IF FOOTBALL is indeed “A results-driven business” why are so-many people trying to avoid admitting, Celtic got a doing at Villa Park on Wednesday night. You can come up with all the excuses under the sun, it will not alter the fact, Aston Villa won, and won well; and but for Kasper Schmeichel's heroics and a penalty miss straight out of Benny Hill, it might have been another Borussia Doetmund result for the Hoops.
OK, I get the financial disparity, to a degree; Celtic pay way over the Scottish odds to bring second and third-rate non-Scots into our pathetic wee Premier Division, while Villa pay even-further over the odds to bring second, and the odd first rate player to Birmingham. Let's face it, if your choice is Barcelona, Madrid or Milan over Birmingham or Glasgow – if you're confident you will be a first pick, it's a no-brainer, but, if you're going to be a squad player, then if youj can jemmy a better deal out of the club from either UK city – you set your agent's default position to “bleed them”.
Even back in the days when England had a maximum wage and Scotland didn't, so the Old Firm could compete in thr UK transfer market, Celtic still sold stellar talents such as Jimmy Delaney, Bobby Collins and Paddy Crerand to English clubs (ok, Crerand went just as England began to have a cash advantage) but they were still, financially, a small club, willing to sell their best assets to a high bidder. That is still the club's management model.
There are players in the current Celtic side who are – by Scottish standards, Superstars; however, in English Premeirship of European terms, they are journeymen. Celtic's greatest-ever XI comprised 11 native Scots, all born within 40 miles of Celtic Park. Last night, they had only two Scots in their starting line-up, even Villa, from the league with perhaps the highest proportion of non-natives in Europe, had five English players in their starting XI.
Celtic's whole club DNA was built on recruiting and polishing young players from “The Celtic Family” - built on the efforts of countless teachers and janitors at Roman Catholic schools, mainly in West-Central Scotland, whose goal in life was to produce at least one boy good enough to some day wear the Hoops.
But, since a Dublin-based billionaire seized control, this proud tradition has been dumped in favour of over-priced, over-paid mercenaries. The result, sure, guaranteed European football every season, but, squads lacking the quality of those Jock Stein managed.
Celtic will not win the European Cup this season, in fact, given the draw they have been handed, they are unlikely to survive the Play-Off round. Sure, they will almost certainly win the Scottish title again this season' they could even pull-off another Treble, but, as Wednesday night at Villa Park showed – this is a poor Celtic squad, playing in a really-poor domestic league, who have perhaps over-achieved in reaching the European stage they have.
I HONESTLY cannot see Rangers winning the Europa League this season, for the simple fact: the cry is no defenders every time the opposition crosses into their box. And when you consider the lineage of Rangers Central defenders, this is a potentially tenure-ending condemnation of Manager Philippe Clement.
Just consider the men who have been the bulwark of the club's defence over the past century – a defence which once merited the newspaper-awarded designation: “The Iron Curtain”.
From Davie Meiklejohn in the 1920s, via Jimmy Simpson a decade later. Simpson passed the torch on to Willie Woodburn and George Young, who in turn bequeathed the job of securing the back door to John Greig and Ronnie McKinnon.
They in turn were succeeded by Colin Jackson and Derek Johnstone, then John McClelland and Davie Macpherson. For all the changes which the
David Murray/Graeme Souness years brought, the club still stood by excellence in central defence from the likes of Terry Butcher and Richard Gough.
Twelve names there, ten of them Scotsmen, covering the best part of a century of defensive excellence. I could have named other great Scottish defenders to have played for thee club – Alan McLaren or Colin Hendrie for instance.
But today, Scottish players are an endangered species around Ibrox, although John Souttar, who returned from injury on Thursday night, is maintaining the tradition of Scottish internationalist central defendders at the club.
That jersey can weigh heavily on newcomers to the club. I can remember when Big Corky – George Young – retired in 1957, the club did not have an in-house replacement, so they did what the club had long done, and signed the then current Queen's Park pivot, John Valentine.
Received wisdom had it that Valentine had all the necessary attributes to be a Rangers' centre-half, but, it never quit worked for him and after the disaster of Hampden in the sun – Celtic's 7-1 League Cup win in 1957, he was cast forth into the reserves and shortly afterwards off-loaded to St Johnstone, a club he served with distinction.
The unfortunate Valentine was replaced by St Mirren veteran Willie Telfer, a true Bluenose from Larkhall, but he was never more than a short-term stop-gap, well thugh he filled that role.
The long-term successor was thought to be Airdrie's Doug Balllie, a big lump who had won his first Scotland Under-23 honour as a teenager. Sadly, Doug never really recovered from a serius roasting from the young John “Yogi” Hughes in his first Old Firm game. Doug never replicated his Airdrie form with Rangers, but, he did mature to be a unique and long-serving talent in th press box.
Between the short-lived Baillie time and the arrival of Greig and McKinnon, the most-regular Rangers centre-half was the unsung Bill Paterson. He made over 100 first team appearances and won four domestic medals during his four years at Ibrox, but is pretty-much forgotten today.
A Kinlochleven man, he won a Scotland B cap during his time with Doncaster Rovers, in a 1-1 draw with England in 1954. He and fellow defender Jimmy Dudley of Westy Bromwich Albion were the only members of that Scotland B team not to go on and win a full cap. He later played and coached in Canada.
Paterson;s success demonstrates, you don't have to pay big money to get a good centre-half, maybe somebody should tell that to the current Rangers' management.
What the current Europa League campaign, and the current domestic campaign has shown is – Rangers badly need a big centre-half, or perhaps the football equivalent of the American Football Defensive Co-ordinator; somebody who can sort-out the team's answer to crosses into the box, get every defender made aware of his responsibilities, and ensuring that do their job.
If they can sort out this glaring weakness, who knows, the club could yet have a good season.
The secret to having a good, winning team, is supposedly in that team having a solid spine: a good goalkeeper, a dominant centre half, a midfield play-maker and a sharp striker.
The current Rangers team is not that far-away. Getting the centre-half job sorted out would be an improvememt, it would also, I suggest, help if they could get Igamande and Dessers playing together. I have a feeling these two, if they could get on the same wavelength and sort-out who is doing what, when, could become as potent as the legendary Brand and Millar combination of the 1960s, or the perm two from three combination of Hateley, Johnston and McCoist in the 1990. . And with Vaclav Cerny as a 21st century Davie Wilson, the Bears may dream of better to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment