Still with me?). Yes, Lennon wagged his finger, and snarled a bit, but Coisty was hardly an angel himself.

Diouf is lucky he didn't get a breach of the peace charge to add to all his previous convictions. Meanwhile, the message from the Bougherra incident is that for five grand you can now physically interfere with the ref during the game - stop sniggering at the back, there - which might be enough to deter players at provinicial clubs but is really only a day's wages to some Old Firm players. If Paolo Di Canio gets a twelve match ban for shoving an official, surely jostling and physically intimidating one has got to be worth at least a game or two?

As for the QC's comments above (McBride, for the record, is the lawyer who defended Neil Lennon recently), the main issue for me is that, if the SFA doesn't have grounds to sue him, it must be because they are worried they can't prove that they aren't dishonest or biased.

For the record, I don't think the SFA are either of these things. I just think that they are completely useless. McBride's other comment that "they are the laughing stock of world football" is only partly true though - Rangers, Celtic and the rest of the Scottish game increasingly come under that banner.

Still, look on the bright side, we could make a few bob on the side by offering Referee Wrestling as an activity - at £2,500 it's a bargain, and I can think of a lot of fans who would be up for it. Depends on who the official is, I guess. Willie Collum probably wouldn't put up much of a fight, whereas Iain Brines is a scary looking bloke who looks like he might fight dirty. But I could see it being the ultimate birthday present for many of our supporters - "happy birthday, darling, here's your present - 10 minutes in the ring with Calum Murray. I paid an extra £500quid so you're allowed to gouge his eyes as well".

I'm onto something here, I reckon. Maybe this is what will turn around the
finances of our football clubs...

L.

Sectarianism - just an excuse for a punch-up

2011-04-07T21:42:00.004+01:00

Yesterday, before the news of Rangers getting into trouble with UEFA again broke, I was chatting to my best mate, a solicitor and Gers fan. Apart from that, he's an okay guy; at least his recent attendance at their last Europa League game puts him in a minority - Rangers fans who have actually bothered to go to watch their team play in the last decade.

He made the point that sectarianism is not really Scotland's "secret shame", the headline-grabbing but fairly meaningless quote used by former First Minister Jack "Flash" McConnell. Rangers fans are not really 24-7 haters of popery and catholicism, and Celtic supporters do not support the cause of the IRA and wish death on the royal family (there will, I suppose be some nutjobs who are the exception to this general statement).

"Sectarianism" is basically an excuse for a bunch of idiot thugs to goad each other, an excuse for them all to get tanked up and go out and beat the living crap out of each other, and, according to the police, their own wives and girlfriends as well. No, Scotland's "secret shame" is not religious hatred. Nor, despite my smartarse best mate's suggestion, is it George Burley. As any Scot will tell you, alcohol is the root of it all.

Just give me a moment while I climb down from my moral high ground...

Anyway, I must admit to surprise at the reaction from Ibrox today, with Chief Executive Martin Bain harping on about how Rangers have done everything possible to deal with the problem, and how everyone else sings nasty songs as well. The problem is that Rangers fans appear to be unique in travelling to Catholic countries, such as Portugal last month, and singing songs whilst there like Billy Boys, with its infamous line "we're up to our knees in fenian blood, surrender or you die". They also sing it loudly and proudly even in venues like Inverness, not just when they want to piss off the other half of the Old Firm.

As for dealing with the problem, Rangers must know who the people who buy the allocation of away tickets are and where they are sitting (or standing, as is often the case); I refuse to believe that, had they the motivation, they would be unable to identify these people and ban them from attending these matches. And whilst those with pure sectarian beliefs are likely few and far between, those who sing the songs are hardly a minority, as the background noise at the recent League Cup Final showed.

Let's get one thing straight; regular readers of this blog (hello, all three of you) know I try to loathe both halves of the Old Firm as equally as possible - like childhood vaccinations, they are unpleasant and cause discomfort but do appear necessary for the greater good. And so I will happily point out that Celtic supporters have a rather curious selection of tunes as well - I simply have less knowledge of what the lyrics are. I don't know why they belt out The Fields of Athenry and what a song about a famine in another country, 150 years ago, has to do with football; I am also aware that their version has been known to include lyrics about the IRA. But, for some reason Rangers can't fathom, UEFA don't care. Maybe it's because Celtic fans haven't caused so many problems before, like when Rangers were previously sanctioned for dodgy songs in Spain in 2007. Or because Celtic fans can go to European finals without wrecking the host city; just compare the parties in Seville in 2003 and the riots in Manchester in 2008.

Anyway, sectarianism isn't really the problem. The problem is the moronic thugs who cite it as their reason for kicking other folk in the head and who the clubs don't have the guts to tackle, and who are fuelled to the eyeballs by booze that the government don't have the guts to tackle. And so the problem goes on, and on, and on, to the point where I suspect that, to most people outside the country, it's the only thing about Scottish football that they know about.

L.

Craig Thomson ruined my weekend

2011-04-03T12:46:00.002+01:00

As the midday kickoff time for Inverness-Celtic approached, the Highland capital was bathed in spring sunshine; the sky was blue, there was a slight breeze coming in off the Moray Firth, and you couldn't have asked for a better backdrop to a game of football.

Which makes it all the more farcical that, two hours earlier, the match had been called off.

The rain on Friday night had been torrential to the point where my sleep was actually disturbed in the early hours. But with the previous few days having been generally dry, my only thought regarding the Celtic game was "a muddy pitch will level things up a bit".

But apparently Caley's pitch doesn't drain as well as it should - mainly because the undersoil heating that is compulsory in the SPL (more of that later) prevents the pitch being forked properly. But at 10-30, when the postponement was announced (referee Craig Thomson had actually called it off as early as 09-45) I looked out at my back garden. The grass was damp. There were no standing puddles on the patio. And the sun had been out for an hour.

Apparently Caley and Celtic asked for a later inspection...but were turned down. They then came to the shared conclusion that delaying the kickoff till 1pm would give the pitch sufficient recovery time, so they phoned the SPL to ask their permission...and no-one was in. No-one. On a matchday. So, on a beautiful afternoon for football, there was no football to watch.

It's just another addition to the long list of cock-ups that have characterized our national game this season. 2010-11 will be remembered as the season where Scottish football became a laughing stock;

The season where numerous matches were postponed because undersoil heating doesn't actually work when it gets properly cold, or because the streets outside stadiums were icy; the season where one half of the Old Firm uses legal loopholes to make sure the punishment for their manager's petulant childish tantrums is minimized;

The season where the SFA was exposed as completely unfit-for-purpose by their management of the above's antics;

The season where the other half of the Old Firm finally admitted they have been financially mismanaged to the point of bankruptcy, only a few months after forking £4million on a striker;

The season where, with fans complaining about the tedium of having to watch their side play the same teams again and again and again, the SPL instead pushed for a reduction in size...so fans will have to watch their side play the same teams again and again and again.

The Edinburgh derby is on TV as I write this, but I'm switching the channel to Craven Cottage as soon as Fulham-Blackpool starts. Because if I wanted to watch a circus, I would at least expect some acrobats, some elephants and a lion-tamer. I don't want Neil Lennon as the ringmaster for a bunch of clowns.

L.

Have Rangers been screwing the taxman?

2011-04-01T19:13:00.004+01:00

Hang on a mo, have I got this right?

No, the bit about Rangers being £29 million in debt doesn't surprise me. It's not so long that the figure being banded about was double that.

It's the tax bill that made my eyes leap out on stalks.

The taxman is already awaiting £2.8 million rhat apparently Rangers owe from between 1999 and 2003, the significance of which is unclear; The Ibrox side's chairman Alistair Johnston has made a big deal out of how the club "have done nothing illegal", which is interesting considering no-one had openly accused them of doing so. Even more curioser is this quote: "I have no idea of the sum for which we may be liable, but Rangers cannot afford much." It's not easy to be sympathetic to this, since only nine months have passed since £4 million was shelled out on striker Nikica Jelavic.

But the blog of BBC Scotland's Douglas Fraser suggests "The figures bandied around are north of £20 million." If that means the full tax bill, rather than the total debt, that is, er, slightly scary.

It's not too long since Dundee ended up in administration because they couldn't pay £300 grand to the HRMC. I know Rangers are a much bigger business, but that is a much, much bigger debt. Gregg Whyte must have a very good plan if he still fancies taking the club over...which appears to involve David Murray footing the tax bill.

As for Rangers supporters slagging off Lloyds Bank for wanting their money back...er, that's why the money was loaned, not gifted. Funny that how, with Rangers' income not increasing, and fewer and fewer saleable assets on the pitch, the bankers don't think the club can be trusted to sort out their debt on their own.

Sorry, but I couldn't be less sympathetic if I was asked to provide Colonel Gaddafi with asylum. Good luck to the banks and to the taxman; Rangers deserve to reap what they have sown.

L.

Narey's Toepoker is now on twitter

2011-03-28T19:30:00.002+01:00

Ladies and gentlemen, Narey's Toepoker can now be found on twitter. Expect my tweeting to be similar to my blogging - unreliable, sarcastic and filled with one-liners which I think are very clever and very funny (and no-one else does).

For the record, I opened it during the second half of the Scotland-Brazil game, which was the football equivalent of OK! magazine - lots of hype and show, a few
names you've heard of, but ultimately just a pointless waste of time.

Scotland boss Craig Levein called it "a great week". I'd be interested to know what lessons he learnt, beyond the fact that a 4-5-1 system, with ten men behind the ball, can frustrate any team in modern international football (such as when Liechtenstein did it to us in September), and that he has a squad of players who
can effectively chase shadows for an hour and a half. That's about it, as far as I can see. To be honest, the only reason I can see for this match being arranged - for I believe that, despite the 55,000 strong crowd the SFA makes no money, such is the charge for Brazil appearing - was to cheer up the Tartan Army, particularly those who wasted their time going to Prague last October to watch Levein's infamous 4-6-0.

Levein has also insisted it was a good team building exercise though - not surprising that, since he took them to La Manga and let them drink beer (I wonder how the players' clubs reacted to that). It remains to be seen whether that will put us in good stead for the remaining Euro 2012 qualifiers which start in September. Levein probably has to win three of those four matches (the fourth is against Spain, ulp) to get a playoff place, which might be the only way to prevent 4-6-0 becoming his legacy.

Sadly, the legacy of the Brazil friendly might yet turn out to be the row over a
banana being thrown at the striker Neymar - whilst the Tartan Army have no reputation for racism (save for anti-English sentiment, of course), this sort of
accusation tends to stick. But I'm fairly confident it wasn't a Scotland fan who threw it - the only time most of them will have seen a banana is when it has been deep-fried in batter...

L.

Delicious...and the footie wasn't bad either

2011-03-22T20:48:00.002Z

How I had been waiting for this moment, ever since I saw the advertisement!

There was no time for anticipation; the smell was so lovely that I simply couldn't wait to get started. I pressed my face into the surface, and hungrily ran my tongue and mouth around the rim and sides, in a rhythmic motion. Occasionally a satisfied "Mmm" escaped my mouth, but I quickly returned to the task in hand. Nothing else mattered, not until I had finished sucking up and swallowing all the delicious juices. All this ecstasy for just £2...

There's no doubt at all in my mind; that steak-and-ale pie at Ewood Park, a special deal arranged between the club and the local brewery, was the greatest pie I've ever had at a football ground, even if the foil container meant eating every last morsel required a bit of dexterity. (What did you think I was writing about?)

The football was rather good as well.

It was four months since my last venture south to watch decent football - currently the SPL's fare cannot be described as "decent" - and I was not disappointed. Blackburn-Blackpool might not jump off the fixture list...my companion for the day took some persuading...but I had high hopes. Both teams are embroiled in a relegation battle. Rovers, as the home side, were obliged to give it a go, whilst the word "cagey" is not in Blackpool's vocabulary (nor, however, is the phrase "competent defending"). An open, high-scoring game was anticipated; anything else would lead to foul looks from Allan as he drove us back up the M6 in the evening.

The first ingredient, ideally, is a goal for the visitors, duly provided by Luke
Varney, who nipped in to divert a free kick into the net from close range, and ran off past the linesman and up the sideline in celebration...before looking back to see the most belated offside flag in the history of the world. I've seen late offside flags, but never one so late that the player has run back past the linesman towards the halfway line before the decision (though TV showed that Varney was offside, and it was the right call).

But Blackpool got their goal anyway, only a few minutes later, though it was the home side's turn to feel aggrieved. I've often wondered why, when players are tackled late just after crossing or shooting, a foul is rarely given, so I was impressed that Howard Webb penalised Ryan Nelsen for diving in just after Gary Taylor-Fletcher had sliced a cross - until Match Of The Day pictures later showed that there was pretty much no contact. With no obvious foul, no obvious appeal, and the whistle drowned out by the jeers for the rubbish cross, most of the home fans didn't realise the penalty had been given until Charlie Adam strode up to place the ball on the spot.

Ah, "Chic" Adam, as one of my Rangers-supporting mates always calls him. Back in 2006 I remember him stuck out on the left touchline at Inverness, looking disinterested (and not a little chubby), nestling comfortably in the pocket of our right back as Paul Le Guen's side lurched to an embarrassing defeat. More than four years one, he's probably going to sign for a very good team in the summer. Certainly he dispatched the penalty with aplomb, and five minutes later, for good measure, doubled his tally with a 20 yard free kick which the word "glorious" doesn't quite do justice. Considering I was sat in the Blackburn end, I was grateful that my brain overruled my legs and prevented me leaping to my feet, and that my shout of "Oh my god!" was pretty non-comittal.

You think things were bad for Blackburn? Varney had another effort disallowed for offside, again correctly and this time a damn sight quicker. The booing at half-time doesn't quite compare to the cacophony I once heard after a Newcastle defeat at St. James' Park, but it was pretty close. But there are some certainties in life - death, taxes, and Blackpool conceding away from home. It was apt that the Congolese defender Chris Samba - less a centre-back, more a colossus - and the nippy Canadian winger Junior Hoilett got the goals that earned a point, for they were the only men in blue-and-white who looked like they truly cared. Both strikes owed something to the inadequacies of Blackpool's Ghanian goalkeeper Richard Kingson, who looked allergic to high balls flung into the box such was his inability to deal with them. Wikipedia lists his height as six feet exactly, yet he reminded this writer of the old quip about former Celtic goalie Rab Douglas - "Six feet four standing still,
five feet four on crosses".

Kingson's calamitous keeping cost his side two valuable points and one wonders if, even with five home games left to play, that Blackpool might rue not winning this game. Blackburn's comeback, meanwhile, merely glosses over some glaring deficiencies in organization, creativity and, blatantly, team spirit. Most neutrals would like to see them relegated after their horrendous treatment of Sam Allardyce, and they might yet get their wish - for this writer it will be three from Blackpool, Blackburn, Birmingham and Wigan who will drop through the trap door at the end of May.

Four goals, two disallowed goals, a dodgy penalty, two efforts off the woodwork and a seat within 10 yards of Ian Better-Than-Jesus Holloway. And the greatest pie ever. You can't ask for more than that.

L.

What is a captain worth?

2011-03-17T14:16:00.004Z

Ah, the saga of the England Captaincy.

The story so far, as far as I can tell, is this; Chelsea's John Terry was named England captain in August 2006, succeeding David Beckham. He managed to keep the armband right up until the beginning of last year, losing the role not because of his efforts on the pitch but because of embarrassing revelations about his private life; a married man, Terry had been bonking the ex-girlfriend of his former team-mate (at club and international level) Wayne Bridge. Initial claims that his lover had been paid to keep quiet turned out to be rubbish. The most amusing part was that in 2009 Daddie's Sauce had named Terry "Father of the Year" in 2009.

How exactly Terry's colourful private life affected his ability to captain a football team is not clear to me. But he was demoted and replaced by Rio Ferdinand...who has been fit enough to captain his country only four times in a year (three of which were friendlies). And so Liverpool's Steven Gerrard has practically had a monopoly on the armband, leading . Yet all of a sudden, with Euro 2012 qualifiers approaching this month, Capello has performed a huge u-turn and decided he wants Terry back as captain again - apparently upsetting Ferdinand, Gerrard and a few other players.

It seems to be a peculiarly British thing, this obsession with who captains a football team.

Now, the last four men to lift the World Cup are Spain goalkeeper Iker Casillas, Italy defender Fabio Cannavaro, Brazil full-back Cafu and French midfielder Didier Deschamps. The last three to captain winning teams at the European Championships are Casillas, Theo Zagorakis of Greece and Deschamps.

What do they all have in common? They were the most capped players in their respective squads.

Sure, some of them were great leaders - Cannavaro in particular was an obvious choice for Italy, whilst Deschamps carried obvious authority (though so did teammate Laurent Blanc). But Cafu, the marauding full-back? Casillas, a goalkeeper? These are not men who fit the "Bobby Moore" theme, the player who will inspire, direct and lead the team, the lionheart, the one who will give absolutely everything for the cause.

For me, that's because this sort of player isn't necessary in the modern game. Teams are well enough organized that the captain isn't required from a tactical point of view (compared to the cricket counterpart). Moreover, most coaches would look to three or four experienced players to lead, not just one. The all-conquering Spain team has, along with Casillas, the likes of Puyol and Xavi. Cannavaro was accompanied by Nesta, Pirlo and Gattuso, among others. For them, the armband grants only the honour of leading the team out at the start, not this ridiculous Roy Race-like responsibility.

So if England were to follow the logic of their continental counterparts, their captain would be the bloke in the starting eleven who had the most caps. If he weren't injured, that would be Gerrard - an appointment that would surely satisfy fans and media at least. But in his absence, next in line is Ashley Cole. What sort of effect would making The World's Most Sulkiest Footballer England captain have on the team?

That's the point; leadership on the pitch should be shared out - Cole takes the armband, everyone else takes responsibility. Including John Terry.

L.

The first division? It's easier to predict the lottery numbers

2011-03-14T10:14:00.004Z

If only Dundee had "remembered" to pay the taxman, so they hadn't had to go into administration. Then they would be top of the first division, instead of stuck in mid-table, weighed down by a 25 point deduction.

Or if only they had appointed Barry Smith as manager last March, instead of Gordon Chisholm, who failed to reverse a collapse which cost the Dens Park side promotion to the SPL last year.

But they didn't. And so, despite being unbeaten for 20 league games, going back to the end of September, with Smith yet to suffer a league defeat since replacing the redundant Chisholm, Dundee are olny sixth in the table. It could be worse, though; the main aim of such a points deduction was to punish the club by making relegation almost inevitable, though not so certain that the fans wouldn't keep pitching off. To their credit, the paper-thin playing squad have stuck up a two-fingered salute to that, and even with nine matches left there is no chance of demotion to the second division.

The moral of this story? Quite simply, the Scottish first division remains as unpredicatable as ever. There are only three certainties: firstly, the side just relegated from the SPL will find it a nightmare to get out of (Inverness were the only team in a decade to return to the top flight at the first go); secondly, teams trying to spend their way to the title will meet a sticky end, even if they do succeed (Livingston, Gretna); and finally, the identity of the title winners will be unclear even as we enter the final weeks of the season.

And so it has been this campaign. Falkirk came down from the SPL and have only sporadically taken advantage of holding on to SPL-quality players like Ryan Flynn and Burton O'Brien. Steven Pressley's side lie third, not quite out of things because of two games in hand, but they lie 11 points off top spot. As mentioned above, it was Dundee who displayed Creative Financial Management this year. And as for the eventual winners, who would have predicted Raith Rovers to lead the way into the final furlongs?

Though Falkirk could still get into the fray with an Inverness-esque conclusion to the season - Caley Thistle won their last ten games last year - the race probably has only two horses, Raith and their Fife rivals Dunfermline. Aside from Falkirk and Dundee, challenges from other sides failed to materialize; financial constraints have hampered Partick and Queen of the South, both of whom face the possibility of part-time football next year. Ross County have dramatically regressed after their run to last year's cup final, and are onto their third coach of the season after Derek Adams left and Willie McStay lasted about as long as a snowball in hell. Jimmy Calderwood will save them from a relegation battle...no question that Stirling and Cowdenbeath will be the bottom two...but it's doubtful whether the tanning salons in Dingwall are good enough to keep him in the Highlands beyond the summer.

The above paragraph has managed to summarize every team in the division apart from Morton - who absolutely nobody expected to finish in the top three and seemed unlikely to be a relegation battle. Their current fifth place is about the only predictable thing that has happened all year.

So, as I said, it's Raith and Dunfermline who are battling it out; the Kirkcaldy side's lead has just been cut to two points after defeat to Partick at the weekend. There are ten matches to go. Raith had a cup run of their own last year, before elimination by Dundee United in the semis, but it's a surprise even to their own fans that they have pushed on like this. All their signings last summer were from lower divisions; their single January arrival was journeyman forward Gary Wales, returned from Australia. Rovers' position, one suspects, is mainly due to the nous of manager John McGlynn.

Raith's setup is at contrast to Dunfermline's; whilst almost no-one is left (bar youth players from the time) from the squad that were relegated from the SPL in 2007, there remains a plethora of top flight experience in the likes of Gary Mason, Martin Hardie and Andy Kirk. The Pars have slowly downsized their budget every year in this league - a failure to go up this time might be the last shot they have for a while.

On paper, it is perhaps the latter side that look stronger - Dunfermline do have more depth to go with the experience. But any predictions about this division should be made at your peril...except the one that says that, if changing to a ten-team SPL after next season means three relegated, expect this year's first division winner to go straight back down.

L.

Make Eremenko player of the year!

2011-03-09T20:14:00.002Z

Here's a pub quiz question for you: How many of the last twenty winners of the Scottish footballer of the year award were playing for a club outside the Old Firm?*

You might not know the answer, but you will know it is not a high number. And there's no surprise in that; the Old Firm's monopoly is challenged less often than Rupert Murdoch's. And, in my memory at least, the few non-Rangers/Celtic names to make the shortlist are often defensive minded players - Andy Webster last year, for example (he was on loan at Dundee United for the campaign).

It's not common for a technically gifted, attack-minded player to turn up at a club outside Glasgow, so no wonder Alexei Eremenko has attracted attention. You could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of Kilmarnock fans who had heard of Eremenko before he pitched up at Rugby Park at the end of August on a season's loan; for the record, he is 27, and had previously played for Lecce in Italy and a few Russian clubs, the most recent of which is his parent club Metalist Kharkiv.

Despite being born in the Soviet Union, he moved to Finland at the age of seven and chose to represent the latter; he has nearly fifty caps. One suspects his nationality is a major reason why the Killie boss and fellow Finn, (and also possibly the world's largest teddy bear) Mixu Paatelainen, managed to convince him to move to Scotland. Presumably he also failed to show Eremenko a tourist brochure of Kilmarnock, which makes downtown Tripoli appear almost middle-class - and, at times, less of a warzone.

But Eremenko has flourished; the team is set up with him as a so that everything flows through him in the trequartista position (yes, I know, the phrase "Kilmarnock's trequartista" sounds like an oxymoron) and he has waltzed through the typical SPL midfields that are generally stocked with battling, scrappy midfielders who can't pass wind. In December, Killie stuffed Inverness on our own patch, and with little positive to take from our own performance it was a relief to distract ourselves by purring appreciatively at the way the midfielder cut us open with his vision and movement.

You can tell that everyone else has noticed him; he has been a target for a bit of the rough stuff recently, not least because two red cards for violent conduct show he has a bit of a temper on him. But his misdemeanours are more than cancelled out by his magic.

In American sports, the award of Most Valuable Player is only partly about overall ability, and just as much about which player is "most valuable" and important to his team. Kilmarnock without Eremenko are nothing. If this league had an MVP judged on the criteria above, he would win at a canter. But it appears that the Player of the Year award is not allowed to leave Glasgow, not even for a 40 minute jaunt down the M77, which is a shame.

L.

*The answer, depressingly, is just one: Craig Gordon of Hearts in 2005-06

The Old Firm: All vitriol and hate, no va-va-voom

2011-03-03T13:14:00.003Z

Two matches on consecutive days this midweek have given SPL Chief Executive Neil Doncaster incontrovertible evidence of everything that is wrong with his organization.

He probably didn't watch the first of these games up in Inverness on Tuesday night, as Caley took on Dundee United; the word "banal" does not quite do justice to the quality of entertainment on show, as two risk-averse teams, paralysed by the fear of how defeat would damage their top six ambitions, showed less derring-do than the Italian Army circa-1940. A battle between two kittens over a ball of string would have provided more thrill and, frankly more menace as well. The biggest shock was that there were goals at all; two for Dundee United late on, the first after a horrendous defensive error. To be honest, I'd toyed with leaving early even with the score goalless.

And to cap it all, the price of a main stand ticket: £26. In the middle of a recession, when a litre of petrol costs over £1, on a chilly Tuesday night. If the attendance was two-thirds of the announced 3,300 I would be amazed; I believe counting season ticket holders as being there allows less tax to be paid on gate receipts, or something? Anyway, it was an utter waste of an evening, and left me utterly depressed and wondering why I even bother going to Caley Stadium, as well as dreading a home clash with Motherwell on Saturday.

It was also going to be the subject of my blog, until "certain events" at Celtic Park superseded it.

To be honest, my first instinct was to snigger uncontrollably at the whole fiasco - El Hadji Diouf strutting around like a primary school kid trying to impersonate Jay-Z; Lennon and McCoist squaring up like teenagers pretending to want to fight but with both secretly hoping that his mates drag him away before one of them is obliged to throw a punch. The slapstick would shame most pantomime actors. But sadly there are just too many people (mostly young men, mostly alcohol-fuelled, all idiots) who are incited to do stupid things as a result - leading to dozens of arrests in the progress.

So this is what the SPL is these days - ten of the teams scrap around trying not to lose, boring everyone to death, while the other two aren't really about the football, but about having one over the other half of Glasgow. Just as well really, considering the quality of the football.

At least with the Old Firm there is an opportunity to make a statement. 22 years ago two players were convicted of breach of the peace after a fight in a Rangers-Celtic game; you would not have to work hard to find grounds to convict Diouf and Lennon (maybe McCoist as well, though he looked rather more sage and dignified than the snarling Lennon). Maybe if the clubs criticized the behaviour of their management teams and players...not likely considering Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell who claimed that his team and fans had been exemplary (presumably whilst sticking his fingers in his ears, closing his eyes and shouting "la la la, I'm not listening)...then perhaps, perhaps, the message that 22 grown men kicking the crap out of each other, to the sound of 60,000 egging them on, with a background hum of singing about the IRA/Pope/Queen, is just not on anymore.

But if the clubs won't do that, then the idea of games behind closed doors is almost as good. How about starting with the next league cup final next month? That would be a statement.

If only. Neil Doncaster will inevitably appear in the next few days to explain how this would never have happened with a ten team SPL.

L.

The Fir Park Potato Patch

2011-02-28T18:23:00.002Z

At what point does Motherwell's pitch become unfit for purpose?

I've not been the biggest admirer of High Definition TV so far, but I saw the second half of Well's clash with Celtic yesterday whilst having lunch at my parents' place, and their lush screen showed the Fir Park surface in detail that my cheap Panasonic box just can't match.

Watching the first 45 minutes on my own telly, I thought the surface looked abysmal enough. On HD it became apparent that the players would have been better off playing in a ploughed field. The only "grass" in the stadium on Sunday afternoon would have been in small stashes in young mens' pockets, for a celebratory joint after the game. Motherwell suffered from the conditions last midweek when St. Mirren's winning goal took a freak bounce off a divot and flew over their prostrate keeper; this weekend they benefitted as Celtic failed to get out of second gear.

But it has been a problem for three years now - in the summer of 2009 they spent £350,000 on trying to fix it, yet within six months it was wrecked again. Out came the excuses - the poor weather, the constant need for undersoil heating - and when they were fined in August 2010, it was only £5,000, with another £40,000 suspended. One suspects the remainder of the fine might be called in pretty soon. They relaid the whole pitch...again...at the end of last season (another 100 grand down the drain) and lo and behold, by winter it again has more craters than the face of a pimpled teenager.

I have no idea what the solution is, but you simply can't keep playing on a pitch that only lasts half a season...and Motherwell surely can't afford to fork out a six figure sum for repair every summer.

That said, maybe I will have to come down from the moral high ground soon enough - there was an under 20s rugby international at Inverness on Friday night, which will not have been kind to our grass either.

L.

Celtic have got the hang of being a Selling Club

2011-02-23T19:45:00.002Z

David Weir has given extraordinary value for money for Rangers. A free transfer signing in January 2007, at the age of 36, the centre-back was nothing more than a stopgap to help Walter Smith stabilize and solidify the team after the fiasco that was Paul Le Guen's reign at Ibrox.

Four years on, Mr Stopgap has played two hundred games for the club. Far from declining with age, he was Scotland's Player Of The Year last season, despite turning 40 the same month that the campaign ended. He has been a wonderful signing for the club; an object of consistency and professionalism.

This makes it all the more sad that last weekend's Old Firm game showed his time is at an end.

Gary Hooper was the harbinger of doom; poor Weir appeared to be moving in slow-motion at times in comparison to the Celtic striker, such was the difference in acceleration. The first time Hooper got the veteran one-on-one he left Weir languishing on his backside, having been nutmegged. That was the warning which Rangers didn't, or couldn't heed; shortly afterwards the Englishman danced gracefully around his opponent once more, and this time he scored. For the second goal, Weir simply didn't have the pace to get back after Celtic had got in behind - no defender was within 5 yards as Hooper slid home for his second goal. It was largely the story of the game, with Celtic quicker in thought and in action and Rangers looking slow and weary.

The miracle is how long Weir has lasted; his durability has allowed his manager to ignore nagging worries about the need to bring in fresh blood in central defence. Smith has even been able to let the likes of Danny Wilson (who seems to feel he will develop better in Liverpool's reserves than in Rangers' first team) and Andy Webster (who Smith just didn't seem to like) leave. But now the task of replacing Weir rears its ugly head at last...though it will be a problem for Smith's successor.

But a new defender will cost money which Rangers don't have. In recent years the Ibrox side seem to have largely gone for big splashes in the transfer market rather than cheaper deals - Nikica Jelavic for £4m, Kyle Lafferty for £3m, Steven Davis for £3m, Madjid Bougherra for £2.5m, Maurice Edu for £2.5m...these are the sort of signings that have been made. Bougherra and Davis in particular could probably succeed in the Premier League, but would they fetch bigger fees than Rangers paid for them initially? I'm not convinced. In fact, the only player in the whole squad who appears likely to make the club considerable profit is goalkeeper Allan McGregor.

The marker of a successful "selling club" - for that is what SPL sides are now,
ultimately, is to buy cheap and sell expensive, so you can then buy better and
slightly more expensive players next time and sell them for even bigger prices and so on. Rangers haven't got the hang of it yet. In contrast, for all the dislikeable things about Neil Lennon, his transfer moves so far have been glorious. One consoling thought for Bluenoses after Sunday was that the best players on the pitch - Hooper, Emilio Izaguirre and Beram Kayal - are far too good for this diddy league; they will surely be seduced by bigger clubs in the near future. But the combined fee for that trio in the summer is in fact slightly less than the price Rangers paid for Jelavic; whilst the suggestion by Craig Brown that Izaguirre is "like Roberto Carlos" and the £10million tag that Celtic have supposedly put on him are pure hyperbole, the Honduran full back is good enough to earn his club, say, £4million? I'd say the same for Hooper and Kayal as well. Assuming Celtic's £9million debt is wiped out by Champions League qualification next season (if they win the league, far from a foregone conclusion), that money can be reinvested in the playing squad.

It's some turnaround from Tony Mowbray and his dud signings. Add in shrewd free
transfers such as Daniel Majstorovic, Cha Du Ri and Charlie Mulgrew and Lennon
appears to have achieved what every manager dreams of...a dramatic short term
improvement in the team, coupled with a sound long-term plan. I don't know who
deserves more plaudits - Lennon or his scouts - but Celtic are on a much firmer
footing than their rivals right now.

If Rangers don't get the hang of being "a selling club" fast, the balance of power in Scottish football will be very firmly in the East End of Glasgow.

L.

An ode to Ronaldo (no, not the Portuguese one)

2011-02-16T13:22:00.002Z

Here's a debate for you...who is the greatest footballer since Maradona?

It's an interesting argument, one that means a lot to me as it is essentially the same question as "who is the greatest footballer of my lifetime?" - I am only old enough to remember football after the 1990 World Cup.

Some might say that there is a plethora of candidates amongst current players, whether it be the apparent reincarnation of Maradona, Lionel Messi, or his teammate Xavi, the master of tiki-taka, or their Clasico nemesis, Cristiano Ronaldo, a man whose ability to do anything with a football is equalled only by his ego and his penchant for petulance.

Go back a little and you have Kaka', the Brazilian schemer who dominated Serie A for years with Milan, but whose reputation has been blunted by persistent injury problems since his 2009 move to Madrid and a mediocre 2010 World Cup. And what about Ronaldinho, the buck-toothed magician with a seemingly infinite box of tricks, who fall from grace after the 2006 tournament was even more rapid than his rise?

Retreat to the millennium and you have one Zinedine Zidane, the Algerian-born French international with the distinctive bald head which delivered two goals in the 1998 final in Paris, who won pretty much everything there was to win at club level in Italy and Spain, and at international level, and whose wondrous control, skill and eye for the killer pass made him one of the few players glorious enough to be remembered for something other than headbutting an opponent in a World Cup Final.

The list of World Player of The Year winners in the nineties includes many more
icons: yet more Brazilians such as centre-forward Romario and the beguiling Rivaldo; George Weah, the almost complete centre-forward who led Milan's attack for years and who was denied international glory only by the misfortune of having to represent Liberia; "the divine ponytail" Roberto Baggio, about whom everything was divine except the ponytail itself; Marco Van Basten, the Dutchman who was the most lethal of strikers.

And let's not leave out the other greats who played deeper on the pitch, such as the lung-busting German Lothar Matthaus, or his doppelganger (in style at least) a few years further on, Matthias Sammer. The seemingly ageless Italian defenders Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini deserve more than just a mention in dispatches for their services. And many would say that the Great Dane Peter Schmeichel rivals mythical names such as Banks and Yashin for the title of greatest goalkeeper.

But anyone who has followed the beautiful game over the last twenty years will note the glaring omission from the list enough. Most of them will look back and think "how on earth did he not end up the greatest of them all?"

And yet, when you type "Ronaldo" into wikipedia, you now get Cristiano Ronaldo as default, then Ronaldo Assis de Moreira - Ronaldinho's real name.

Talk about a fall in stock.

But for the period between the 1994 and 1998 World Cups, Ronaldo was THE MAN. Just look at the stats - between 1994 and 1996 he scored 54 goals in 57 games for PSV Eindhoven, then 47 in 49 games during his one season at Barcelona, then 34 in 47 games in his first year at Internazionale. They were hardly tap-ins either; Ronaldo was six foot tall and stocky, but blessed with exhilarating pace and acceleration, accompanied with outstanding close control. Give him the ball anywhere in the 18 yard box, and it would end up in the net. No wonder he was World Player Of The Year in 1996 and 1997. As satellite television and the Champions League turned football into global entertainment, so Ronaldo was the first superstar.

He went into France '98 as the main attraction...but after four goals in the earlier rounds, he allegedly suffered some sort of fit the night before the final (though this does not ever seem to have been confirmed) and was left off the original team sheet, only to be restored before kickoff. It was no surprise that he had a shocker. Eighteen months later, he buggered his knee for the first time; between November 1999 and Christmas 2001 he played only one match. But he returned to fitness in time for Japan and Korea - though some unkind (and probably accurate) folk suggested the stockiness had turned to flab - and despite an ridiculous haircut, with a semicircle of forehead hair on an otherwise shaven skull, he took the star billing he had been denied four years earlier. Eight goals (including both in the final) and the tournament golden boot completed a redemption almost so corny it could have been scripted by Richard Curtis.

A mega-money move to the Galactico clan at Real Madrid followed, as admittedly did lots of goals over the next 3 seasons. But the bursts of acceleration were briefer, the waistline wider, the frown deeper. Germany 2006 showcased a man who, even at 29, was past his best. Over the last five years, up to his retirement this week, "The boy O" as referred to in Only An Excuse (as in "Ronald O") faded from view, with some nice pay days back in Italy and then in Brazil. The numbers look good - 350 club goals, 62 international ones, including the most ever in World Cups. Three World Player Of The Year awards (for he won in 2002 as well) do not lie.

While Ronaldo was brilliant, he was not the best ever, for me. He just didn't do it for long enough - three seasons of genius do not a Pele make. Not by a long shot. But for a gammy knee, he probably could have been. This buck-toothed Brazilian was what Alan Shearer (in an "expert" Match Of The Day analysis) would call A Player.

A bloody good one, too, deserving of a lot more fanfare that he's been getting.

L.

Will this be the year Accies go down?

2011-02-14T19:33:00.001Z

Very curious goings-on this weekend across the Kessock Bridge from me, as Ross County sacked manager Willie McStay (insert innuendo joke here - I'm going for "Willie could not guarantee staying up") after only nine games. That makes it sound even more drastic than it was, as McStay had taken charge in Dingwall a full three months ago and according to Staggies fans had fallen out with several key players, filled the side with Celtic reserves on loan, and most importantly had won a grand total of zero matches. County are currently eighth in the table and, with a wage bill above average for the division, could not risk relegation. Still, it felt like a knee-jerk decision, unless of course the board of directors have someone lined up quickly.

Given the rumours are that Chris Sutton is a candidate, I suspect they don't.

About 180 miles south, Billy Reid may be thanking his lucky stars that he has a chairman that has no penchant for over-reacting, and also that he has built up a
lot of credit during his five-and-a-half year tenure at New Douglas Park. For
Hamilton Accies are 5 points adrift at the bottom of the SPL (albeit with a game
in hand on 11th placed St. Mirren). They have only two wins all season, the last of which was on 30 October. Neither of them were at home. They have scored only 14 goals in 23 matches in the league. In January they made several signings, but almost all were young players from England's lower leagues. The big sales in recent seasons of James McCarthy, James MacArthur and Brian Easton are offset by the mediocre income from the SPL's lowest average attendance, so there was no money for strengthening. They have used 35 different players in the league this season, which tells you there is a lot of doubt over who the best XI are.

If there was a recipe for a dish named "relegation certainty", it would contain all the above ingredients.

Of course, about roughly this time last year, I posted about how Accies were embroiled in a relegation battle, about how they couldn't score, how Reid constantly changed the team and signed and discarded players seemingly on a whim, how their style of play was defensive, boring and, at times, quite devious, and how I was convinced their dysfunctional setup meant they were doomed. I looked like a bit of a prat when Hamilton went on a superb run in the final third of the campaign and finished seventh. Funnily enough, they escaped the drop with a similar surge of form the season before that. Might lightning strike a third time?

The trouble for Reid now is that his side are adrift of the rest, and that the teams above St Mirren - Hibs and Aberdeen - have started putting results together themselves. It will be very surprising if anyone else gets stuck in a dogfight. Their next three games are away, though considering their home form this may not be a bad thing. Hamilton have proved me wrong before, but the odds are more heavily stacked against them than ever.

L.

Some transfer window musings

2011-02-02T13:03:00.002Z

So much for the recession

An economist would say it's all about supply and demand - the supply of world class footballers is low, but demand is high, and therefore they are very expensive indeed. But £50 million for Fernando Torres? It feels a bit risky, like buying a three year old sportscar - it looks gorgeous on the surface, and you know the level of performance will be high, but there have to be concerns about reliability and miles-on-the-clock. From the world cup onwards, Torres has looked a shadow of the player he was before; Roman Abramovich and Carlo Ancelotti will be hoping this is because of the general malaise at Anfield, rather than because the Spaniard's best years are behind him.

But if that's a bit of a gamble, then what can you say about the arrival at Liverpool of Andy Carroll? To put a bit of perspective on things, £35 million is roughly what Barcelona paid this summer for David Villa, an international striker who has been a goal machine in La Liga, European competition and the international stage for several years. It is also what Liverpool paid Newcastle for a centre forward who has only been a Premier League regular for half a season, who has been out for several weeks with an injury (allegedly caused by falling off a bar stool) and who has...erm..."character issues" - it is worth noting that recent charges that he assaulted his ex-girlfriend were dropped, but he has an assault conviction for smashing a glass in a man's face and broke teammate Steven Taylor's jaw in a training ground fight last season (breaking
his own hand in the process). Classy bloke. He might turn out to be the best England centre forward in a generation, but he might turn out to be the next Joey Barton. I can't help thinking that his new strike partner, Uruguayan Luis Suarez, is the much safer bet, even if he cost a cool £23 million.

El Hadji Diouf at Ibrox

If Andy Carroll is the best example of how much football clubs are willing to overlook character issues, then El Hadji Diouf surely runs a close second. The Senegalese player has just been hounded out of Blackburn after claims that he taunted QPR and Scotland striker Jamie Mackie whilst the player was being treated for a broken leg. He is already infamous in Scotland for his behaviour at Celtic Park whilst playing there for Liverpool in a UEFA Cup tie; having gone over the advertising boards trying to prevent a throw in and landed in the front row of the Celtic support, he got a few pats on the head from the local jakies...and promptly turned around and spat at them (he ended up with an assault conviction and a fine - though it might be said that his spittle was the closest thing to soap that would land on those Celtic fans for a long while).

Diouf also got banned whilst a Bolton player for gobbing in the face of Portsmouth's Arjan De Zeeuw, and was questioned by police for racially abusing an Everton ball boy. Off the field, he has a string of motoring offences including driving without a licence. In short, he is not the sort of man you want your daughter to be dating. But I'm sure Rangers fans won't care if he scores against Celtic in the cup this weekend.

By the way, does anyone else appreciate the irony of Rangers fans expressing moral outrage over Diouf;s signing? These are people who support a club irrevocably associated with sectarian hatred and bigotry, so they aren't exactly bastions of society themselves...

Deadline day may decide who wins the first division

Aside from Diouf, transfer deadline day was pretty low key north of the border...but the most intriguing and important move of the day, for me, came at East End Park - the sale of Dunfermline's outstanding winger Willie Gibson to English lower league side Crawley Town. It will be pretty difficult for the Pars to replace a player of his quality, and it might tip the battle for promotion to the SPL in the favour of their Fife rivals Raith Rovers - who managed to hold on to their own star man, Gregory Tade, in the face of interest from bigger clubs. But it's very tight at the top of the table, with Falkirk also close behind (Dundee would be top but for their points deduction), and with squad depth minimal at all the clubs it might well be the team who has the fewest injuries and the least fixture congestion who emulates Inverness Caledonian Thistle's storming run to the title last year.

Why couldn't Andy Webster succeed at Rangers?

I know his first year or so at Ibrox were destroyed by injuries, but Webster was so good on loan at Dundee United last season that he was shortlisted for Player of the Year honours. Yet even when fit he got precious little opportunity this season, as Rangers continue to shirk their responsibility of grooming a successor to the evergreen David Weir. Walter Smith just didn't seem to rate him for some reason. Webster was released from his contract on Monday, which allows him to find a club outwith the transfer window - he is rumoured to be returning to Hearts, whom he left in 2005 after a contract dispute to Vladimir Romanov. If he reaches his previous high standards, this could really come back to bite Rangers hard...

And one last thing...

I'm delighted by Caley Thistle's transfer window business - young Irish winger Aaron Doran comes on loan from Blackburn with glowing references, whilst former Hibs captain Chris Hogg gives us cover at centre-back and right-back, areas of weakness. How Hibs could afford to let Hogg go is beyond me - they spent deadline day getting another goalkeeper (they now have four) called Jakub Divis - the joke is that his shirt will say "Divis 1" as a marker of where the Hibees will be next season. Hamilton, their main relegation rivals, brought in a bunch of young players from down south and Ireland. St. Mirren just didn't bring in anyone. It will be interesting to see how these deals influence the battle against SPL relegation.

L.

Could Hibernian be relegated?

2011-01-29T13:54:00.002Z

It was no surprise, after Hearts upset Rangers at Tynecastle last week, to hear this question being asked loudly - "could Hearts challenge for the title?"

Having watched that game, I felt confident the answer was an emphatic No. Rangers had been utterly dominant, spurning a plethora of chances and running into an inspired goalkeeper in the shape of Marian Kello. Admittedly Hearts were hugely weakened by Kevin Kyle's absence, but they were so bereft of quality in the final third that Ryan Stevenson's late winner was in fact their first shot on target.

In short, it was not a statement of intent from Jim Jefferies side. And so it proved at Celtic Park in midweek, where they crashed 4-0. Sadly, this season's title race will be between the same two horses, one jockey in royal blue and the other in green and white hoops. Still, Hearts look an odds-on bet for third place.

But another burning question is being asked about Edinburgh football. This query is "Are Hibernian too good to be relegated?". The answer is far from certain. It was no secret that Hibs had stagnated under John Hughes; the second half of last season and the opening two months of this campaign were abysmal, and he had to go. And on the face of it, Colin Calderwood looked like a decent appointment - plenty of experience and some success with Northampton and Nottingham Forest.

Three months and fifteen games later, Hibernian are eleventh in the table, three points above bottom side Hamilton (who have two games in hand). In the league, they have won just twice in that period, although that included a fantastic 3-0 win at Ibrox. The nadir was a desperate, dismal humiliation at Somerset Park, going out of the cup in a replay to Ayr United. That was no smash-and-grab cup upset; Ayr were excellent value for their win and could have won the original tie at Easter Road.

Yet, on paper, the Hibs squad looks, well, so good. Guys like Ian Murray and Liam Miller, who, half a decade ago, were starters for Rangers and Celtic respectively. The talismanic Derek Riordan, former Aberdeen right back Michael Hart, ex-Killie striker Colin Nish, and Graeme Smith, who was excellent in goal for Motherwell a few years back.

But all these guys appear to be a few seasons past their best, and unable to roll back the years. Their talents have ebbed, but, as the story goes, their egos have not. There is no team spirit, no morale, no will-to-win. Attack-wise, Riordan still shows flashes of his immense ability, but these are completely overshadowed by the hunched shoulders, the sulks, the silly fouls. Calderwood has been unable to find a suitable number nine to partner him - Nish's confidence is shot by constant jeers from the fans, whilst loanee Darryl Duffy has failde to hit his stride after a broken foot. No-one has come close to replacing the goals of Anthony Stokes, sold to Celtic in August.

As for the defence...well, what defence? If Calderwood didn't have a hard enough task already, the loss of his two centre-backs earlier this month, Sol Bamba (sold to Leicester) and Jonathan Grounds (whose loan from Middlesbrough ended) left him even more trouble. He has three senior goalkeepers in Smith, Mark Brown and Graham Stack, all of whom appear dogged by the Hibernian Goalkeeping Curse which struck previous incumbents such as Ollie Gottskallsson, Simon Brown, Zibi Malkowski, Andy McNeil and Yves Ma-Kalambay. Hart at right-back has been a disaster, and Calderwood is left with Ghanaian Francis Dickoh - voted the worst player in Dutch football last season - at the heart of the defence. Bizarrely, Chris Hogg, previously a captain of the side, has been ostracized.

Calderwood has not so much dipped his toe into the transfer market as dived in head-first; three new players so far. But he has no new centre-back, and no new centre-forward. There's no "marquee signing" here to inspire the support. Maybe former Liverpool youngster Victor Palsson will turn out to be a gem. As it is, fifteen of his players are out of contract, and therefore need not fear first division football next year. Almost all of them are the senior ones.

So in conclusion, are Hibs too good to be relegated? As the weeks, and the defeats, mount up, the answer is, increasingly, "probably not". If Hamilton find a semblance of form, the Hibees could be bye-bye.

L.

More female officials please, and not just to annoy Andy Gray

2011-01-24T17:54:00.004Z

It's not been a good few months for Sky Sports pundit Andy Gray. It will be a while before people will forget his comment about Lionel Messi on Monday Night Football after almost three years of extraordinary performances - "but could he do it on a Wednesday in January at Stoke?" Whether it be a result of jingoism, xenophobia, or just plain ignorance, it was the sort of stupid comment that we increasingly hear from football pundits these days, as intelligent, thoughtful folk are chucked off the sofas to make way for ineloquent, poorly-prepared, and, well, thoughtless morons such as Alan "he ought to have done better there" Shearer and Jamie "the defence literally fell asleep" Redknapp. Oh, the relief when I turn on to Match Of The Day and see Alan Hansen and Lee Dixon on the screen. I have nightmares that, a few years down the line, Hansen will be replaced by Ian Wright, or that Andy "tactics truck" Townsend will be poached from ITV.

To complete the horror, such a Match Of The Day From Hell would probably be presented by James "being hideously overweight with a wobbly chin somehow makes me funny" Corden.

But whilst moronic comments about the football itself are now par for the course and something I just feel obliged to put up with now - like my receding hairline, it annoys me and worries me but there's not a lot I can do about it - sexist rubbish isn't. So whilst on the one hand it seems unfair that Andy Gray and his co-presenter, Richard Keys, were caught off-air making ridiculous comments about the female assistant referee (or lineswoman?) at the Wolves-Liverpool game - surely it's a bit harsh to catch them for what was supposed to be a private conversation - the things they were saying were an absolute joke.

It's made all the sweeter by the fact that Liverpool's opening goal involved a borderline offside decision...which Sian Massey got absolutely spot on. At Inverness-Hamilton that afternoon I witnessed, for the umpteenth time this season, a male assistant who looked chubby, unfit and struggled to keep up with play; Massey had no problem sprinting down the line as Liverpool broke with speed. (Insert innuendo about her being "fit" if you wish)

So it's nice to see that Mr Gray and Mr Keys look like complete twits.

The one other thing that I noticed from Molineux on Saturday though was that the Wolves defenders and goalkeeper turned round with arms raised, made as if to sprint after the assistant to protest...and then suddenly realized it was a lady and stopped. Or at least did it from a distance instead of crowding and attempting to intimidate her. Such decorum made a pleasant change. It makes me wonder whether more female officials are what we need in order to try and expunge dissent from the game.

That said, it'll probably just lead to lots of wolf whistles and dodgy shouts from the crowd. That'll become tiresome quickly, unless it is of the quality at a Montrose-Elgin game I was at a few years ago and which almost got abandoned because of a pea-souper of a fog. Morag Pirie, a Scottish official, was running the line that day when one wag shouted "Can I walk you back to your car after the game, Morag?"

I can't remember her reacting. Which is probably for the best.

L.

PS - The obligatory jokes about the incident are coming thick and fast; examples include...
1) Andy Gray re-iterates his scepticism about the abilities of lineswoman Sian Massey - "let's see how well she does on a Wednesday night in January at Stoke"
2) Sky pundits have been quick to defend Andy Gray's comments - "It certainly looks bad, but he's definitely not that sort of pundit"

Anyone got any others?

Ian Holloway - better than Jesus?

2011-01-14T22:13:00.004Z

It's already well documented that the bods at West Ham United are getting increasingly ancy about the possibility of Championship football next season; every second day's football news carries a snippet about manager Avram Grant (he who has an unusual similarity to Baron Greenback from Dangermouse fame) being on the brink of the sack, even though the Hammers are only one point from safety.

But it's a remarkably close battle at the bottom of the Premier League this season; at the time of writing the bottom nine teams are separated by only five points. It's not quite panic stations yet, but several other managers will be feeling a little uncomfortable in their dugouts just now; Mark Hughes has hardly managed to emulate Roy Hodgson's achievements at Fulham, while Alex McLeish's Birmingham have regressed, possibly because he blew the transfer budget on Nikola Zigic, the 6ft 8in circus freak of a Serbian forward. Zigic is not only rather mediocre in the air, but he is not even worthy of the cliche "good touch for a big man" which forever damns the likes of Peter Crouch with faint praise.

On the other side of Brummy, Gerard Houllier's honeymoon period evaporated quicker than an ice cube between Pavarotti's buttocks, with Aston Villa currently languishing in eighteenth place after only three wins from the Frenchman's seventeen league matches in charge. Houllier's former club Liverpool already pulled the plug on the aforementioned Hodgson's life support, but are right in the thick of trouble and have gambled on Kenny Dalglish reliving his glory years as Anfield manager in the eighties (rather than his nightmare seasons at Newcastle and Celtic more recently). Even David Moyes, after all the wonderful work he has done for Everton, is facing a bit of heat. Chucking Moyes now would be like criticizing Churchill's second stint as Prime Minister - after all the good work he did, against all the odds, he deserves a bit of slack, surely.

West Brom, Wolves and Wigan, at least, seem to have expected a relegation battle and, at the moment, seem to offer security for their respected coaches. But it wasn't meant to be like this. The chances of relegation this season were meant to be 33% lower than normal. There was supposed to be a bit more grace, a bit less pressure.

Because Blackpool weren't supposed to be, well, doing bloody brilliantly.

If you are bored, look up 'Ian Holloway quotations' on google, for such gems as "I love Blackpool. We're very similar - we both look better in the dark" and his analogy for winning ugly, "To put it in gentleman's terms, if you've been out for a night and you're looking for a young lady and you pull one, some weeks they're good looking and some weeks they're not the best. Our performance today would have been not the best looking bird but at least we got her in the taxi. She wasn't the best looking lady we ended up taking home but she was very pleasant and very nice, so thanks very much, let's have a coffee".

The man has a wit that ITV sitcoms simply dream of. He is, also, a miracle worker. For a start, he's made Charlie Adam a star. Charlie Adam, who I once saw sulking on the left touchline at Inverness on a cold Tuesday night in December, being utterly owned by Caley's lumbering full back. Yet he will almost certainly find himself at a much bigger club in the next six months. I know Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and changed water into wine, but I seriously doubt he had the capacity to make Charlie Adam into a Premier League midfield player. That Holloway has done the same with so many other journeymen is simply extraordinary.

And not only that, but Holloway's Blackpool play with a style and panache which makes them the most watchable side in Britain currently. And I include Arsenal in that, for Arsene Wenger shows a degree of restraint in big matches. Holloway doesn't know the meaning of "restraint", in his interviews or his tactics. He is the anti-Rafa Benitez; as the joke goes, "why do Liverpool play two defensive midfielders? Because they don't have a third in the squad". Now it could be paraphrased into "Why don't Blackpool play four strikers? Because they only have three to pick from".

They got their backsides handed to them in heavy away defeats by Arsenal and Chelsea early in the season, yet they bounced up and have won eight games. It was said of the ultra-defensive Greece of Euro 2004 that coaches had forgotten how to play against such old-fashioned defensive tactics. I wonder whether, circa 2010-11, they have forgotten how to play against the old-fashioned "lets score more goals than you" that Blackpool adopt.

There's definitely a part of me that worries that the Seasiders might yet crack, Hull-style, and slide back down towards oblivion. This season 40 points will probably be required to stay up. But they are already only 12 short of that, with 18 games left. The bookies have Blackpool odds-on to stay up; if they do, only the supporters of the relegated teams will begrudge them.

And most importantly, if they stay up then it means post-match interviews with Holloway on Match Of The Day next season, which are better than most of the highlights.

L.

Reading between the lines with Neil Doncaster

2011-01-06T21:10:00.003Z

Looking up the wikipedia page of SPL Chief Executive Neil Doncaster, it's not surprising that his original career was as a solicitor.

No wonder his silver tongue appeared, just for a second, to have got the Scottish sports media eating out of his hand with a load of claptrap earlier this week. Let's have a look at some of his soundbites, and, well, rip them to shreds...

"We've certainly had the indication that the plan on the table is more attractive to TV than the status-quo"

From whom? Sky? The BBC? Why on earth would the SPL trust TV companies so soon after the Setanta fiasco? And how much more attractive - how much more money would there be (and why won't you tell us?)

"if we stay as we are then we will be managing continuing decline"

Actually, the fans would tell you the reason for not staying as we are is that they can't be bothered with the boredom and lack of variety of playing each other so often.

"No one else has put any alternatives up. I think those who want 16 teams in the top flight are deluding themselves"

Actually, Henry McLeish himself put up the alternative of a 14-team SPL. You might be right about sixteen being too many. But you've made an effort to point out the pros of 10, and the cons of 12, 16, 18 and 20. There is another even number in there which you are blatantly ignoring.

"This is not just looking after our own. It's about the best interests of all 42 clubs"

How is this in the interests of, say, Albion Rovers and Montrose? What do they have to gain from this? (Since this is another question you won't answer, is it reasonable to infer that they have nothing to gain?). As you have said, you are splitting the cake into bigger slices - for the top ten teams. And who gets the two biggest slices? Who do you think? I'll give you a clue - it ain't Caley Thistle and Kilmarnock.

"It's about ensuring teams don't face the financial oblivion that the likes of Falkirk and Inverness have done in recent years"

Since when were Inverness in financial oblivion? Being in the top division didn't stop Dundee, Livingston and Motherwell from going to administration, nor did it stop Rangers, Aberdeen, Hearts and Kilmarnock, among others, from building up ridiculous levels of debt. And how does the money reach Albion Rovers, Montrose etc?

"We have to acknowledge that the popular vote is for a larger league but you can't just ask the question in isolation"

How many other businesses are run on the premise that you do eactly the opposite of what your customers want?

"If you put it to them that your club will lose at least £1m then it doesn't look very attractive"

These are his "calculations" based on apparent loss of TV money and big games. These are also calculations that nobody has seen, and may not even exist - which reminds this writer of the dossier on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction.

"It's imperative that we bring more money in, we get the best players that we can afford and that fans see more exciting football."

I almost wonder if Doncaster forgot his facade for a moment here...he has basically admitted it is all about the money in the coffers. The last phrase shows a real lack of knowledge about football - anyone who watches it can tell you that the best players do not necessarily mean the most exciting football. As for "the best players we can afford", Scottish football did this in the 1990s, and it turned quickly into "the best players we can't afford now but will once we've lured more fans and won trophies", then morphed into "the best players we can't really afford but we'll kid ourselves that we can" and eventually rotted into "the best players which we have to make redundant, along with lots of normal people associated with the clubs".

Thankfully, it appears Dundee United, Inverness, Kilmarnock and Hearts, plus the SFL (who haven't even been consulted on the plan to remove a quarter of its teams and potentially even expunge it) are going to put a foot down to stop Doncaster. But watch the SPL's Chief Executive in his next TV interview...I swear that, if the lights catch him at the right angle, you can see very thin strings hanging from his arms and legs. Strings which a cynic might say are being operated by his Old Firm puppeteers.

L.

Blackburn and Newcastle - the neutral's choices for oblivion

2011-01-04T17:40:00.005Z

Football is silly.

Come on, who else is big enough to admit it?

It is a game where grown men run around a field, often whilst wearing garish shirts (for, if you were to look up "garish" in an illustrated dictionary, you would find a picture of Fulham's current away strip, which is the colour of a Fulham home shirt after it has been put in the wash with the underwear of a man with e.coli food poisoning), aiming to put a ball in one net whilst stopping other men from doing the same thing. It is a game which some of these men are paid the GDP of a small country to play. It is a game watched by thousands, many of whom are quite pleasant, humble, unassuming people the other 99% of the time, but whilst attending the football match become horrible, threatening, vile, dislikeable morons.

Sometimes, it is difficult to see how it could become more silly.

Then I read about Blackburn Rovers bidding for Ronaldinho, and it turns out it could.

PT Barnum famously said that there's one born every minute. That referred to customers. Increasingly it refers to those providing the custom. You've got to love the quote given to the BBC by Anurhadra Desai, who is the public face of Venky's, the Indian owners of Rovers - "The impression is I've never watched a football match. I've not watched in a stadium but I have been watching the World Cup in India."

Okay, we all stand corrected; she is obviously fully qualified to run a football club and decide transfer policy. By applying the same logic she might also suggest that ownership of a box set of Grey's Anatomy is all you need to become a doctor. I actually thought that, after years of idiotic men running football clubs, a woman might bring a degree of common sense to the whole thing - turns out they are just as dumb as the rest of us. Having sacked Sam Allardyce, they appointed his coach, Steve Kean, to replace him, apparently on the simple grounds that he told them he will play attractive football. Kean has never managed a club before. But apparently he said the right things, so he got the job.

Why is it that successful entrepreneurs, with their remarkably successful companies and the years and years of sound business sense which has led to their millions, suddenly completely lose the plot when they take over football clubs? Still, Blackburn are yet to emulate Mike Ashley's lunacy at Newcastle - there is grounds for sectioning a man who appoints Alan Pardew as manager of his football club.

And so neutrals everywhere are quite up for the Toon disappearing back into the Championship, having treated Chris Hughton quite abysmally, and for Blackburn, once a club run by the very dignified Jack Walker, to follow them. In such a close season, where there are probably thirteen clubs who could be relegated and 40 points might be required to stay up, where Blackpool are yet to do "a Hull" and collapse, where battle-hardened teams like Stoke, Aston Villa, Everton and Fulham are likely to grind their way up the table, there is every possibility that Blackburn and Newcastle could take up two of the three relegation spots.

And that's even if Ronaldinho ends up in a Rovers shirt. But doesn't that idea just sound silly?

L.

The ten worst Celtic signings of the century

2010-12-27T20:57:00.002Z

Told you I had a Celtic list as well. In fact, I wrote it a month ago, to post when I was going through a busy patch and didn't have time to write something fresh. Which makes it a bit inexcusable that I've barely posted in the last fortnight.

10) JUNINHO (free transfer from Middlesbrough, August 2004)
Martin O'Neill must have hoped he was signing the Juninho who had lit up the Premier League at Middlesbrough in the late nineties, or at least the one who was solid in midfield for Brazil at the 2002 World Cup. Instead he got a timid, titchy player whose legs had gone and who couldn't cope with the physicality of the SPL - and who couldn't dislodge Neil Lennon and Stiliyan Petrov from the team. He scored only one goal for the club and left after a year for Australia, having earned a healthy wage in the process.

9) MARC-ANTOINE FORTUNE (£3.8 million from Nancy, July 2009)
Fortune was Tony Mowbray's marquee signing, having had a solid five months on loan under his tutelage at West Bromwich Albion. The Frenchman was a decent target man who could run the channels and hold up the ball - but not a goalscorer - he only scored 2 goals in his first 12 games. That tally was to improve - a total of 12 in 43 - but he was so mediocre he made Georgios Samaras look decent. Celtic at least got £2.5 million back when West Brom signed him in August 2010.

8) DAVID FERNANDEZ (£1 million from Livingston, June 2002)
Both Rangers and Celtic have gone through spells of stealing the best talent from other SPL clubs - possibly more to weaken their opponents than to strengthen their own squads. Fernandez was a prime example; a Spaniard brought across to play in the first division for Steve Archibald's Airdrie in 2000, he moved to Livingston when that all went belly-up and was their star man in the 2001-02 season as the team finished third. Martin O'Neill quickly moved in and, for a million, he got a guy who made all of 20 appearances in 3 years, with a solitary goal against Suduva in the UEFA Cup. But Livingston went downhill after that. After leaving Celtic, Fernandez had spells at Dundee United and Kilmarnock where he appeared to earn decent wages for doing not very much.

7) GLENN LOOVENS (£2.5 million from Cardiff, August 2008)
Obviously transfer fees are not what they used to be, so you would expect to get a centre-half of decent quality for £2.5 million. Instead, Celtic got Dutchman Glenn Loovens, a standout in the Championship with Cardiff City but just accident- and injury-prone since his move to Scotland. Tony Mowbray tried pairing him with both Stephen McManus and Gary Caldwell; when that didn't work out he bizarrely chucked the other two and kept Loovens, who hasn't held down a regular place under Neil Lennon. Talk is of him returning to Cardiff in January, with Celtic unlikely to get their money back.

6) JOS HOOIVELD (£1.4 million from AIK Solna, January 2010)
As I said on a previous blog - what does Jos Hooiveld actually look like? As stated above Mogga chucked Caldwell and McManus and spent heavily on this Dutchman who had looked good in Finland and Sweden, but who picked up a thigh injury in his second game and has only made nine appearances in a year. So far, so good...he's another one who may be off to pastures new when the transfer window opens.

5) JIRI JAROSIK (£2 million from Chelsea, June 2006)
Gordon Strachan seemed hell-bent on signing European midfield players - none of whom worked out (also see the next two entries, as well as Marc Crosas). Jarosik had looked out of his depth at Chelsea, then out of his depth at Birmingham as well. The Czech international midfielder did score two Champions League goals for the club, but did little else of note other than look disinterested on the bench and moved to Russia after eighteen unimpressive months.

4) MASSIMO DONATI (£3 million from Milan, June 2007)
The irony with Donati is that he finally put in a few good games for Celtic at the start of the 2009-10 season...and was promptly sold to Bari. A holding midfield player, the Italian was signed with a bit of fanfare, the most expensive purchase of that summer. His high point was scuffing in a late winner against Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League, but amid reports of homesickness he fell behind Scott Brown, Paul Hartley and Barry Robson in the queue. He made only 13 appearances in his last year and a half at the club.

3) MORTEN RASMUSSEN (£1.8 million from Brondby, January 2010)
Celtic must wish they hadn't let Tony Mowbray waste so much of their money in his final transfer window. Rasmussen was known as "Duncan" in his home country because of an alleged resemblance to Duncan Ferguson, though since the Dane is a six foot one inch goal poacher I certainly can't see a similarity. Mowbray appeared to quickly decide he didn't like him and marooned him on the bench; Neil Lennon liked him even less and packed him to Germany for a year's loan. Where he still sits on the bench.

2) THOMAS GRAVESEN (£2 million from Real Madrid, August 2006)
Remember when the bald headed Dane strutted around midfield for Everton like he owned the place (usually because he actually did own the middle of the park)?
Celtic didn't get that Thomas Gravesen, who went missing and has never been seen again; instead they got the Gravesen who looked timid and lost at Real Madrid for eighteen months prior to arriving at Celtic Park. He actually scored in an Old Firm game, and a hat-trick against St Mirren too, but sank without trace, with rumours of a poor attitude abounding. A year's loan back at Goodison Park didn't go well and he was let go after two years where he might well have been Celtic's highest paid player.

1) RAFAEL (£5 million from Gremio, January 2000)
Now you know why I made these lists "of the century" instead of "of the decade" - so I could include the misfit Brazilian defender whose full name, Rafael Felipe Scheidt, gave tabloids and fans instant, everlasting amusement. The manager who brought him to Parkhead, John Barnes, was sacked within a month, and his fee of £5 million eventually transpired to be £1 million for each of the five appearances he made in a Celtic shirt. Surely this counts as the worst signing in Scottish football history?

Happy Christmas and New Year to you all.

L.

Grubby political fingerprints smudging everything

2010-12-22T19:42:00.002Z

The other day, FIFA suddenly decided it would be a good idea to play the 2022 World Cup in the winter. No matter that, during the whole voting process, the Qatar bid was all about playing in state-of-the-art stadiums with special cooling systems to keep the players and fans cool. There was no mention, over the three years that the bid was advertised, that a Qatari World Cup would be used to try and force the rest of the footballing world to stop what it was doing, release all its players, and work out some way of sorting out their leagues to deal with it.

Of course there wasn't a mention - that sort of condition would have prevented anyone from touching the bid with a barge pole. So the World Cup we get will not be the World Cup we were told we would get. Sounds like a liberal democrat campaign promise. The cynic in me believes that Sepp Blatter knew a December World Cup would be inevitable long ago, but kept it quiet - it's amazing how gazillions of petro-dollars can keep one's mouth firmly shut.

The same week, Henry McLeish's long-awaited report into Scottish football was released. I actually trawled through the whole thing (two hours of my life I will never have back) and here are a few points worth noting.

1) It appears to have been written by an eight year old. Literally. Typos and grammatical/spelling errors everywhere. At least most 21st century eight year olds know Microsoft Word has a spellcheck function. The pick of the bunch: "The SFA's turnover in 2009 was £25". I know there's a credit crunch but, well, I paid more than that for my cup final ticket.

2) McLeish does not, technically, recommend a 10 team SPL - he mentions it as one of the best options for change, along with a 14 team league. There is certainly no mention of a two-tier SPL...despite about a hundred BBC articles since the report was published saying that his report endorses this.

3) There is, tucked away in the report, a quiet mention that a 14 team SPL would be "more in tune with what fans and spectators are asking for". I don't see the SPL themselves paying even lip service to this. You would think that customer opinion might we worth more than a warm bucket of piss (a prize goes to whoever knows where that reference comes from).

4) What is there to be gained from a 10 team SPL? It's quite simple; the money is only divided ten ways. As it is, more than a third of the cash goes to the top two teams - with a massive drop off to third place. We've seen, in recent years, Aberdeen and Hearts both finish as low as 9th, and Dundee Utd finish lower. Therefore, everyone except the Gruesome Twosome will have a nervous thought or two about relegation. Methinks this does not mean exciting football - a nil-nil at home will always seem like an ok result. But the Old Firm get more dosh, so what do they care? The bottom line is this - a 10 team SPL is about as competitive as a 100m dash between Usain Bolt and a paraplegic whose wheelchair has been clamped.

5) McLeish claims a 14 team league means "the quality of the SPL would also be a major consideration" - i.e. we would be letting two rubbish teams in. Since the last decade has only seen the damned Gretna relegated the year after promotion, and with St. J nearly making top six last year and Inverness flying this time around, this argument, frankly, is complete hokum.

6) So what is this report actually useful for? Real toilet paper would be more comfortable, and I can't think of any other reasons.

The bottom line? Never again should anyone believe for a second that anyone at the top of football is interested in the good of the game, for all they care about is self-preservation and the lining of their own pockets. The only thing that makes them less crooked than some of those who call themselves MPs is that no-one's charged the cleaning of their moat to FIFA or the SPL yet.

But it's only a matter of time.

L.

The decline of Clyde

2010-12-12T22:46:00.003Z

Ever heard of Steve Hislop? Even by Caley Thistle fans, he is hardly a club legend, having spent two years at the club from 2003 till 2005. Since then he had brief spells with Gillingham (who dopily paid us £50,000 in a transfer fee), and Livingston when they were an SPL club, and since then has tottered around clubs in the second division. He currently plays for East Fife, and I'm sure I read in the papers a few years back that he is training to become an optician or something.

There are plenty of reasons why Clyde FC lie bottom of the Scottish league at the time of writing, but Steve Hislop is one of them. For in spring 2004, Clyde led the first division, ten points clear at one point, though Inverness, their main chasers had games in hand. In March, the Bully Wee travelled to the Highlands for a rearranged midweek game where, with Caley 2-1 up, midfielder Roy McBain was sent off for handball on the goalline. The resultant penalty was missed and the home side won 3-1. Clyde, managed by Irishman Alan Kernaghan at the time, hardly collapsed, but they dropped enough points in the run-in to give Inverness a sniff. When the sides met again at Broadwood in May, it was the penultimate game of the season and Clyde were still two points clear - a draw would mean they just needed see off Alloa, the division's whipping boys, to get to the promised land of the Scottish Premier League.

Hislop had been at Inverness for eighteen months, having joined from Ross County but his hard work and constant running never really made up for his inherent clumsiness. My own username on the club's fan website is "Hislopsoffsideagain", out of homage to a commonly used phrase on the terraces during his tenure. He was a bit part player during that season, demoted to the bench because of the prolific scoring of veteran striker Paul Ritchie. But he came off the bench at Broadwood with the score 1-1, and it was he who arched his neck back to power home a header with 11 minutes left that turned out to be the winning goal. Clyde gubbed Alloa the next week but it was no use, for Inverness saw off St. Johnstone and won the division instead.

In 2004, Clyde were that close to being in the top division. As 2010 draws to a close, they are at the foot of the third division, with only one win from their opening twelve matches.

And unlike Livingston, they've never been demoted because of going to administration. They've ended up in the fourth tier of Scottish football because they've been relegated twice.

Clyde FC are a team that can be found mentioned even in the oldest history books
about footie in this country. Founded in 1877, they were named for the river that runs through Glasgow, and whci was adjacent to their first pitch at Barrowfield. The side joined the Scottish Football League in 1891 and soon afterwards moved to Shawfield, the ground which would be their home for 88 years. Shawfield was initially owned by the club, but was also (and still is) used for greyhound racing - and for financial reasons Clyde sold the ground to the Greyhound Racing Association in 1935. This somewhat came back to bite them...for in 1986 their owners evicted them so that Shawfield could be renovated.

To be honest, Clyde were just another team in Glasgow anyway. Though they won the Scottish Cup three times, the last in 1958, and spent several seasons in the top flight, they were but a tiny fish in a pond ruled by the Old Firm and where the scraps went to Partick Thistle. It was with Partick that Clyde had to groundshare, initially, when they left Shawfield. As if five years as tenants at Firhill didn't damage their support base enough, a further two years at Hamilton, out of Glasgow altogether, probably eradicated this. So Clyde took the gamble of completely abandoning their roots, and left for the new town of Cumbernauld, about 20 miles out of Glasgow and with a population of 50,000. And without a football team. North Lanarkshire Council built (and still own) a stadium called Broadwood, and a capacity crowd of 6,000 turned up for the first game. Not a bad idea, huh?

Except that Cumbernauld is not a very affluent town. No, let's be honest - it is an absolute hole. And its proximity to Glasgow means that, inevitably, the locals still enjoy a considerably loyalty to the Gruesome Twosome. In reality, even when challenging in the first division, Clyde's attendances were less than 2,000. On the pitch, the club found itself in the third division in 1998, but the reigns of managers Ronnie MacDonald and Allan Maitland saw back-to-back promotions, with the coaches improving the squad by attracting the best players from junior football. Trying to get to the SPL was a big gamble, however, and one which failed miserably.

By the end of that season, creditors were sniffing around, and whilst they never quite ended up in administration, a Compulsory Voluntary Agreement was required which left the club debt-free, but weak, even after a shock cup win over Celtic in 2006 (best remembered as Roy Keane's debut for the Hoops). Even with a poor team, the bills were run up again and the last two seasons have seen back-to-back
relegations. And to cap it all, this week they have announced that they are going to leave Broadwood.

Sadly, it's not as if they are leaving much of a support behind, much like in the 1980s.

Clyde's story is increasingly typical of the lower reaches of the Scottish game; a club who have been around forever, but whose support has drained over years and years. The lack of income off the field leads to a lack of quality on the field - and this means less paying fans, and so less income...and so on. And Clyde were one of those teams, like Livingston, and Dundee, and plenty of others, who gambled it all on reaching the big time, and were almost irreparably damaged as a result. Goodness knows where the club go next - there is no other "Cumbernauld" out there, no town that looks like ripe pickings. If they go back to groundsharing in Greater Glasgow, who would go and watch them?

The romantic in me finds it a depressing tale, and hopes that this historic club
find themselves a niche in the Scottish game. The pragmatist in me wonders whether there is any point to their existence any more.

And their current plight is a depressingly common one throughout the lower reaches of Scottish football. They might just be the first who end up fading away. There will be others.

L.

Craig Brown takes up Pittodrie's poisoned chalice

2010-12-10T17:53:00.002Z

Reasons why Craig Brown might think leaving Motherwell for Aberdeen is a good idea...

1) He wasn't given the assurances he was looking for regarding strengthening Motherwell's squad - guys like Alan Gow are out of contract in January whilst his top scorer, Nick Blackman is only on loan.

2) Stewart Milne has offered guarantees that Brown will be given cash to perform a complete overhaul of the squad - you can currently count on the fingers of one hand the number of players they have who are good enough for a top six SPL side. (In which case, where has the money come from and why wasn't McGhee allowed a sniff of it?)

3) The age of 70 is old enough that Brown's memory might be beginning to go - has Milne tricked him into thinking that the year is 1985, that the Dons are still a force in the game and that his centre-backs will be McLeish and Miller rather than Ifil and Diamond?

(that last comment is going to lead to accusations of ageism...)

The thing is, two summers ago Aberdeen wanted to replace an (apparently) underachieving management team, and they went and picked up a new coach who had plenty of experience north and south of the border, who had done impressive things on a shoestring budget...at Motherwell.

That turned out well, huh?

Either Craig Brown will be the man who finally turns Aberdeen around and brings the fans, and good football, back to Pittodrie, or he will dent his own reputation and legacy and just become another in the long list of coaches who have failed in the North East.

Which outcome do you think is more likely?

L.

Just a bit of fun - the ten worst Rangers signings of this century

2010-12-07T21:57:00.002Z

It's a slow news week football-wise, so I thought a wee blast from the past might be fun. As the potential sale of Rangers continues to develop, chairman David Murray might not want to look at this list of reminders of where a lot of his money got wasted (for the sake of fairness, not to mention fun, there will be a Celtic list at some point too - otherwise someone will accuse me of sectarianism).

So, for the record, here are the ten worst Rangers signings of the 21st century...so far...

10) JEROME ROTHEN (loan from Paris St. Germain, September 2009)
Rothen by name, rotten by nature; Walter Smith has made few transfer market mistakes in his second spell as Rangers boss but this was one. The French winger won 13 caps, the last in 2008, and was the only signing that summer - he played eight games in an eight week period, the last of which was a dire performance in a 4-1 home humping by Romanians Unirea. He came down with "a viral illness" after that and was shipped out in January. At least he only cost four months' wages.

9) EGIL OSTENSTAD (free transfer from Blackburn, August 2003)
Alex McLeish really didn't have much cash to splash in the summer of 2003. My memory of the burly Norwegian forward's time at Ibrox is of an old man who looked years past it - yet I'm surprised to see that Ostenstad was only 31 when he signed for Rangers. A cult hero in his younger days at Southampton, he had achieved little in four years at Blackburn prior to this and started only two league games all year. His only goals came in league cup games against lower league teams St. Johnstone and Forfar.

8) MARCUS GAYLE (£1 million from Wimbledon, March 2001)
A very good example of the reckless spending during the Advocaat years - a couple of strikers injured with six weeks of the season left? No problem - here's nearly a million quid for a useful but unspectacular forward from down south. Four games and no goals later, he was shipped back to London - to sign for Watford - for £100,000 less.

7) MICHAEL BALL (£6.5 million from Everton, August 2001)
On the face of it, Ball, a 22 year old left back who had just won his first England cap, looked like quite a coup for Advocaat - but his four years in Govan were basically a nightmare. He was fined for swearing at his manager when subbed during his first Old Firm game, then, after only his eleventh appearance, he buggered his knee and was out for a year and a half. Then having worked his way back to fitness, he barely played at the beginning of the 2003-04 season because his 60th game would trigger a £500,000 payment to Everton. This was resolved - but he left in 2005 after only 78 appearances for the club, in a £500,000 move to PSV Eindhoven.

6) LIONEL LETIZI (free transfer from Paris St. Germain, June 2006)
One of Paul Le Guen's early moves as boss was to sign Letizi, who had been PSG's keeper for six years, to be his number one goalkeeper. He gifted Dunfermline a goal in his third league game, then was injured after his fourth and watched Allan McGregor put in a string of good performances as his replacement. Le Guebn controversially chose to restore Letizi to the side despite this, and was "rewarded" when another catastrophic blunder gifted Inverness a 1-0 win at Ibrox. Despite consternation from the supporters, he stuck with the Frenchman for another few weeks, but eventually dumped him. After a grand total of eight appearances, it was no surprise when he left shortly after Le Guen's dismissal.

5) KARL SVENSSON (£600,000 from IFK Gothenburg, May 2006)
Another to follow Le Guen into Ibrox, Svensson was as catastrophic as every other signing the Frenchman made as Rangers coach (with the exception of Sasa Papac). His poor performances at centre-half were all the more mystifying as he had been in Sweden's World Cup squad prior to his move to Scotland. He couldn't head the ball and he couldn't tackle, and he looked like he wanted to be anywhere other than Glasgow. Despite this, his boss persisted with him right up to his sacking, but he made only seven appearances under Walter Smith before signing for Caen on a free.

4) NUNO CAPUCHO (£670,000 from Porto, June 2003)
As I said before, McLeish had almost no transfer kitty at all that summer - so why splash it on this hapless Portuguese wide man? That said, at the time it looked like a decent deal for a 31 year old who had played at the 2002 World Cup and started in the 2003 UEFA Cup final. Don't be fooled by the fact he scored six goals in his solitary season - I remember seeing him being kept under control by Aberdeen's Scott Morrison (not exactly the best full-back ever) at Pittodrie that season. He was so bad that everyone laughed at him instead of booing him.

3) JOSE-KARL PIERRE-FANFAN (free transfer from Paris St. Germain, July 2005)
Rangers' dealings with Paris St. Germain have not been particularly good, have they? At least they didn't have to pay a fee for Fanfan, who scored on his debut but fell out with McLeish and played only nine games, none after November. Yet he hung around for another nine months, leeching wages until his release in August 2006.

2) FILIP SEBO (£1.8 million from Austria Vienna, August 2006)
If we chuckled at Capucho, we sniggered at Sebo. a clown of a striker from Slovakia, who displayed plenty of energy - but generally just ran around the park in a manner more befitting of a headless chicken. Austria Vienna's chairman mischievously admitted, 6 months after his transfer, that he would have accepted a third of what Rangers paid for him. He made only four league starts (I saw one of those in Inverness, where he was so bad the home fans started chanting his name) and was generally used as an "impact sub", though it is hard to say what impact was ever made. Sebo scored two goals for Rangers before leaving for the French league; believe it or not, he was recalled to his national team this year.

1) TORE ANDRE FLO (£12 million from Chelsea, November 2000)I actually feel a little sick in the stomach at the thought of a Scottish team paying this sort of fee, especially for a good, but hardly world-class player like Flo - the Norwegian's reputation was destroyed by the fact that he simply couldn't match Henrik Larsson's scoring rate. His 38 goals in 72 games for Rangers is not that bad, but £12 million? Dear god. Rangers at least got £6.75 million back when they sold him to Sunderland in 2002.

Any others you can think of? Certainly I nearly put Bert Konterman on this list as well.

Ah, the memories...

L.

Welcome to rant city

2010-12-04T14:57:00.001Z

Rant one: the world cup.

I would love to go to a World Cup - in fact I would happily exchange one of my upper limbs for this privilege. However, the destination would need to fit certain criteria; firstly, it would need to be relatively straightforward to get to the country, and to travel throughout that country. Secondly, I'm not going anywhere where my own safety is at significant risk.

The 2010 World Cup was in South Africa - expensive to travel to, with a poor infrastructure for travelling around the country, where the risks of carjacking and violence are very high. Chances of me going - half the chance a snowball has of surviving in hell

The 2014 World Cup will be in Brazil - expensive to travel to, with unmaintained roads, a railway network that has seen barely any investment in years, and concerns over the safety of its air travel. And as the esteemed Tim Vickery pointed out for the BBC this week, it is also a place where muggings etc happen a lot. And it will be bloody hot. Chances of me going - half the chance a snowball has of surviving in hell

The 2018 World Cup will be in Russia - expensive to travel to, though it might have a decent infrastructure in eight years (none of it has been built yet - nor have most of the stadia). Personal safety is a huge issue, though I'm protected a bit by the fact I'm not black, gay or a journalist representing a free press. Chances of me going - half the chance a snowball has of...well you get the picture.

The 2022 World Cup will be in Qatar - expensive to travel to, whilst the infrastructure doesn't exist right now either. In fact, the stadium for the final will be built in a city that...doesn't exist yet. Seems safer than the other countries - though the foreign office lists it as being at significant
risk from terrorism. The main worry is the 40-plus degree heat in the summer months. Chances of me going - half the chance a snowball has of surviving in...er...Qatar.

At least Spain/Portugal and Belgium/Holland are affordable, straightforward destinations for the majority of supporters - let's not beat around the bush here, the vast majority of football fans who can afford to go to World Cups are European. And whilst I enjoy the irony of David Cameron moaning about people making him promises and turning out to be lying, it's quite sickening to see what the World Cup has become - you have to beg to get it, not bid, and it's all about who can provide FIFA with the most cash whilst asking the fewest questions. The only solace - hell hath no fury like the British press scorned. Sepp Blatter and co think Panorama and the Sunday Times were the worst of it? This could become very interesting over the next few months.

Rant two: Undersoil heating

I emailed a complaint to the BBC this week after an article that suggested that Inverness, St. Johnstone and Aberdeen were all likely to have their games called off because "of the weather in the North East".

Inverness - North East? Perth - North East? Obviously the writer has never ventured beyond the Forth Road Bridge in his life - and he assumed somewhat erroneously that the weather in the Highlands was bound to be exactly the same as in Aberdeen and Tayside.

Well, it's not. We've had barely any more snow since the original fall at the end of last week. The temperature is still low, but the roads are generally okay (except for my street, which apparently doesn't appear on the maps of any council snow plough drivers). So I was massively hacked off to hear that all the SPL games were called off this weekend - on Wednesday afternoon. Caley had quite proudly been telling everyone that our pitch would be playable - but
apparently it is too unsafe for spectators and stuff.

If the roads are too unsafe to go to the football, doesn't that make them too unsafe to, well, do anything? I don't see the police closing all the shopping centres so that people aren't encouraged to make non-essential purchases. Besides, the A9 was worse last weekend...when the SPL showed no interest in postponing Caley's away game at Celtic whatsoever. The team bus barely arrived at the ground in time.

And to cap it all, Inverness' undersoil heating (installed at a six-figure cost) was switched on the first two days this week (at a cost of about £3,000 a day) because SPL rules dictate all clubs must have it and use it. Yet it appears that now, whenever the weather is bad enough to require USH, the police will demand the game be called off anyway. So what the heck is the point? And how do these central-belt wusses intend to pay us back for the money wasted trying to get the game on? When the game should have been on anyway?

Rant no.3 - why bother selling hot food on the shelves at supermarkets when the queues are so long that its cold by the time you pay for...oh, wait, thats not about football. I'll just have to rant about that to someone else then.

L.

Whoa! Its another great El Clasico

2010-11-30T22:00:00.001Z

What was Jose Mourinho thinking?

Last season, the Portuguese maestro demonstrated why he is arguably (along with perhaps Guus Hiddink) the greatest tactician of the era when he guided Internazionale past Chelsea and Barcelona on the way to Champions League glory. Against both sides, he lined up with three forwards, including Samuel Eto'o out wide, and played a high pressing game, with a screen of defensive midfielders whose main - nay, only - job was to stop Xavi, Iniesta and Messi from getting on the ball; in the two legs against Barca, he gave the Catalans all the possession they wanted 30 yards from their own goal, but denied them the space even to breathe, let alone play, anywhere else on the pitch.

And yet, for his first Clasico as Real Madrid manager, at the Nou Camp, Mourinho played an attack minded 4-2-3-1 with Ronaldo, Di Maria, Ozil and Benzema all starting. And it ended up a massacre. The 5-0 scoreline just about does justice to the gulf in class; Barcelona were brilliant, Madrid abysmal. The Special One, as a manager had never, ever, lost by more than 3-0 before in his career. But his previous successes have been with teams built in his image. Porto, Chelsea and Inter won trophies galore by playing a pragmatic style, eschewing flair for solidity when necessary. At the first two teams he had a bunch of hungry, ambitious players willing to do whatever required to win - after all, what had John Terry, Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba achieved before they came under his charge? Meanwhile, in Italy the players are far more receptive to tactics and organization than elsewhere - and again, they would do absolutely anything if it meant victory in the Champions League. Real Madrid, however, are different. Very different.

Some things never seem to change, however hard you try, and one of those is the apparent fact that the Real Madrid starting lineup will be filled with egos. Earlier in the decade it was Ronaldo, Raul, Roberto Carlos, Figo, Beckham and Zidane. They got annihilated by a wonderful Barcelona team as well, 3-0 at the Bernabeu in November 2005, where Ronaldinho gave the greatest performance of his
life. Real are supposed to be all about flair and excitement - maybe Jose felt he couldn't play an extra defensive midfielder; maybe he wasn't allowed to; maybe he felt the squad lacked the discipline to produce the type of performance which brought his Inter side such joy last year.

Or maybe his own ego got the better of him, and he dared to believe that his own flamboyant forwards could destroy Barca in their own back yard. The result was delightful for the neutral, but humiliating for Madridistas. The midfield wasn't nearly crowded enough - giving time to Xavi and Iniesta is like giving matches to an arsonist. The latter remains one of my favourite players on this earth, buzzing like a hornet all over the park, whether to run at defenders or to play an incisive pass (like the one for Xavi's goal). His running, along with that of Barca's front men, put Real Madrid's lackadaisical, workshy forwards to shame; it also meant that their backline had no time to pass out of defence, and the home side had a monopoly on possession.

I have already extolled Iniesta, but what can one say of Xavi? Now thirty, he has been the fulcrum of sides that, at club and international level, have won just about everything that they possibly can over the last three years. He seems, superficially, so limited - he is of diminutive stature, he lacks pace, he is not proficient at tackling, and, last night notwithstanding, his goal return is modest. Yet, in my lifetime at least, I cannot remember a player who appears to control a match in the way Xavier Hernandez Creus (his full name) does. It seems every attack, every incisive movement, is dictated, in some way, by his passing. Sid Lowe, the Guardian's esteemed journalist, described his effects best - not only does he see, and make, the killer passes, but he sometimes moves and passes in such a way that it extols a teammate to make a run that he would not otherwise have made. Does that make sense? In short, Xavi is a unique player, able to move his teammates, and opponents, around the field as if it were a chess board. And it is much easier to win a chess game if you move your opponent's pieces as well as your own. And, unlike so many stars, Xavi produces it in the biggest of matches last night.

As for the other twenty players? The less said about Mourinho's bunch, the better. The lack of discipline was no surprise, nor was the lack of willingness to press the ball - the day Ronaldo closes down a defender will be the day the world ends. But it was a surprise that Xabi Alonso couldn't put a foot on the ball, and it was a shock to see Mesut Ozil so ineffective that he was substituted at half-time - he couldn't have been more anonymous if he had been wearing Harry Potter's invisibility cloak. Jose brought on that extra holding midfielder at the break, but not only had the horse already bolted, he had wrecked the stable door on the way out as well. Mourinho teams have never gone to pieces in this way before - his Special One aura, polarized and imbibed by over seven years of almost unstoppable victory, seemed to fade over the course of one wet Catalonian evening, finally evaporating as Sergio Ramos went for his early bath for a crude hack on Messi.

And what of the Argentinian wonderkid? A pretty average performance - for him, that is. After all, he only hit the post and laid on Villa's two goals. Pedro got one as well. And it is worth glorifying Sergio Busquets as well - the defensive midfielder provides the steel to go with his teammates' silk. Busquets-Xavi-Iniesta - has there ever been a better midfield combo? That is one to debate. Barcelona's defence might still be their achilles heel, but such was the lack of threat from their opponents that they were never stretched.

I've raved and waxed lyrical about Barcelona in the past, and with good reason.
They are not perfect, not by a long shot, but in their pomp they are a simply unbelievable team to watch. I really, really, could have watched that ninety minutes all over again from start to finish (though that proves I have too much
time on my hands). In short, Barcelona are the best club side of a generation.
The Clasico shows Jose Mourinho has a long way to go to get his side competing on an even keel.

But if anyone can do it, he can. The return game is in April; I can't wait.

L.

Caley Thistle unbeaten away for a year

2010-11-28T20:54:00.002Z

What should Caley Thistle maanger Terry Butcher get for Christmas this year?

Well, he loves his red wine. He's certainly done enough to deserve a humungous crate of the stuff.

Considering his side's glorious start to the season, though, he can't be far off being able to write 'bronze statue of myself outside Caledonian Stadium' on his letter to Santa.

A year ago, Caley were mid-table in the first division, and were about as consistent as the bowel habit of an Irritable Bowel sufferer. Now they lie fourth in the SPL with any fears of a relegation battle rapidly receding. Butcher currently has the dream scenario of any coach - his team are punching above their weight, getting results and playing some damn attractive football in the process. He is idolized by the home support as a consequence of this, plus his charming, eloquent and honest post-match interviews.

And to cap it all, the lazarus-esque comeback from two down at Celtic Park this weekend means that Inverness have been unbeaten away from home in the league for a whole year. That, ladies and gentlemen, is some record, even if the first ten matches were in the second tier. And nicking a point off the Hoops feels like pretty much the perfect way to do it - plenty of non-Celtic fans will be toasting us for ruining Neil Lennon's weekend.

This stunning form can't last forever; surely even the most optimistic of Highlanders knows we will eventually lose away (quite possibly on our next trip south, to Tynecastle in three weeks). The next two matches, home games with Dundee United and Rangers, could burst the bubble spectacularly. Injuries are an inevitability; so too, I think, is the departure of star striker Adam Rooney in the summer when his contract expires.

But it has been some year for Inverness Caledonian Thistle - wins, points, a title and a heck of a lot of fun. So, Mr. Butcher, if you demand that bronze statue, I'm sure I can be easily persuaded to make a contribution...

L.

The referee crisis!

2010-11-23T17:40:00.002Z

This ad may or may not appear in job centres near you this week...

Are you looking to supplement your income with a weekend job?

Why not become a Scottish Premier League referee?!

We are looking for men between 20 and 49 who possess the following qualities:

- An urge to spend a Saturday afternoon running around in the freezing cold

- A keenness to listen to professional sportsmen swearing, shouting and throwing tantrums when decisions go against them

- An enjoyment of the sound of up to fifty thousand supporters questioning your competence, integrity and/or sexuality

- Delight in reading quotes from football managers questioning your competence, integrity and/or sexuality (well, maybe not the last one)

- A satisfaction from knowing that giving a dubious penalty might result in verbal or physical violence being directed towards yourself, family or your property

- A willingness to find oft-repeated quips about Specsavers amusing

- An ability to look good in fluorescent yellow

The Scottish Premier League offers you the opportunity to earn a reasonable, though not substantial remuneration for ninety minutes work every weekend - uniform and whistle supplied!

Note: applications will not be accepted from those who fit the following criteria...

people who support Rangers

those who are of the Protestant faith

anyone who has cheered goals scored by any team against Celtic

anyone who has cheered goals scored by any team other than Celtic

anyone who questions the doctrine of papal infallibility

anyone who disagrees with John Reid's attitude on the Iraq invasion

anyone who is not on Neil Lennon's Christmas card list

Dougie McDonald

(just me being a little mischievous)