Socrates MacSporran - Scottish Football Philosopher

SPL - Simply Pathetic League

2012-02-17T03:03:00.000-08:00

I HAVE had enough of gloom and doom this week, so let's set aside the small matter of conjecture on the affairs of Rangers FC and look instead at the state of Scottish football - something I was diverted away from addressing by the events of this week.

Last Saturday, for my sins, I was asked to cover Kilmarnock v Heart of Midlothian by a national newspaper, this was, as I remarked last week, my first exposure to SPL football for a couple of seasons - it was rank rotten.

A poor crowd of just over 4000; ok, the timing wasn't great and the demands on their hard-earned being borne by the Hearts' fans at present doubtless contributed to the thin spread of Jambos in the "away" end. But, barely 4000 home fans were prepared to turn-out to watch a Killie team playing (allegedly) a high-quality passing game.

To my mind this demonstrates what I've been saying for a long time - the SPL is over-priced. It would, last weekened, have been cheaper, and infinitely-more-comfortable for me to take "'Er Indoors" to the Odeon in Kilmarnock, to watch Meryl Streep in 'The Iron Lady' than to take her to Rugby Park to watch Killie play Hearts.

Hasn't it occured to the High Heid Yins in the SPL - your core audience in Scotland are struggling in the present recession - you've got to find inventive ways of getting them to part with their hard-earned, just to keep them coming. And while you're at it, improving the quality of your product might be a good idea.

In the press conference after the match, the red-top boys, who set the agenda, only wanted to focus on the pre-match spat between "Rent-a-gob Shiels" and "Motor-mouth Sergio"; the lack of a hand-shake; what Sergio did or didn't say to Shiels Minor and vice versa.

Mind you, I don't blame them, there was very little to ask about concerning 90 minutes of misplaced passes, missed opportunities and mainly headless chicken impressions.

If that's typical SPL fare - We're awe doomed - doomed ah tell ye!

HOWEVER, my mental turmoil was eased slightly on Wednesday evening, after I was despatched to Somerset Park to cover the Ayr United v Falkirk Scottish Cup tie.

Like A Boy Named Sue - after he finally met his Dad - I came away with a different point of view. I had possibly seen the future and it might work. I was more than impressed with the performance of the Falkirk team. OK, they lost narrowly, but, the way Elvis has got a bunch of kids ready and willing to get the ball down, pass and move was refreshing. There is real talent there and I wish Elvis and his back-room all the best in their endeavours.

But, to laud the losers and say nothing of the winners would be stupid. I've said before and will probably say so again, the way big Brian Reid's name is seldom in the frame for SPL managerial vacancies amazes me, after what he has done at Ayr. He just might be the best United boss since Ally MacLeod - first time around.

His team got a chasing in the first half and were extremely lucky to turn round all-square, after scoring with their only upfield sortie of the 45 minutes. But, whatever he said in that dressing room at half time worked - they dominated the second half and might well have won by more than Mark Roberts' penalty goal. And, if ever there was an example of how to take a vital penalty, this was it.

Ayr demonstrated the old Scottish virtue of refusing to surrender to a technically-superior team and got their reward. As I told Pat Fenlon of Hibs, who was also in the press box on BBC duty - his guys are in for a good old game in the quarter-finals.

Ayr also have some young talent in their squad - as I have said, the talent is still being produced in Scotland, it's long past time the fans put pressure on the directors to make the managers and coaches work better, to give this talent a chance.

When this happens, just watch Scottish football go and grow.

FINALLY, I seem to be the only journalist who remembers the name of Bill Hiddleston, or to have raised that spectre in relation to the Rangers case. It was good, this morning, to read that the Polis are sitting-up and taking notice of events at Ibrox.

More work coming the way of M' learned friends I feel ceretain.

What Hapens Now?

2012-02-16T01:51:00.000-08:00

IN signing-off my last posting, I aluded to the next question about Rangers: What Happens Next? Of course, at this moment in time, nobody knows. Messrs Duff & Phelps have to get to work, try to sort-out the mess which David Murray's years of profligacy and what is, from the little which has leaked into the mainstream seems an almost criminal nine months of Whyte ownership and asset-stripping, have left.

Then we await the rousing of that 10,000 lb gorilla in the corner - the EBTs tax case.

Worse case scenario is, the liquidation of Rangers Football Club - The End, finito, no more Messrs Bad Guys; but even that is fraught with difficulties. If it happens, Craig Whyte will enter Scottish football mythology as William Hiddlestone x ten - Mr Hiddlestone being the "chancer" who in the 1960s asset-stripped and took Third Lanark to the wall. Hiddlestone's legacy is Cathkin Park, the stand, the buildings were allowed, over a period of time to crumble and fall; certainly the Council have to a degree land-scaped the terraces and the pitch is still there, but, Cathkin, as those of us old enough remember it, is no more.

Cathkin was the original Hampden - there should have been a preservation order on it, but wasn't. At least, the listed building status of the main stand might save it, but, if football isn't played there - what is the site for? I'd hate to think of my grand-weans, 40-plus years hence, driving past a crumbling, dangerous, listing but still listed stand, with a graffittied, uncared-for statue of John Greig standing beside it - that could happen.

If HMRC decides to play hardball with Rangers - and I feel they will pour encourage les autres in the EPL; there can be no reconstituted Rangers, and very likely no new one, even one starting life in the Third Division of the SFL, or maybe the Juniors, hoping to maybe get onto some future pyramid.

How about this curve-ball, out of left field. Rangers FC dies, but some Rangers-minded millionaire fan - there are some out there, buys the husk that's left, including Ibrox and Murray Park.

However, instead of joining the SFL - he takes his new club, with a core staff of British players who are primarily Rangers fans, into the North West Counties League in England - which is probably the highest level which any new club can enter the English pyramid.

This club should, surely, climb rapidly through the leagues and, within a decade - "New" Rangers are knocking on the door of the EPL. Without the Ulster religious/political element which the Old Fir rivalry brings, this might well be a "clean" vibrant club - hopefully the lessons of the liquidation have been absorbed and Ibrox is again rocking every second week to full houses, seeing good football.

I know, it's maybe a bit far-fetched, it's a long-ball game: but, wasn't the long-ball game for so long a successful Rangers tactic?

Of course, more-likely scenarios are -

1, administration, the current club continues, initially with a slimmed-down infrastructure and mainly young, cheap, Scottish players. The club goes back into the mid-SPL pack for a few years, then re-emerges as title challengers; the silly stuff continues and Scottish football keeps going backwards.

2, liquidation, Rangers FC dies and is re-born as "New" Rangers, still in the SPL - well, the other ten NEED the Old Firm, they may be despotic lairds, but, they generate cash. A period of financial prudence happens, then, in the desperation to better Celtic, the bad old ways of Scottish football finance returns and it's pretty-much business as usual.

3, liquidation, Rangers FC dies and the "New" Rangers which emerges has to start in the Third Division of the SFL. They keep the Murray Park kids and the fanatics among the older players, ripping through the lower two SFL divisions. Meanwhile, with Celtic isolated in a 1/11 vote and the TV companies saying - no Old Firm games, no deal; the other clubs finally grow a pair and return to an 18-club SPL, which suddenly becomes competitive and vibrant - (that last phrase is wishful thinking) - and Scottish football is re-born.

4, liquidation, Rangers FC dies and with it Scottish football - (that's the Rangers faithful's thinking).

Who Will Be Rangers' Wee Fergus?

2012-02-14T23:03:00.001-08:00

PHIL Mac Giolla Bhain, the Celtic-minded blogger who has been in the front rank of those foretelling of imminent disaster for Rangers over this past year used an interesting similie earlier this week - when he drew a parallel between in mid-Atlantic in 1912 and in Govan in 2012.

Right, RMS Rangers has hit its iceberg; who is in command of the rescue ships and how quickly can they get there? I have no wish to apportion blame, some of those responsible have lang syne got into the life boats and while many will seek to align Craig Whyte with that Italian cruise liner captain - and for sure the early evidence seems to point to reckless disregard for correct and prudent management - but, vessel and iceberg were locked-on to a collision course long before he took the wheel.

In the midst of their natural and understandable gloating at what has happened to the Forces of Darkness, as they see Rangers, many of the Celtic family have pointed out how, when the Families finally ran out of cash and ideas at Kerrydale Street in 1994, while Wee Fergus was the guy with the vision and the drive to oust them and right the ship from almost the point where the stern left the ocean and the final plunge began, ALL the Celtic family chipped-in.

I personally know ordinary Jungle Tims who dug really deep to see their club survive. They couldn't bear the thought of Celtic going under. Will imminent disaster mobilise the troops across the city?

Sadly, past evidence indicates that while to many of Irish or Roman Catholic descent in Scotland, Celtic is an icon which could not be allowed to die, that same desire to cherish and nurture an ailing Rangers is not, even in these dire times, evident.

I can only surmise, saying: "We arra peepel" comes as easily, but with a lot less meaning than saying, for instance: "We are all Neil Lennon". Supporting Celtic is a cause, supporting Rangers seems to be a feel-good factor.

There are guys out there who could salvage a Scottish institution, men who, perhaps not wishing to be tainted with any possible association with the wilder and more-disreputable elements in the club's following, who will, only after a wee hauf or two, in the privacy of friends they have known for years, confess to being: "Rangers Men", and who have the wherewithall and knowledge to save the club.

Whyte has to go, and soon - who is the Wee Fergus who will kick him out.

That will bring us to the next question - what happens next?

Oh Shit! The Wicked Witch is Dying

2012-02-14T01:52:00.004-08:00

IF indeed, possibility of imminent death concentrates the mind wonderfully, there will be a deal of hard thinking going on in Scottish football's corridors of power. Because, we ought to be in no doubt, if Rangers goes under from the fall-out of years of financial mis-management, Scottish football as we know it, is dead.

This actually might be no bad thing. Sure, we would end up as something akin to the two Irish and Welsh Leagues, maybe even a Danish League - one full-time club and a lot of part-time ones. Initially, Celtic would rule the roost untroubled. However, long before they had ran-up ten-in-a-row League titles, the Jungle Tims would be thoroughly sick of inevitable victory and longing for the old days when they had Them to hate. But in the longer run, we might have a really competitive league again.

Of course, we Scots are at our best/worst with a strong wind in our faces, we love to see the dark side of life. Rangers are only going into administration - they are not shutting down, that statue of John Greig will not be sited in the middle of a patch of grass, in the centre of an industrial estate for a long time to come, if ever.

But, even administration will change the game up here.

If that is as far as Craig Whyte has to go, the club will emerge with a leaner, fitter, outline. The bigger-name players who are coming to the end of their contracts will be allowed to depart, ditto those who are on the fringes of the action and those such as skipper Steve Davis and Alan McGregor, who have a decent re-sale value. The post- administration Rangers will have a younger, more home-grown squad. This is bad news for Ally McCoist and his management team, they will have to start coaching and managing, not trying to direct a squad of big-money, supposedly-able players who were bought.

Such a squad will still be competitive in Scotland, IF the guys in the track suits are prepared to coach.

If Rangers as currently organised is wound-up, that's the $64,000 (and more) question for the rest of the SPL. Sure, it would be great, after all these years of Rangers arrogance, to rub their noses in it, kick them while they are down and tell Craig Whyte when he comes along with Glasgow Rangers 2012 and asks to join the SPL: "No way pal, join the SFL, or, nip along the corridor and see if Tom Johnston will have you in the Central Regional Junior League - Glasgow Rangers v Larkhall Thistle, a bi-polar's delight.

But, in spite of Lawwell's claim that Celtic don't need Rangers - Aye Right, like Liz Taylor didn't need Richard Burton, Ernie Wise didn't need Eric Morecambe and Mike Winters didn't need Bernie. With no Rangers, who's going to be Schnorbitz?

As I have said before, for all their supposed friendliness with the power brokers from the other SPL clubs, when push comes to shove there is really only one club on whom Celtic can rely when they want something badly enough, and that club is Rangers.

Without Rangers, it becomes Celtic v the Rest 1v11, and that will allow a fairer, more-level playing field. For Celtic, more than anyone else, even Craig Whyte, these are dark and dangerous times.

Today I find out - how bad is the SPL

2012-02-11T01:23:00.000-08:00

I WRITE this post at just after 9am on a Saturday; in less than six hours I will be covering my first SPL game for two whole seasons and am looking forward to the experience, if only to see, for myself, if it is as poor a product as has been claimed.

I shall post my thoughts on the game tomorrow.

MEANWHILE, darn souf, there is just one issue in sport - will, or will not 'Arry rides to his nation's rescue and take the England job? It has been said before and by better sports writers than I, that the England manager's post is Mission Impossible - there is no way Tom Cruise and his team would take this gig.

Between an extreme paucity of talent and England expecting far too much, I fear they will never again, not even if they ever have the chance to play all their World Cup matches at Wembley, see an England captain hold aloft the World Cup.

Pedants might of course say: "So what, no England captain has ever held aloft the World Cup before". This is correct, it was the Jules Rimet Trophy which Bobby Moore and his team paraded round the old Wembley in 1966.

'Arry would be mad to take the job; however, for all his protestations of genuinely being as fick as he appears - 'Arry is a smart cookie who will most-likely screw a generous leaving deal out of Tottenham and a very lucrative salary package out of the FA - although the negotiations with Daniel Levy at White Hart Lane will doubtless be the more-difficult.

Just so long as he doesn't take Joe Jordan to Wembley with him.

IT'S Liverpool v Manchester United this weekend - in Scottish terms, Kenny v Fergie. Two successful but unloveable Scots going head to head. Both are, by birth or living time, Govan men, so they are unlikely to like each other; the fact they tolerate the other's presence in the same stadium is, I suppose, progress.

To paraphrase the great Captain Edmund Blackadder: why don't they just stay in Govan, have a square go outside Govan Cross subway station, winner gets the points. 'Twould save a lot of bother.

THINGS are getting worse for Craig Whyte. In the idyllic, sun-kissed former Ayrshire mining village where I live, the former Fuerher of the local junior team lives a half-life, ignored by most, shunned by many, because he all but bankrupted the club during his tenure as president.

He never meant to, he took over in hard times, he did his best, but, well he has never been the sharpest tool in the box and it all went pear-shaped. For all that, and in spite of our many fall-outs, I still like Jock, his heart is in the right place - the same cannot be said of his brain (if he has one).

However, this week in the pub, I heard Craig Whyte described as: "A Jock for senior football".

Ouch, that's hard. Down here, where you used to get the picture of King Billy on his white horse along with the keys to your council house - when they start joking about Rangers, that club is in bother.

Just what does IFAB stand for?

2012-02-09T23:38:00.000-08:00

UP here, in the rarified atmosphere of the Philosophy department of Scottish Football, myself and the very few other philosophers are often accused of being out of touch with reality. I argue, it's not us who are out of touch, but Scottish, indeed, British football.

In support of this theory, I submit as evidence the agenda for next month's meeting of IFAB - the International Football Associations Board. IFAB is the supreme law-making body in world football and its membership is drawn from a wide field. Each of the four Home Nations is a member, the fifth member is FIFA. So, because of a historic anomaly, in the sport's most-important body, the one which makes the actual rules of the game - Stewart Regan, Alex Horne of the FA and their counterparts in Wales and Northern Ireland have each got the same clout as between 40 and 50 general secretaries or CEOs of every other football association on the planet.

Given that Regan can barely run a bath and the mess the FA has got itself into over John Terry and Fabio Capello - that don't say much for the other 190-something FA leaders across the globe.

[To digress slightly - it's not their international independence per se which is the big problem with the IFA's, SFA's and FAW's opposition to the Olympic football teams and the threat of forced amalgamation into a UKFA - to be known, in all probability if it happens, as The FA - it's their possible loss of their places on IFAB and access to junkets such as next month's, to be held at the swish Pennypit Park Hotel, in Surrey.]

Mind you, the four Home Nations don't actually do much with these places, the agenda - currently available for all to see on the FIFA and UEFA websites makes interesting reading. Yes, goal line technology is up for discussion, but don't hold your breath for implementation. But the stuff which will actually be acted upon is mundane.

They plan to drop the word "blatant" from the deliberate hand ball ruling for instance; they are tidying up some other wordings and the SFA has had some input into a suggestion that, if a match goes to extra time, a fourth substitution can be allowed during the additional half hour. Actually, this is quite sensible - are they sure its an SFA idea?

But, the item which caught my eye is one, from the (English) FA, which calls for tape round stockings, often used to hold shin guards in place, to be the same colour as the stockings. That should do wonders for the sale of those multi-coloured insulating packs you can buy in garages and hardware stores. Not sure about any positive effect on the game however.

You might think, between deciding what to do with John Terry - stocks and the ducking stool or castration, hanging, drawing and quartering, beheading - or all the above and sitting down with Daniel Levy and our 'Arry to sort out the Capello succession, the FA had more-serious matters than coloured tape to worry about.

By the way, it appears that the worse than useless experiment of the additional assistant referees behind the goals is to be extended into this summer's European Championship finals.

This is a great move, in theory, but, you still see the same amount of wrestling at corners, and referees and assistants still miss instances of the ball being over the line for goals not given. A potentially good change, if we can get the right men in situ, with the readiness to use their powers.

Which will survive - Rangers or Hearts?

2012-02-09T00:09:00.000-08:00

MANY of the Sellick-minded amongst us are positively wetting themselves at the prospect of Rangers being wound-up, shut-down, liquidated, or whatever. They are revelling in the travails of the Ibrox club. So what, it's natural Scottish behaviour - the boot would be on the other foot were it Celtic which was being pursued by HMRC and sundry other creditors, as it was when only the last-minute arrival of Fergus McCann saved the hoops in the 1990s.

Whilst the on-going Ibrox saga is exercising much of their emotional steam, the thought that the so-called 'Sons of William' might be followed into the history books by their Edinburgh kinsmen the 'Cousins of William', or Heart of Midlothian as they are more-properly known could well be too-much for some of the more delicate members of the Celtic "family".

My reading of the situation is, should the worse come to the worst and both clubs are liquidated, a re-born Rangers will have more chance of immediate re-admittance to the top level of Scottish football than any re-born Hearts.

This is based on nothing more than a knowledge of human nature - Rangers, for all the mis-management of recent seasons, has always been in the tent pissing out, while under Mad Vlad and for all the diplomatic skills exhibited by reigning SFA president Campbell Ogilvie during his time as a Hearts administrator, Hearts have increasingly been seen as being out of the tent, pissing in.

[Just a thought here - Campbell Ogilvie was at Rangers when the seeds of the current problems were sown; he then went to Hearts and things also went pear-shaped; he is now Hampden Honcho - I see a pattern emerging, should we be worrying?

I ask this since Scotland's international independence is in danger from the Olympic football mess. Might we all have to vote for independence to save the fitba team in 2014?]

Right, back on-message. For all their arrogance and dominance over so-many years, Rangers have always been seen as a Scottish institution, albeit one with strong Unionist leanings. Hearts, under Romanov, have been the outsiders - even more than the "Irish" club which has consistently played the outsider card for 124 years. Some within Hampden might well bend a few rules, tweak a few strings to keep some kind of Rangers presence in the SPL - they would not, I feel, be so accommodating towards Hearts.

And, chief amongst those will be Celtic - for the simple reason: for as long as the Old Firm stick together, they can bend the rest of the SPL and Scottish football to their will. SPL rules allow two clubs, if they stick together, to hold the other ten to ransom when it comes to the big decisions.

Without Rangers, Celtic would have nobody they could trust absolutely and would be vulnerable to the other ten tweaking the rules, which currently it is alleged, gives the big two too big a share of the money.

The Old Firm, because they have, for more than a century, been a football firm which sticks together in times of danger to themselves, separately or in conjunction, will act in the best interests of the Old Firm. So, if calamity hits Rangers, the men who have to rebuild will know, they have supportive friends across the city - in the boardroom if not in the cheap seats. Hearts don't have that security blanket tucked away somewhere.

Should Craig Whyte fail, and remember, while his will be the hand on the tiller - the real skipper who had steered the ship towards the rocks, got off in his life raft a year ago, somebody will come alongside and throw a tow rope - Hearts will be allowed to sink.

In reality, both clubs should be allowed to sink - but, there's more salvage value in Rangers, so look for them to be saved.

The Sellik-minded sometimes refer to Ibrox as: "the Scrapyard" - there's money in scrap, remember.

Capello's departure confirms - managers are only employees

2012-02-08T12:40:00.000-08:00

LET'S all laugh at England - no, maybe not. We Scots simply love schadenfreude and anything which gives us a laugh at the English football team diverts us from having to laugh at the Scottish team - it's either that, or we cry - because we really are in a bad way. At least, the English have the European Championships to look forward to.

The manner in which the Capello reign ended again shows how out-of-touch we, the football public and the football media, are when it comes to realpolitik. In football in this country, in spite of the higher profile enjoyed by the likes of Roman Abramovich at Chelsea, Vladimir Romanov at Hearts, Craig Whyte at Rangers or even back-seat owner Mr Desmond at Celtic - we still look on the manager as THE MAN in a club.

They are not - not even Sir Alex Ferguson. If push comes to shove in any club, the manager goes, the owner stays until he decided to sell. I cannot think of a single manager who was in reality THE MAN at his club since Bill Struth during his final decade at Rangers. Back then, he was the club's largest share-holder, he was vice-Chairman, he represented the club on the SFA. Not even Jock Stein had that power.

Perhaps he remained in office too long, but, Struth had the luxury of retiring at a time of his choosing, Big Jock didn't have that luxury. Capello didn't have that luxury at the FA.

The story is, he felt the FA blazers under-mined his authority by relieving John Terry of the England captaincy while he faced his trial over his alleged racist abuse of Anton Ferdinand. On the face of it, Capello has a point - however - given the media storm which is already surrounding this case and which will increase in power as his court date nears, I don't think the FA had any choice. For the good of English football, Terry had to go. Indeed, I feel he should have been left out of the England squad until the case is over and Terry is found guilty or innocent.

Capello was a foreign mercenary, the FA blazers are the guardians of the game. They have made mistakes in the past, they surely will again in the future - but, in this case - they got it right and Capello got it wrong.

MEANWHILE, back up here in la-la land, we have the on-going conjecture as to whether or not Ally McCoist should walk away from Rangers, or if he should be pushed.

There have long been rumours to the effect that Coisty never has had the confidence of Mr Whyte and that the owner of the club wants Billy Davies in as manager.

Rangers slump out of the Scottish Cup to Dundee United and suddenly, Billy Davies, is all over the media. Coincidence - or conspiracy.

Rangers need to re-discover their Presbyterian work ethic

2012-02-06T23:05:00.000-08:00

ANOTHER of my generation of football writers, now semi-retired, hosts a blog which, naturally reflecting its author, is very much skewed towards the view from about half-way up the Copland Road Stand at Ibrox. In my old mate's eyes, Rangers' current travails are all the fault of - to some degree David Murray's failure to reign-in Dick Advocaat, but mostly to anti-Rangers bias by certain well-placed Celtic supporters.

There may well be a grain of truth in this, but, ranting and raving about the failings of the former owner and biased decisions taken by bankers will not halt FC Rangers' full steam ahead cruise towards that bloody great iceberg now standing ahead of it.

It is common knowledge that there is never a single reason for a fatal car crash, rather a lot of seemingly unrelated wee incidents come together in one big bang, which provides business for the undertaker. I presume, even as I type this, the corporate minds at KPMG and the other firms which have done well out of company failures in recent years are licking their lips at the money to be made out of the failure of Rangers.

One can only hope that, just as there was a wee, seemingly insignificant almost nerdy accountant from Croy, sitting in his office in Canada watching the old Celtic of the families lurch towards Carey Street and making ready to mount his charger and ride to the last-minute rescue - somewhere other than Scotland, a wee nerdy Larkhall boy is getting ready to do likewise for Rangers.

For right now, as things stand and as, daily, fresh revelations of the past business practices of Craig Whyte and concerns about what, if anything he can do to alter the club's course arise, I cannot help but feel - were John Laurie's Private Fraser to be a regular in certain "Rangers houses" around the club's supporters' heartlands in Scotland, his regular declarations of: "We're awe doomed, doomed ah tell ye", would be greeted as extreme optimism.

Ally McCoist's alleged demands for more money, to buy new players, are akin to the aristocrat, emerging from his bank, having been told - the money was all gone, the bailiffs would be round in the morning and he would then be out on the street, lighting-up a cigar with his last tenner.

I don't know if Coisty will ever be seen as a Struth, Symon, Wallace or Smith - but, he hasn't made the best start. Coisty can only piss with what he's been given, but, if he gets rid of the flab, puts in the hard hours on the training field and gets as fit as he can be - he can still probably piss higher than the next man.

Rangers is supposed to be the ultra-Presbyterian team. Well, perhaps a big bit of that extreme Presbyterian work ethic will get them past Celtic and on to four in a row. I doubt it, but, Coisty isn't going to get any more new players this season; his team is mis-firing badly, he has to get himself and his team of mechanics - Messrs McDowall, Durrant and Stewart on the job and working to put things right - he cannot buy his way out of this one.

As for the players, maybe, as with the old joke about the galley slaves being unchained, fed and allowed up on deck to sun-bathe, they should be told: "Enjoy the day lads - tomorrow the captain wants to go water-skiing".

I don't see Coisty water-skiing to the title, but, with the first signs of over-confidence emerging from the Lennoxtown dressing rooms, he should be ready to try.

BY the way, all this focus on Rangers' problems has tended to deflect from one obvious fact - how well Dundee United played on Sunday. Similarly, in the other games this season in which an admittedly poor Rangers team have shed points, winning sides such as Killie and St Mirren have been almost damned with faint praise.

Sure, they did beat poor Rangers teams, but they still beat them. Perhaps my Old Firm-osessed colleagues in the mainstream media in Scotland should be talking up the other SPL teams - the gap between the Big Two and the other ten isn't as broad as it once was - and that's fact.

Shoot All The Lawyers - Not That I'm Against Them

2012-02-05T01:19:00.000-08:00

FOR my money, the trouble with the United Kingdom today is - we've got too many lawyers. At school, half a century ago, I was an A pupil - that I have since learned, meant I had a particularly good Qualifying exam, nothing more, nothing less.

Maybe I did have a few more functioning brain cells than the rest of the gang in my Primary Seven class, but, back then, a kid's chances in life were greatly enhanced, or permanently blunted, by how they did in that single exam.

Any how, in my 1A class at the local Senior Secondary (Scotland's much-superior equivalent to the English Grammar Schools), there were 35 pupils - so much for the 30 pupil maximum. We have a reunion every five to ten years and at the last one, held as we began to retire, we boasted: 1 university professor, 1 retired senior RAF officer, 1, retired senior civil servant, 1 guy who runs his own automotive consultancy, 1 IT millionaire, 1 retired and loaded merchant banker, 2 more retired bank managers, 2 journalists - both published authors, 1 retired engineering firm manager, 1 retired police Inspector, 1 senior manager for a big fashion chain, 2 mid-ranking civil servants, 2 mid-ranking charity managers, 8 teachers, 3 nurses, 1 accountant, 1 vet and 2 girls who married well and young to husbands who inherited big farms - the other 3 class members, sadly died young.

You will notice - not a lawyer amongst us. The only lawyer to come out of our year was in 1B, the next class down; he's a great guy, but the saying amongst us has always been: "If you need a good lawyer - see Bob, he knows one or two".

Nowadays we are awash with lawyers, there are so-many, they need to find ways of passing their time, so they stick their noses in where they aren't really wanted and the result has been the rise of various "industries", whose only benefit is, they create work for lawyers.

In particular, lawyers have almost invented and advanced the race relations industry. Now, I appreciate, I might be entering choppy and dangerous waters here, but having been exposed to 60-years of what passes for religious tolerance in Ayrshire, I think I can navigate my way through it.

I hold great store in the wise words of the Bard's great work 'A Man's A Man' - I have no time for those who abuse others because they are, to use the common language of the West of Scotland streets a H bar steward or a F bar steward; such people (the verbal abusers) are not worth bothering about.

But, that said, in the adrenilin-and testosterone-fuelled world of football, inhabited as it is by lots of guys who wear their IQs on their backs, I would have supposed that even a lawyer would have been able to differentiate between "banter" and racial abuse.

After all, in one of my jobs a work mate and I would, every morning, greet each other as an Orange bar steward and a F bar steward, and our line manager never felt the need to pull us up for it.

In another job, I had to go through a full stewards' enquiry after I suggested awarding someone a modern equivalent of the old Robertson's Golden Gollywog as a prize. It appears, in saying this I was a racist. Still don't see how, but, I have never been right-on PC and only used that particular childhood item as shorthand for an all but worthless prize.

So, where do I stand on the issue currently dominating English football - I refer to John Terry's loss (again) of the England captain's arm band whilst he prepares to defend his alleged racist slur on Anton Ferdinand.

I don't know too-much about Ferdinand Minor; he seems a reasonable Premiership journeyman. However, his elder brother Rio, Ferdinand Major, comes across as a bit of a twit, sharing that standing with his England co-defender, the afore-mentioned Mr Terry.

To me, Terry is a nasty piece of work; between his alleged involvement with Wayne Bridge's partner, the stories about him selling access to certain places to businessmen, his pique at being stripped of the England captaincy before and his unashamed efforts to have the post restored to him - had the FA had a shred of dignity and decency about the place, they would long ago have instructed Mr Capello to not merely strip him of the captaincy, but to kick him out of the squad.

Given his other failings, Terry may well be a racist - he may equally well not be, however, in the world of the working class, which football still is: it is not uncommon for insults to fly around when the going gets tough. The C word, the more common form of bar steward, the exrament word, quite often, in Scotland, preceded by the H or F words or Orange or Irish is far from unusual.

I would imagine therefore, in England, that the player being spoken to's skin tone might also enter the exchange. However, it's all in the tone, the context and how it is perceived.

I am assured by a distinguished former Scotland captain from some years ago that the Scotland squad which he led, one dominated by Old Firm players, and which performed an awful lot better than their 21st century successors was a very tight-knit, happy and friendly one. That didn't stop the Celtic players from addressing the Rangers ones as Orange or H bar stewards and being responded to as F or Irish bar stewards. It was all in the mutual understanding.

Of course, they didn't have lawyers telling them what to think; they knew what was banter and what was, very occasionally, abuse - and dealt with accordingly.

Get rid of the lawyers and let common sense back in. Mind you, I still think English football would be better-off without JT.

Let's Play The Game In The Games

2012-02-04T06:01:00.000-08:00

WHEN Glasgow was first named as host city for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, after the initial euphoria - because it will be great to see some of the world's top athletes in action in our largest city - I became a wee bit concerned, about how there might be a return in the massive costs of staging such a large festival of sport.

Sure, if what happens in Glasgow two years hence inspires even one young Scot to take his or her in-built talent and promise, build on it and became a sporting champion and an inspiration to the kids coming along behind, then it will all have been worth it.

That will be the long-term bonus, in the short-term, we want to see full houses at Hampden and the other venues; we want to see fans encouraging the athletes, and in all honesty, there isn't a great market for some of the Commonwealth Games sports in Scotland.

Again I turn to the fact, in Scotland, football is the only game in town and the one manner in which football and athletics worked together was in the heyday of the old Rangers Sports at Ibrox. This event was overseen by manager Bill Struth, who himself had an athletics background and some of the biggest names in athletics were only too happy to travel to Glasgow and participate in the event.

But, what made the Rangers Sports work in terms of big attendances was the inclusion, among the sprints, middle distance and field events of a five-a-side football tournament, featuring teams from the then six Scottish League teams from the city.

The hope was always that it would come down to an Old Firm final - that would really get the crowd going even more than the appearance of one or more Olympic gold medalists.

Fast forward to 2014. Imagine what the attendance would be like if football was included in the Commonwealth Games, and the final came down to Scotland v England? They'd have to lock the gates and the atmosphere would be electric. It couldn't fail and if there was a Scotland team involved and going well, it would even be Usain Who?

Of course, it will not happen, mainly because football isn't a Commonwealth Games sport - and, certainly in the context of the Glasgow games, it would have been a winner if it had been.

Now, let's take a quantum leap into another emotive topic - the 2012 Olympic Games football and the presence of Team GB. As things stand, this is a one-off event, even if Team GB were to win the gold medal, they wouldn't be around to defend it in Rio.

However, IF football was a Commonwealth Games sport, then all four home nations would be obliged to field properly-organised and funded squads, for preference playing to Olympic Games selection criteria. These teams could be an excellent bridging team between the Under-23 and full sides and would definitely help turn club players into internationalists.

Getting football into the Commonwealth Games, would help maintain the international independence of the four Home Nations, and at the same time keep Team GB in the Olympics - giving the lucky players from the four countries who made the Olympics cut additional experience. It's a win-win situation for all four.

If Rangers Collapse - Who Will Celtic Hate?

2012-02-03T07:08:00.000-08:00

I engaged in an exchange of cordial e-mails this week with a former colleague, who now occupies a rather nice media sinecure darn sarf, in that there Lunnun. He was once a regular Jungle Jim; now he gets his 90 minutes of Saturday suffering at the Emirates. But, he likes to keep abreast of events up the road and like many a Celtic-minded man, he doesn't know whether to laugh or cry at current events around Ibrox.

Sure, like most Scots he enjoys schadenfreude and is thus revelling on the daily doom and gloom stories concerning the Establishment club; but, like most intelligent Celtic fans, he worries what might happen, should Rangers go under.

After generations as the outsiders, the nobody likes us, we don't care alternative, could Celtic and their fans cope with being Ra Peepl, the Establishment? We live in interesting times.

Tomorrow sees the start of Rugby's Six Nations, kicking off with Scotland v England, at Murrayfield, for the Calcutta Cup. However, the rugby authorities build things up nicely towards the big one, with the rival Under-20s and A teams meeting, while for those complete rugby anoraks, the Scotland and England Women's XVs will also clash.

There is a recognised pathway in Scottish international rugby - Under-15 to Under-16 to Under-18, then to Under-20, perhaps the Scottish Students XV, then the A team and finally the big team. It works too, development is monitored and players get used to playing to a set pattern long before they win that first full cap.

On the face of it, the SFA also has a development plan - Under-15, Under-16, Under-17, Under-18, Under-20, Under-21....er!!

If you're good - say a Darren Fletcher or a Barry Bannan, you can then step almost seamlessly into the big squad; if you're not so good, or seen as a slow developer, or if you happen to play for one of the really big teams who prefer to buy over-priced foreigners to rearing home-grown players, that is either the end of your international career, or, if you're lucky and spend two to seven years in the wilderness, you might, assuming they cannot find a player in one of the lower English leagues with a Scottish granny who plays in your position, get into the main squad.

The truth is, we don't have a system that works. We did have, between 1955 and 1957, when young players could go from the Under-23 team, to the B team, perhaps gain extra experience in the Scottish League team, then graduate to the full team.

Forty-five players played for the Scotland B team between 1952 ane 1957, nine of them had previously been capped, 16 didn't make it to the main team, but the other 20 did - even if in one case, that of Ronnie Simpson, he had to wait 14 years between his B team debut and his full international one.

Between 1955 and 1976 244 players were capped for the Scotland Under-23 team, 129 of these went on to win full caps a 53% - 47% split in favour of those who trained-on to become full caps.

Since the Under-23 team gave way to the Under-21 team these percentages have reversed, and more; indeed, given that the very first Scottish Under-23 team, which lost 0-6 to a Duncan Edwards-inspred England, at Shawfield, on 8 February, 1955: Willie Duff (Hearts) Alex Parker (Falkirk), Eric Caldow (Rangers), Dave Mackay (Hearts), Doug Baillie (Airdrie), Bobby Holmes (St Mirren), Graham Leggat (Aberdeen), Jimmy Walsh (Celtic), Andy Hill (Clyde), Bobby Wishart (Aberdeen) and Davie McParland (Partick Thistle) comprised 11 players who were all first team regulars with their club, while the latest Scotland Under-21 team contained just eight players who might be seen as first team regulars at club level - and that number is an increase on what was the case two or three or even five years ago.

We have lost our way a bit in our development of international players and this is a topic I intend returning to in the near future.

Planet Fitba - It's Life Jim -But Not As We Know It

2012-02-01T23:27:00.000-08:00

PLANET Fitba may look like planet Earth, it might rotate on its axis once every 24 hours, and take roughly 365 days to orbit the Sun, but, once you cross the space-time continuum between Earth and PF - you're in a whole new galaxy.

Why else would otherwise sane and sensible (not forgetting rich) business-men, used to making correct business decisions every day of their lives act as they do whenever they stop becoming businessmen and morph into football club directors or chairmen? Is it something they put in the water - maybe it's time we properly analysed the chemical content of liquid Bovril - just about the only drink you ever see at football matches, but nowhere else. Repeated blows to the head from an inflated spheroid, delivered at pace from someone else's boot might be a factor - except, we don't see too-many directors doing Joe Jordan impressions.

Craig Whyte's finances may or may not be what they were assumed to be, when he first emerged as a buyer for Rangers, but, if he does indeed have billions tucked away in some Monaco or Caymen Islands bank account - the belief is growing that they somehow got there through underhand means and are kept there by the simple fact that Mr Whyte doesn't appear to pay for things until a (figurative) gun is held to his head.

But is the Rangers' owner the only seemingly bad apple on PF? Not by a long chalk. Take the English Premiership - "The richest league in the world" - its 20 clubs are owned by some apparent wide boys, who make Del Boy Trotter look like the epitome of moral rectitude, fiscal probity and good business practice - indeed, they are such a bunch of wide boys, I am amazed that Trotter's Independent Trading Company isn't the league sponsor.

Any regulatory body worth its salt, (and what are the SPL and SFA if not regulatory bodies?), would have a degree of independence, protocols in place to properly assess any would-be club owner's fitness to control that club; meaningful statutes would be in place, with bonds and deposits required so that, in the event of a single club going under - the other members would not lose out.

Did anyone monitor Whyte's background, ability to properly fund Rangers or business past? Of course not.

I had thought, when I first heard of his interest: What does a venture capitalist want with Rangers? There didn't seem too-much there which he could cream-off and make money from (the traditional modus operandi of a VC).

Since nothing obvious there, maybe we should have taken him at face value - as many did: a Rangers fan, who had got rich and now wanted that rich man's plaything, a big club to call his own.

Perhaps we wanted, too-much, to see him strip back the over-inflated playing staff, get rid of the over-paid, under-performing players, put an end to Rangers' habit of paying over the odds for average Europeans and start bringing through good young Scottish players.

It hasn't happened - Rangers have carried-on over-spending, refusing to live within their means and with the lack of a clear vision and drive which has characterised the club since Celtic ended their run of nine-in-a-row.

Now, this Scottish institution is in the hands of an apparent spiv. Even the mainstream Scottish sporting media has woken-up to the fact that Rangers might be in freefall and beyond saving.

Now, apparently, thoughts are turning to seeing what might be saved and how the club can be kept in the SPL - Rangers being too big to fail.

Well, they are not and while I would hate to see Rangers joining Airdrie and Third Lanark in the ranks of the dead clubs, would it be all that bad a thing were they to join Queen's Park and Dumbarton in the lower reaches of the SFL? Perhaps reflecting on past glories, but, still able, under the right leadership and with the right mind set, to clamber back to the top - refreshed, invigorated and able to carry on to fresh glories.

Rangers have always welcomed the chase - let's hope, if the worse happens, they welcome doing the chasing.

Just a final thought - might not a race between "new" Rangers and "new" Hearts to see which club can be first to go from the SFL Third Division to the SPL kick new life into the sometimes moribund SFL?

Thank God That Window's Shut

2012-02-01T09:24:00.000-08:00

WHEN I was a fresh-faced innocent, setting-out along the road to journalistic credibility (I might get there some day), the way to get ahead was to get out and meet people and make contacts. You learned more from speaking to people in their own homes and offices, or in their favourite pub; you spent time with them, got to know them and the stories came along in the course of the day.

Modern media methods are very different. Today's young journalists spend long hours in their offices, at their desks, in-thrall to the interweb - that's where they do their research, often find their stories and through which they communicate, via e-mail, facebook, twitter or whatever.

I don't think it makes them better journalists, and while the internet is a wonderful tool for research purposes and e-mail is a heck of a lot faster than posting letters, technology can be a bad master.

There is also, among the promoted journos who run the various desks, today a need to keep in touch, to have the troops on a tight rein, to not trust them when out of sight.

But, as I see it, being desk-bound, tightly micro-managed journalists has been bad for our trade. The best journos were always the mavericks, the guys who could operate independently of their desks.

The best local news hound I know worked for an Ayrshire local paper. He would turn-up at 9am on a Monday morning, to assure his editor he was still alive, but would be out of the office (having spent the time in there compiling his expenses) by 11am. He would spend the rest of Monday trawling the pubs of his town, meeting his contacts; he would attend the local council's Monday night meeting, which would often keep him out until past midnight as he discussed events with the councillors. Then, after a lie-in on Tuesday morning, he would arrive at the office after lunch time, to type-up that week's "splash" - the front page lead story - and the pages, three, four, five, six and seven lead stories.

Wednesday, press day, would see him checking his stories for late developments in the morning, then, as the paper went to press that afternoon, he would be on the telephone to the nationals, selling-on his best stories on a lineage basis and in the process significantly increasing his earnings.

On Thursday he would do some features, on Friday, after a morning in the office, he would disappear, not to be seen again until he re-surfaced on the Monday morning. Today, he'd never survive the close scrutiny of his line managers, and in the process, he wouldn't get half the stories he did - many of which greatly embarrassed the local council staff, and just occasionally a coonsilor. He'd be just like the rest, re-hashing press releases, being mostly bored stiff and longing for a way out of what used to be, but is rarely today, a great job.

Even as micro-management of news and newsroom staffs spread like wildfire across the nation, we lucky bar stewards in the comics section, the sports desk, still had a wee bit of leeway. Club managers still like to exit the dressing room to meet a knot of reporters; they like to see the odd journalist turn up at the training ground and, provided you don't see the punch-ups between the players, you're welcome.

The players also like to see a friendly face around the place, particularly if that reporter will listen to their thoughts on the game and knod sagely as the player explains why he really should be playing for Scotland, Manchester United, Barcelona or whoever, when he can barely trap a sack of cement.

But, every January, even the sports guys become desk bound, as they go through the annual charade of the transfer window. This, particularly in Scotland, is a joke, and for me, it is no longer funny.

Each club begins the season with the playing staff which either - they can barely afford (most cases) or, more probably, they are stuck with. They will never be happy with either the quantity or quality of player they have to work with, but will give it a go, knowing, if things don't work out, if the players are crap, it is they, the manager, who is dispensible, rather than the players.

They also know that in the SPL, they are playing for third place, unless they are managing You Know Who, while in the lower divisions, while the squad they have might be good enough to win that league, they will be crushed in the one above the following season. So, if the title or one of the two cups is success beyond their wildest dreams, real success is third place and a drubbing in Europe the next season, while fourth, fifth and sixth, and those two additional Old Firm games, should be enough to keep the directors off their backs.

Therefore, given that a maximum of seven of Scotland's 42 senior clubs can win a trophy (assuming things are spread around at a rate of one trophy per club), five-sixth of the clubs each year are doomed to failure.

They might, by New Year, accept this is inevitable, but, if they are in the mix at the top of their respective tables on 1 January, then prudent and successful dealing in the January transfer window just might make all the difference between success and failure.

These 31 days are a gambler's feast - do you stick or twist? Will than new arrival make or break you.

It's rubbish. Proper planning during the close season, hard work in pre-season, attention to detail, discipline and team-work and team spirit will do far more to bring success to a club than panic buying and selling in January.

The transfer window is a waste of time, the only people who benefit are today's idle, indolent journalists. For these 31 days they get even more shit flung at them, so they don't have to dig for it.

Does it make football or football journalism better? No way Jose - do away with it, say I.

Think Before You Speak - Always Good Advice

2012-01-29T03:17:00.000-08:00

KILMARNOCK was reasonably quiet on Saturday night - there were one or two young gentlemen wandering the streets singing the praises of their heroes, but, realistically, we got the expected outcome and Killie will now face either Celtic or Falkirk in the League Cup Final - I post prior to kick-off in the second semi-final.

I expected the Ayrshire Derby to be a tight affair: I actually thought it might take penalties to separate the sides, but always felt, the game was Killie's to lose. To be fair to Kenny Shiels - he has worked wonders at the club and he and his players deserve their final appearance. The boss is trying to get the players to play an old-fashioned Scottish passing game, it doesn't always work as he and the players hope it will, but, to go to Rugby Park these days is to be entertained.

Ayr were, as I expected, well set-up by big Reidy, but, the breaks they needed to offset the difference between a full-time SPL side and a part-time SFL one never came their way. However, they went down with their pride intact.

Now we come to the disappointing bit - Kenny Shiels' post-match comments to BBC Radio Scotland. He is not the first manager to be caught-up in his immediate post-match comments by the adrenilin still coursing through his system. One famously remembers Alex Ferguson and Jim McLean, to name but two, coming out with instant reactions which continue to haunt them.

Perhaps we in the media should adopt a 15-minute or so black-out before we approach managers for post-match quotes - although I don't see that being too-popular with the radio and TV guys, deeply in-thrall as they are to instant reactions.

With that black-out, Mr Shiels might have been saved from himself and his injudicious comments on Ayr's performance. Maybe Ayr did set themselves up not to lose - silly tactics in a match which had to be decided on the day - more likely, Reidy's plan was to offer Killie few chances and be ready to take his own: and what's wrong with this approach when you are the under-dogs?

As my old mother used to say: "If you cannot speak well of someone - say nothing".

WHICH brings me nicely to something which has been bugging me for some time. Back in the old days before the internet and wall-to-wall 24/7 football on TV, only the true fanatics bothered writing to the sports letters pages of the papers. We all knew the saloon bar bores who were experts on all matters football and who had apparently limitless access to managers - but by and large we dismissed them as generally talking through an orifice other than their mouths.

Today, with broadband, twitter and blogs - we are all experts, while the papers now have their on-line boards and forums, which positively encourage debate. This, in many ways is a good thing; although I don't think we are as yet making the best use of modern technology and, in particular, I think the clubs could make more use of the internet for better-defining their relationship with their fans.

But, one down-side of this is the rise of the cyber-warrior - normally viewed as some kind of sad sack, spending all day, every day, debating issues on-line with similarly-afflicted followers of other teams. Nothing wrong with this, except in Scotland, where the age-old differences between followers of Celtic and Rangers, on on-line forums, rapidly descend into rampant whitabootery: "70-years of not signing Catholics" - aye right: "Big Jock knew". "Masonic conspiracy by referees" - come off it - "Compliance officers favouring Celtic at the expense of Rangers".

Maybe, as received wisdom has told us, Rangers have traditionally had most of Scotland's referees in their fan base; but, these days are apparently passed. If so, does the SFA's compliance officer (allegedly) being a Celtic fan move things on?

If it was wrong for Rangers to have friends and allies at court - is it suddenly right for Celtic to now apparently have undue influence?

The schism is apparently growing. Well, from my point of view, it is maybe time some of the men in power at the other clubs grew a pair and stood up to the big two. When push comes to shove, the Old Firm will stick together. Their notion is that they are bigger than the game as a whole, they are bullies and the only way to deal with bullies if to stand up to them.

Now, that is the most-pressing piece of whitabootery in Scottish football today.

Just what are they going to do about it?

Better Player Discipline Will Avoid Trial By Television

2012-01-27T04:46:00.000-08:00

AS I was saying just yesterday, it's a total lack of discipline which is one of the biggest things wrong with Scottish football today. Instgead of whining about "trial by television", it would, I feel, better help managers such as Messrs Fenlon and McCall, if they instilled some discipline into their players.

If they, the players, didn't make obscene gestures to fans, then they wouldn't bring themselves to the attention of the SFA's Compliance Officer. Simples - like the players.

That said, there is perhaps an element of "trial by television" coming into play. I do not hold TV and radio journalists in high regard - they deal in the instant reaction and immediate opinion, those of us who work in the print or online media - we can take a wee bit of time, reflect on what we pen and (hopefully) give a more-measured response to an incident, or take a more in-depth view of an issue than can our broadcasting bretheren, who must rect immediately.

OK, with modrn technology, their boobs can come back to haunt them, as surely as cuttings services can dig-up our written faux pas years later. But, if our carefully-crafted words end still end up as fish and chip wrappers, theirs dissolve into hot air - not a lot of difference.

As regards "trial by television" - this ought to level the playing field, since, given their greater exposure to the cameras, the Old Firm players' misdemeanours "should" become more apparent than those of the guys who play with the "diddy" teams - unless, of course, some technician forgets to remove the lens cap at half-time.

But, to be fair, the SPL should have an official camera recording every game, same level of coverage for each, and only that camera should be used to determine if, the referee having perhaps missed it, post-match punishment awaits a player. Anything else is unfair - and as the clubs have been saying, but not demanding, for years - all we want is a level playing field.

2012-01-26T10:58:00.000-08:00

AS someone who grew-up in football playing: "Ayrshire Junior Rules", I am highly-cynical when it comes to players and managers moaning about fines and suspensions being levied on them after they misbehaved. If we all played to the AJR protocol of: "Nae bluid, nae foul" - we could simply get on with the game and the world would be a better place.

I have also been for ages an advocate of zero tolerance for on-field misdemeanours. The weakness of the principle of a referee and two assistants, as in use today, is that almost all referees are, at heart, football enthusiasts. I know there is a cynical view in Scotland that to even contemplate becoming a referee, you have to have serious personality problems and be extremely anti-social. OK, perhaps the odd referee meets that description, but so-too are a few players and managers, it's life folks. But, in my experience, the vast majority of referees are in it from a deep love of the game and, not being top-drawer players, they have found refereeing a good way of taking their love of the game further than their talent might otherwise allow.

So, referees are often guilty of letting minor dissent and law breaches go unpunished, the players are enboldened and the misbehaviour gets worse. Then, when the poor wee dears are finally brought to heel, they react like the over-grown, spoiled kids most of them are.

Then there are the managers, who scream blue murder if one of their guys is hit illegally or is the victim of unseemly behaviour, but tend not to see their own guys' bad behaviour. "They awe dae it but oor boays" is the managers' default position.

So, when guys like Michael Higdon and Leigh Griffiths step over the line, I have no sympathy for them when they are caught and punished.

That said, there are a lot more, far-more-serious issues on which the SFA adopts a laissez faire attitude. But, I believe they should be congratulated on getting to grips with the smaller issues, so long as they start sorting-out some of the bigger issues as well.

Footballers are, by and large, thick; their general behaviour is terrible, they lack discipline and the clubs seem quite happy to let them behave like neds in shorts. Brighter players, forced to behave in an orderly, disciplined manner, just might be the first step in Scottish football's recovery.

And Now, The End Is Near, And Now They Face The Final Curtain

2012-01-25T07:43:00.000-08:00

ONE of the joys of being 64, semi-retired and a freelance is - I don't have to toe the party line. I can now write what I like and if I fancy submitting it to a newspaper or magazine, while it is still nice to see my piece in print, it doesn't matter whether or not it gets published.

Thus, I don't have to cow-tow to anyone, I can call a spade a fucking shovel if I like and it doesn't matter a jot. Which is why I'm happy to be on the sidelines when it comes to the seemingly endless speculation which is the Rangers' Tax Case.

Some Celtic-minded bloggers and journalists are becoming somewhat agitated at the moment, as the members of the tax tribunal who heard the case of Rangers FC and their EBT's v Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, a case whose outcome is due to enter the public domain within weeks. As far as these gentlemen are concerned, Rangers were always guilty as charged and they are wetting themselves at the prospect of Rangers being invited to find some £49 million to settle when what they see is the inevitable guilty verdict is revealed.

Now a wee glitch or two has developed. There is the wee rumour that Rangers may perhaps be about to win the case - which of course might well be wishful thinking on the part of some members of what is known as the Lap Top Loyal - in addition, there is a fear amongst the Celtic-minded that preparations are being made for a "new" Rangers to be fast-tracked into the SPL, should the existing Rangers be forced into liquidation by HMRC.

We are increasingly being told that: "Rangers are too big to fail"; that club "Cannot be allowed to go under".

Let me tell you this boys - no company is too big to fail, unless they have a lot of friends in government, in which case common sense goes out of the window. Rangers might be a huge club in Scottish terms and still a pretty big one in European or world terms, but, in the eyes of the government, they are small beer and IF the HMRC case goes against them - that club could fail, and rightly so.

It has been mis-managed for years; this mis-management cannot go on and while it would, for many people, be a crying shame to see Rangers vanish - they are no more immune to the penalties for mis-management than were Third Lanark, Clydebank, Airdrieonians or Gretna.

Professional football is an arm of the entertainment industry - the Alhambra and Empire Theatres used to be the biggest and glossiest in Glasgow, both are now gone. Green's Playhouse was one of the biggest entertainment facilities in Europe - gone too. John Brown's at Clydebank built the world's two greatest ocean-going liners -gone; Harland and Wolff built the Titanic, the most-iconic ship ever built - shut. Ravenscraig was one of Britain's greatest steel mills - gone. Why should Rangers be different from these other icons?

And, if Rangers does go, will it be bad news for Scottish football? I think not. Other clubs will rise, the trophies will be shared around and the loss of an equally-big, if not bigger, rival across town might be good news for Celtic.

Instead of having to buy foreign to stay upsides, they could try breeding and encouraging young Scots. After all, the greatest Celtic and indeed Scottish club side of all time was 100 per cent Scottish - all 11 players and the manager born within 35 miles of the ground and with only two of these bought-in (OK, three if you count the cost of Bertie Auld being repatriated from Birmingham).

Don't give me the old: "These days are past, it couldn't happen today" argument. It could and should happen today and maybe, without the hindrance of having to beat Rangers, Celtic could settle down and make it happen; or maybe Hearts or Aberdeen.

No, should Rangers go under, don't throw a lifeline, let it go.

2012-01-23T09:05:00.000-08:00

I have to laugh sometimes at the praise heaped upon today's football team captains. For at least the last 25-years, maybe longer, the position of captain of a football team has been repeatedly undermined by the rise of the coach as God - a phenomenon imported from American Football.

Football captains haven't really been important since the mid-1960s, or at leat the early 1970s. Sure, some captains have, even since then, had a more-significant impact on games than others - but, in all honesty I do not see in today's football, captains of the stature of THE captains of my youth - Billy Wright of England, Danny Blanchflower of Northern Ireland, Johnny Carey of the Republic of Ireland, John Charles of Wales; or the man who to me is The Captain - George Young of Rangers and Scotland.

When Young led Scotland, in the decade from 1948 to 1957, he was more than merely captain - he was in effect player-manager of the national team, which was picked by a selection committee. Occasionally that committee would be headed, or have as a member, a former internationalist or two, George Brown, Rangers director, former Rangers left half and himself a former Scotland captain, had a productive spell as chairman of the selection committee in the mid-fifties; but, mainly the selectors were the usual eclectic mix of butchers, bakers and candle-stick makers from Scotland's smaller clubs.

Selection was erratic, there was no long-term planning and with no team manager, it was left to Young to lay down the game plan and make sure the players stuck to it.

Amazingly, Scotland's record in those days was no worse than today, when we are playing Craig Levein a lot of money, for not great results.

Eric Caldow, himself an outstanding national captain, has told me that Young was magnificent. He could play his own game to a consistently high level, but, he could (and did), at half time, disect the other ten players' first half performances, suggest changes and provide motivation.

But, Young was just one great captain of those times - across the city there was Jock Stein; Hugh Long at Clyde was a great captain, as was Bobby Parker at Hearts, Davie Mitchell then Archie Glen at Aberdeen, Willie Toner, then Frank Beattie at Kilmarnock and while Gordon Smith at Hibs maybe wasn't in these defenders' class as a "sergeant major" figure, Lawrie Reilly has always insisted that the fear of letting Gordon down and of failing to match the standards he set was a great motivating factor for him and the other nine Hibs players.

Later, Dave Mackay was a great captain, as too, surely were Bobby Moore, John Greig and Billy McNeill. Billy Bremner appears on the face of it to be a great captain, but, alas, for me he falls down through his lack of self-control. Willie Miller, Terry Butcher, Graeme Souness, Pat Stanton and Roy Aitken were for me the last great captains - thereafter the men with the armband have been basically ball carriers.

And I include in that rating, Davie Weir, who has now left the Rangers' pay roll. He had the bearing of a traditional Rangers captain; he made much of the talent he was given; he never gave less than 100 per cent - but, for me, givent he nature of the modern game, he could never match-up to Greig, Caldow, Young, Shaw, Simpson and Meiklejohn - his predecessors. He was sent-off from Ibrox to ringing praise at the weekend, yes, he deserves the praise - but it was, for me, a bit over the top.

But, that's the measure of modern football journalism - I sometimes think the guys writing in the papers today think Scottish football began in the era of Law, Bremner and Dalglish.

I NOTICE Ally McCoist has been getting pelters from the fans as Rangers have stuttered in recent weeks. This Rangers/Celtic thing is all getting a bit too-hysterical these days, with fans, on both sides demanding that their team win every game, nothing less is acceptable.

They may still be paying over the odds for fairly average players, but the fact is, both clubs are nowhere as strong as they once were and the fact that they continue to dominate the SPL is more an indictment of the managerial policies of the boards of the other ten clubs than of any greatness from the two clubs.

I've been saying for years, if the other ten would have more of a go at the Big Two, they would enjoy more success. They have nothing to fear but fear, sadly, this is not a lesson they have learned.

Speaking of learning, McCoist is still learning his job as manager and for me, he would have benefitted from two or three seasons elsewhere, away from the influence of Walter Smith, before succeeding him. I question some of his purchases; I question his Smith-like refusal to trust in his young players, but, I will not write him off as Rangers manager after just over half a season. To do so is silly in the extreme.

THE battle lines are being drawin in my native Ayrshire this week, as the count-down to the Ayr United v Kilmarnock League Cup semi-final gets under way.

On paper, this SHOULD be a win for Killie - but - Ayr has by and large kept their best form for cup ties this season. Brian Reid never gets into the frame when it comes to vacant SPL jobs, but, look at his record at Ayr and he has worked wonders with little or no cash. Mark my words, Ayr could win this one, and if they do, get your money on Mark Roberts bagging the winner.

The Tax Man's Arrival Must Change Rangers' Mind Set

2012-01-21T00:59:00.000-08:00

I HAVE deliberately steered clear of the on-going speculation as regards Rangers FC and in particular that club's problems with the tax man. I can, however, say from personal experience that HMRC does tend to go in for grandstanding and posturing when it decides to go after an individual or company; but, once you sit round a table with an individual tax man, they tend to bend over backwards to be fair and are always entirely civil in how they conduct themselves.

This perhaps explains the fog of half-truths, misinformation and speculation which has surrounded the case of HMRC v Rangers FC. It will all come out in the wash and I would never attempt to predict the outcome.

What I will say, and given he appears to be an intensely private person he has perhaps done himself no favours thus far, Craig Whyte really must up his media game. Being head of Rangers isn't like heading-up any other Scottish or British companies and he has not impressed.

If I was Craig Whyte I would have - several months ago - told Ally McCoist: "Rangers are no longer a buying club; you can recruit via Bosmans, you can recruit, in the short-term via Under-23 Scottish players, for preference through sell-on deals with other Scottish clubs - but, your principal means of freshening-up the team will be through getting more out of the young kids we have and ensuring that, in the years ahead Rangers consistently recruit and nurture the top Scottish talent.

"The days are past when Rangers will pay big money for foreign players - the club cannot afford this".

For too-long Rangers have bought their players. They have failed one, perhaps two generations of young, very-often, Rangers-daft Scots. This they can no longer afford to do and if their management is wedded to the concept of: "Buy, buy, buy" then they MUST either adapt or be replaced. There is no alternative in the current state of the national or Scottish football economy.

I return again to the on-going and vexatious question of Team GB's Olympic Games row. Yesterday, within 48-hours of contacting them, FIFA's media team got back to me with the answer to a series of questions which I asked them.

I also put several questions to - the FA - who have asked me to telephone a certain member of their media staff, who will answer my questions; the BOA, FAW and IFA - who have acknowledged my enquiry of six days ago but not yet responded further; and the SFA, who haven't even had the courtesy to acknowledge my enquiry.

As I have said before - the SFA's whole stance on the Olympics issue disturbs me. They could, with one move, halt the BOA's demands for an all-UK side, which they say threatens Scotland's international independence - but for some reason will not.

It's no big thing: simply invoke Article 8/3 of FIFA's statutes as regards governance of the game, and the all-UK team cannot happen. The relevant passage reads as follows:

Fifa statutes - Article 8/3.

Scratch teams consisting of Players not belonging to the same club or Member shall not be permitted to play clubs or teams representing Members or similar teams unless authorisation has been granted by Members concerned and the Confederation on whose territory the match is planned. If the Players belong to clubs or Members from different Confederations, the authorisation of FIFA is required.

"Members" in this instance means individual member countries of FIFA - England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It is therefore down there, in black and white, that if Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales tell England: "You cannot pick our players for the Olympics" - then they cannot.

Given these are FIFA statutes - why is Stewart Regan continuing to insist: "There is nothing we can do to prevent Scottish players from playing in London?"

The Battle For the Soul of British Football

2012-01-20T05:46:00.000-08:00

THERE IS a good-going argument in progress on the Scotsman's website: www.scotsman.com this morning, on the subject of the BOA's Olympic football team. With Stewart Pearce allegedly saddened and unable to fathom the SFA's stance on the matter. I am sorry to return again to this subject, but, it really is serious and yes, the future of Scotland as an independent footballing nation probably is at stake.

So, who is (as I see it) doing well and who is doing badly out of all this.

The FA is doing well (up to a point to which I will return later) - they control football in this country as far as the Olympics is concerned; they are still the only voice football has on the BOA, so, the FA's blazers will get their plush seats and prawn sandwiches at the Games.

Stewart Pearce and Hope Powell are (for the moment) doing well: they've got the coaching gigs and, in Pearce's case, if the team gets amongst the medals, he becomes a credible alternative to "Our 'Arry" as Capello's replacement.

David Beckham is doing well: he has all but been guaranteed the captaincy of the Men's squad and, if they get among the medals, as an OBE he will be bumped up to at least CBE, more-likely KB as Sir David Beckham.

The BOA is doing well: they didn't like the "England as Team GB" option agreed by the four FAs, and forced the FA to renage on that and publish a UK-wide long list; this will have repercussions further down the line too.

Any England Under-21 player with a Championship club who shines at the Games will do well; he'll be in the shop window during the transfer window and could get a mega-move out of it.

Who isn't doing well?

The three "Celtic" FA's. They have shown their lack of professionalism by having been unable to force the FA to accept the compromise of the "England as Team GB" option.

They compounded their folly by not pulling-up the BOA; they should have pointed out to that body that FIFA rules prohibit the FA from selecting Northern Irish, Scottish or Welsh players without the permission of the IFA, SFA or FAW. Had they done that when the BOA insisted on an all-UK team, the row would have been defused.

Once the BOA and the FA ignored them, they ought to have been straight on to the Court for Arbitration in Sport in Switzerland - the CAS would surely have found for them.

The FAW and SFA have further compounded their folly by, while refusing to sanction the use of Welsh and Scottish players, happily agreeing to host games in Cardiff and Hampden. That's like going on a diet but refusing to give up chocolate cake.

Those Scottish players who opt to play are risking not doing well. The wilder elements in the Tartan Army will pounce on every mistake made in any post-Olympics matches, while some of the wilder elements within the SFA may well pressurise Craig Levein not to pick them.

In particular, Stephen Fletcher isn't doing well. Should he play in the Olympics, then, probably following Craig Levein's departure, end his Scotland exile - he will get a terrible time from the Tartan Army, unless he scores the winner against England.

Stewart Regan isn't doing well. Some of his pronouncements have been naive and foolish in the extreme. The future of his organisation might be at stake here - he ought to be getting tough with England.

Then, there is where the FA has, I feel, been short-sighted. They seem to be working under the illusion that, should the forces within FIFA who hate the idea of four separate FAs within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and who want - instead of the FA, the FAW, the IFA and the SFA having separate powers - football in this country controlled by a single UKFA: then that new UKFA would simply be the FA, with the other three added-on.

They ought to remember, the four Home Nations are entitled to have one FIFA vice president, that role could go; but, more importantly, almost always, that vice president IS NOT ENGLISH, because the three Celtic FA's gang-up on the English. They got their man in after John MacBeth made his badly-timed press statement about corruption within FIFA - their man was so gash, the other three got rid of him at the first chance.

IF a new UKFA has to be formed, the HQ might well be in London, but I think you would find the top jobs would go to Scotsmen, Northern Irishmen and Welshmen, as pay-back for English arrogance and self-interest, which has kicked-off during the lead-up to these Olympics.

I don't in all honesty see UEFA allowing their four longest-established members to vanish to be replaced by a single new member, who would be another big beast, so loss of independence is highly-unlikely - however, we should never say never.

I feel the real prize for FIFA is to get hold of three of the four places on IFAB, the International Football Associations Board - the body which does little other than tinker with the Laws of the Game.

This is a prize which the Home Nations have, but have neglected. They rarely speak with one voice at IFAB, if they did, they could make a start on sorting-out the mess which is the Laws of the Game as currently promulgated and the way these Laws are interpreted; they could be a genuine force for good in the game.

The FA/BOA stance on the 2012 football squads truly threatens that as yet under-used ability to influence and that is something worth fighting for.

The first battle is for an acceptable compromise to heal the Olympic selection wounds.

A Chance Lost

2012-01-19T01:56:00.000-08:00

SO, David Weir is seemingly about to ride off into the Govan sunset, still raging agaist the dying of the light as he attempts to prolong a playing career which has already entitled him to a congratulatory telegram from the Queen, through its great length.

Given that he has left his family living in England throughout his successful sojourn with Rangers, his short-term football future looks likely to be spent in the Football League.

I wish him well, but, it is a pity there is the lack of nous in Scotland, and in particular with the apparently troubled ranks at Rangers, to keep him in the land of his birth.

Weir, of course, was never your normal, run-of-the-mill footballer; the kind who (allegedly) wear their IQs on their back. For a start he is a product of the North American collegiate sporting student system. Therefore, being college-educated, Weir had brains in his head. He was also exposed to the better habits of American collegiate sport.

That does not mean he body-swerved drink, women and the many pitfalls which successfully derail too-many promising sportsmen. But, he came through a system whereby progress on the field had to be matched by progress in the class room. He had to work for his degree and that hard work has continued throughout his career.

I reckon Weir will make a cracking manager, I feel, however, Rangers missed a trick in not finding a role for him as a guide and mentor to the younger players, or by creating him a role which originated in American Football and is now big business in Rugby Union - that of defensive co-ordinator.

Look at Rangers' technical staff: Ally McCoist was the arch-penalty box predator; Kenny McDowall was a terrific front man, continually stretching defences; Ian Durrant had few peers in the midfield battle-field; Jim Stewart was a top-class goalkeeper.

All areas of the team are well-covered, except one - nowhere in the technical staff is there a defensive expert. I accept that football, being more free form that American or Rugby football, isn't as suited to the thought processes of a defensive specialist - but, there are still set pieces to defend, strategies to work out. I feel Weir, kept on as a player-coach with defensive responsibilities, could have made a significant contribution to the future of Rangers FC.

HOWEVER, if you read the ravings of certain cyber-warriors of a green-and-white hue, Rangers don't have a future. The First Tier Tribunal in the case of HMRC v Rangers FC has now concluded taking its evidence, the "judges" are now sifting through the evidence and will in due course - the popular money is on the fact that this will come in late March or early April - deliver its verdict.

Then, Rangers will either be home free, or in administration. I do hope they get off, and not through any love of Rangers. It is simply this, I don't think the police, ambulance services or indeed the NHS could cope with the hordes of suicidal Celtic fans whose reason for living would vanish if Rangers got off. Whilst an equal number of Rangers fans might die laughing, that the forecasts of impending disaster proved had proved false.

AS Davie Weir rides off into the sunset (or not), an other old face re-appears, with Mark McGhee back in management at Bristol Rovers.

I have always felt Bristol is one of those cities in England which could benefit from putting local rivalries to one side and amalgamating its two clubs, who have under-achieved for generations, into one potentially big club.

Bristol Rugby Club was, for many, many years, one of the top teams in England. Of course, they have been in the doldrums more or less since Rugby went professional, but, they will be back in the top flight soon enough. That's not something you can safely say about either City or Rovers, however.

Still, it will be good to see how McGhee gets on in winning his battle for local bragging rights over City, led by Derek McInnes. As usual in a battle between Scots - you under-estimate the Paisley man at your peril and I can see McGhee's side continuing to play second-fiddle to McInnes's.

WELL done Morag Pirie, in being promoted to the Elite grade of women referees. Wee Morag has battled hard for recognition in Scotland and deserves this promotion, as do her male counter-parts. This month seven male Scottish referees have been confirmed as FIFA-listed.

I reckon we now have far more "world-class" referees than we have players, yet still we abuse them - ach, that's fitba.

I SPOTTED an absolute gem from my big mate Shuggie Macdonald, in the Herald this week. Writing about the on-going Olympics row, Shuggie revealed that SFA Honcho Stewart Regan isn't too-bothered about the possible SFA loss of independence, should a proper, all-UK "Team GB" play in London - but he is worried about the possible loss of Scotland's individual place on IFAB.

Since, under the current legislation, we cannot lose our IFB place for so-long as we are an independent football nation, I would have thought the loss of that independence would make the loss of the IFAB place inevitable. So, all his efforts should be geared to staying independent and therefore keeping our IFAB place.

The SFa's conduct of the whole Olympic debacle has been disgraceful. If Craig Levein had managed the national team so-badly, he'd have the entire Tartan Army on his back, yet the SFA's poor display over the Olympics goes relatively unreported.

Nearly 100 years on and the Tartan Army (football version) is like the Tartan Army (the real military version) - Lions led by Donkeys.

Sic a Parcel o Rogues in a Nation

2012-01-18T11:16:00.000-08:00

I AM becoming more and more frustrated at the way the furore over the UK's participation in this year's London Olympics refuses to die down. But, I am becoming even-more frustrated at the way football ties its knickers in a twist over this issue.

On the face of it, it is unacceptable that the UK, the host nation, should not be represented in every event at the four-yearly sports fest. That said, the IOC, the body which runs the Games, has become increasingly greedy in the way it expands the Games, without properly managing this expansion.

IF, as we are led to believe, the Olympic Games is the greatest display of sport on the planet, then surely an Olympic gold medal ought to be THE prize in any sport. Take boxing, in an ideal world, the winner of the Super-heavyweight gold medal in the boxing ring would be seen as THE man - so, at least one of the Klitski brothers should be competing, while, if we was serious in wanting to be seen as the best - David Hyde would be fighting for Team GB: ditto Amir Khan.

But, they will not be there. Likewise, the winner of the tennis gold medal would be THE man, it could even be oor ain Andy Murray, only, he'd rather win Wimbledon (as, even more so - would the UK tennis public wish this for him).

Then we come to football. IN an ideal world we would be seeing ALL the top players - Messi, the great Spanish players, the Brazilian superstars etc, playing. But we will not - in its determination to protect its own World Cup as THE football tournament, FIFA - whose membership of the IOC gives Herr Blatter another opportunity to strut his stuff ont he world's sporting stages - deliberately down-grades the Olympic football tournament.

If you win it, great, if not, it's not as if it's the World Cup.

I have nothing against the four Home Nations' FAs using the Olympics as a development tournament, giving vital international experience to our best Under-23 players from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

I can understand the opposition of the three "Celtic" FAs to playing as "Team GB"; they rightly fear for their international independence. I can also understand the (English) FA's determination to have "Team GB" involved. It's England's games after all AND, crucially, the English, being programmed from birth to be unable to differentiate between England and the UK will be convinced, if FIFA ever pushes through a single UK FA, they - THE Football Association - would be that body and they would allow the other three in as subordinates.

Aye Right, as the response to that would be from Glasgow.

So, given that the English have given nothing, particularly any say in the management, I'm against a UK-wide "Team GB", but have nothing against England representing "Team GB".

The SFA, the IFA and the FAW had nothing against this, but, the British Olympic Association, the BOA, had to have a UK-wide team. They, of course have no knowledge of or interest in the possible ramifications of this.

That's that out of the way. What I cannot get my head round is, here we are 190 days from kick-off, and with a football close season taking up quite a few of these days, there is still nothing done about getting a representative team ready.

Warm-up games - no. Have they cut the several hundred players on the long list down to a manageable number? No. With the ROI and England both playing in Euro'2012 at the end of this season, an end-of-season tournament between Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Team GB would I feel, have been interesting.

Finally, there is the sheer hypocrisy of oor ain SFA. They wanted nothing to do with Team GB; they don't want Scottish players to make themselves available for it - BUT - they are quite ready to host games at Hampden. They keep telling us: "We cannot prevent Scottish players from playing for Team GB". They can, if they can be bothered to read the FIFA rules.

That's blatantly two-faced - we still have: sic a parcel o rogues in a nation.

Stewart Regan was widely-quoted today in forecasting a back-lash by the Tartan Army against any Scot who plays for Team GB.

I hope the lads in the TA are just as harsh on the two-faced SFA "blazers", their conduct has been less than exemplary.

You win nothing with kids - but if you're not winning anyway - why not go with them?

2012-01-16T14:00:00.000-08:00

I AM currently working on a couple of books concerning Scottish football history, consequently I am trawling through details of the early days of football in this country - the legendary days when Scotland ruled the world and the "Scotch Professors" were the most-sought-after commodities in the game.

Back them, in the days when the sun never set on the British Empire, while the Widow of Windsor led an almost reclusive life on the Isle of Wight, the High Road to England was the road to riches for so many coal miners from Ayrshire, Fife, Lanarkshire and the Lothians; gallus "Weegies" from the Glasgow, farm boys from Stirlingshire or Angus, or boys from Highland glens.

You could almost say that the expansion of football in England and the Scottish diaspora to feed that expansion's need for talent was little more than stage two of the Highland Clearances. The ambitious, the driven, they left for a better life in the south. The rest stayed behind.

It therefore, goes without saying that, if the elite of Scotland's footballers continually left, the quality of the domestic game was sure to decline. If the cash which the clubs received for these players wasn't properly invested in the future, then the quality of the domestic game was sure to decline. The SFA and the clubs, it has to be said, did well to manage that decline - Scotland's hasn't (metaphorically) plunged over a cliff in the same way as Austria and Hungary has; we've simply gone into a gradual decline, which hasn't yet, but still could, accelerate into a full-blown hurtle to oblivion.

It also goes without saying that, if the best of each generation, as was the case in Scottish football for the first century and more of organised football - some four or five generations, was exported - and aren't we always told its people has been Scotland's finest export - then we are badly diluting the native stock.

Pat Crerand's famous throw-away line from his spell on the 1970 World Cup pundits panel: that the British nations ought to import Pele, Tostao and Gerson from the brilliant Brazilians who won that year, and put them immediately to stud duties, has a resonance today. Is it too late to get Messi, Kaka, Christiano Ronaldo and the likes to do their stuff with some athletic Scottish girls?

If we don't do that - we have to improve our coaching, work harder and have faith in our young players - not recruit Hondurans, Hottentots, Haitians, and other exotic foreigners, at the expense of our own young players.

We have seen, in recent weeks and months, efforts from within the SFA to make the necessary changes. The McLeish Report wasn't universally welcomed; the changes Henry called for haven't been made as quickly as some of us hoped they would be; even some of the changes made have got a few of us on the sidelines concerned; while, of course, some of the backswoodsmen are resisting with all their might.

Fanning The Olympic Flames

2012-01-13T23:37:00.000-08:00

IT SAYS much about the ineptitude of our football administrators in the United Kingdom that, less than 200 days before the kick off in the Olympic Games football tournament, "Team UK" is totally disorganised.

Speaking as a Scottish nationalist (note the small n), I would far rather support a Scottish Olympic team, but, while I think I might well see one at the 2020 Olympics, I am not holding my breath. The reality is, there will be a Team GB football team in action this year, it apparently will be an all-UK one, and there will be Scots players in it.

I applaud the SFA's stance (thus far) on prefering not to get involved officially, since there could be implications for Scotland's footballing independence - but, their handling of the whole affair has been terrible. That said, the British Olympic Association has been dishonest, self-serving and short-sighted too. None of the administrators from the five parties involved - the four Home Nations' football associations and the BOA - has come out of this well.

But, if they move quickly, the mess can be sorted-out. IFAB, the International Football Associations Board, will meet in Cardiff in March. The high heid yins of the FA, FAW, IFA and SFA will be there, as will Herr Blatter, Monsieur Platini and the movers and shakers of the global game.

Here is an opportunity to get FIFA to make it clear, the independence of the four separate countries is, in football terms, secure. Given the way UEFA in particular has allowed so many "minnows" to enter the various UEFA competitions - San Marino, Andorra, Leichtenstein etc, they, the most-influential bloc within FIFA will not allow four of the oldest members, including one big beast -England, a middle-sized beast with a proud past - Scotland and a couple of long-established small beasts, to disappear and become one huge beats - a potential UKFA.

OK, worst-case scenario, one or maybe two of the four individual UK places on IFAB might have to be ceded to UEFA - but all four FAs would survive.

But, the Home Nations need to present a united front. They need to get together first and have a unified plan of action. The FA, for a start, should swallow its considerable pride and cede authority over the football team at this and future Olympics to a new UK Football Board (note, I say board rather than association) - specifically set-up to operate within the BOA. Olympic football can no longer be, as it has been since 1905 - England's ball game.

With that UKFB set-up, the four can speak with a single voice to FIFA. The three Celtic nations should point-out to England, under FIFA rules, they cannot, even with BOA backing, pick Northern Irish, Scottish or Welsh players for the London team, so, if they want their team in action in London - they had better get the UKFB up and running and onto the BOA.

They must then tell FIFA, we come together only for the Olympics, otherwise, we are four separate countries and we remain thus.

The three Celtic nations, and in particular Scotland, did themselves no favours when they said NO to player participation, but YES to making Hampden available for games.

Given the political realities of probable Scottish independence, this whole Olympic row will only last for this one Olympics, perhaps also, for Brazil 2016 - if Team GB does well - but, it needs sorting out and the IFAB conference in Cardiff is the single occasion on which all parties will be together.

Then, with the right result in Cardiff, Stewart Pearce and Hope Powell can get their squads together and organise the warm-up games they will need.

The right Team GB squad would, given England's Euro 2012 commitments, have a strong Scottish and Welsh core, would have broad public backing and could do well. The whole thing so far has been a cock-up which reflects well on nobody. Time to do the British thing, muddle through somehow and win.

The independence of the four international teams is important, but, so too is a good performance as host nation in London. It has been a shambles so far, but, it can still be sorted-out - if the "blazers" get their act together - NOW.

Put a Brick Through that Window

2012-01-12T23:07:00.000-08:00

I HATE the January transfer window. When I "were nowt but a lad" as my Four Yorkshiremen friends say, football's transfer market was easy to understand - if a player was available, some club with the money bought him, or otherwise - up to some point a few weeks before the end of the season. Today all the buying, selling and trading is done in two "windows" - end of season - to end of August, and in the month of January.

We are told the transfer market is what keeps football going. Me, I'd like to see the January market abolished. Of course, players will always want to move, clubs will always want to freshen-up their squads, man has become over the millennia a natural trader, but, these days, I reckon, if we banned transfers for cash, football would be better for it.

I always look at North American sport as my model. In the big sports over there - Americal football, baseball, basketball and ice hockey there is no transfer market which involves the big-name stars moving from club to club for millions of dollars. Sure, they still move, but they, the players, have control of their own destinies. They are their own men - they contract their services to clubs, but are not "owned" by the clubs, as happens over here.

Mind you, the way American sport is organised, with franchises, with the way there is no relegation threat and where clubs can plan for the future is far fairer than the comparatively unregulate state of football in Europe makes far greater sense to me. Amazingly, North America, the home of capitalism and the free market economy has, in the way its professional sport is run, shown more "socialism" and built a flatter playing field than we have this side of the pond.

If, over here, we had a situation whereby the transfer window closed on the eve of the first match and thereafter managers had to manage and clubs had to make do with the squads they then had, we might have a better game. And, if we franchised each league to remove the fear of failure and relegation, we just might start to produce better players, since clubs could not buy their way out of trouble, but would have to make do with what they had. And, if the supposed first picks weren't doing the business, either bring in the kids, or change the manager/coach.

I LOVED HIbs boss Pat Fenlon's comment about the abuse he allegedly received from some Cowdenbeath fans. Mr Fenlon was allegedly shocked to be described as an illegitemate Irishman, rather than, as he was used to as a Linfield player, an illegitemate Orangeman. Of course what Pat maybe didn't grasp is, he was in Fife at the time.

We here in God's County of Ayrshire have our detractors among the sophisticated Weegies of the world, but, as I always say: you come to Ayrshire, put your watch back 100 years - you cannot do that in Fife, over there the watch hasn't been invented yet.

I ADMIRE what Kenny Shiels is trying to do at Kilmarnock. His support for the passing game and his insistence that the team passes is wonderful. That said, if opponents fore-check well, the Killie defence has a collective bout of the skitters, which makes for an interesting game.

I firmly believe Derek Riordan, should he sign for Killie, could flourish in the team's system. And, if the club was to house him in Onthank, series two of "The Scheme" could go global. But, seriously, Killie survived Kris Boyd, McCoist and Durrant and successfully re-habilitated Andy McLaren. It's a no-brainer, come to Killie Deeksie son.

The Curse of: Interesting Times

2012-01-10T11:32:00.000-08:00

I HAVE never "got" big business or high finance, which is why I write about sport; had I known my way around a balance sheet or a share prospectus better, I might have had a well-paid job, made my pile and been retired years ago. I prefer the simpler life of writing about sport.

So, when it comes to the current apparent malaise around Rangers FC, I try not to pontificate or put forward opinions. That said, if I was a Rangers' fan, I'd be worried, very worried, by current events.

Sir David Murray has, somehow, swanned off into the sunset, leaving Craig Whyte to soak up all the flak which is currently flying around this Scottish institution. However, the fact is: Rangers' current travails are mostly of Murray's making. SDM is the son of a gambler; his late father had a good-going business, covering various fields of business, but he lost it all through his addiction to slow horses.

His son made an even bigger pile and for a time seemed untouchable in Scottish business. He had the confidence of the money men in Edinburgh financial circles and could apparently do no wrong. Now, his star has dimmed - his reputation is tarnished.

I for one am not surprised. I watched Murray the Younger's rise in basketball. For a time he could do no wrong apparently as he recruited Americans and Scots-Americans to keep Murray International Metals (MIM) ahead of the field and in an effort to make them a force in the game in Europe.

Certainly, MIM won a couple of invitation tournaments, but genuine European success, as measured by success in basketball's equivalents of the Champions League or the Europa League eluded him. He took MIM into a genuine British League, only to be pipped for the silverware there by, of all clubs, Rangers BC. He then bought Rangers FC and its basketball younger brother, shut down the basketball operation and concentrated on the football one.

MIM became Livingston Bulls, which collapsed through a lack of investment and, more-crucially, the lack of a youth policy. They could no longer afford the big-money imports, so they became just another team and folded.

He started a Scottish tabloid Sunday newspaper, the Sunday Scot, recruited some big money, big ego journalists - it failed, he closed it.

We can now see a pattern emerging. For as long as Murray flung money at Rangers, they were pre-eminent in Scotland, but, as with basketball, his sporting model in football was unsustainable.

He got out of basketball and left others to pick up the mess. Now, he has done the same in football. Sir David Murray is now, to some of us, as much of a failed gambler as his father was.

Now we come to Craig Whyte. I know nothing of him, but, I do have a friend in the rugby world who worked for Mr Whyte in his days in plant hire and security. My friend does not have a good word for him and is very resentful of the time his innocent period as one of Whyte's underlings involved him with the police.

"I wouldn't trust Craig Whyte as far as I could throw him", is my mate's assessment. OK, that is just one man's view, coloured by unfortunate association.

That said, Whyte's first nine months or so as "The Man" at Ibrox have hardly been a case of hitting the ground running and producing a Kennedy-style first spell of action and improvement. Since he took over, Rangers have lurched from crisis to crisis, embarrassing headline to embarrassing headline.

Yet, for all this, even with an on-going tax case which, let's not beat about the bush, could yet finish-off the club, Rangers are hot on the heels of Celtic in the annual two-horse race for the SPL title. What does the fact that such a troubled club can still be competing for the big prize say about the rest of Scottish football, by the way?

I couldn't for the life of me see what Whyte saw in Rangers. Nobody can make money out of Scottish football in the present climate. If the club was to be allowed to fail - it is doubtful that, in the current economic climate, a short-term or even medium-term killing could be made from demolishing Ibrox and developing the site.

I can only conclude that Whyte is either, a Rangers' fan (btw my mate who worked for him insists he is a Motherwell fan), who has allowed his heart to over-rule his business head, and has become enchanted by the idea of owning Rangers; or, he is a patsy, put in there to take the flak.

Honestly, I am none too bothered on either score. Rangers are not too big to fail and maybe, if the biggest club went to the wall, the others would stop, think, and put Scottish football's many wrongs to right, or follow Rangers into history.

We live in interesting times, of that there is no doubt.

Well Done the Third Team

2012-01-07T09:48:00.000-08:00

IN over 30 years of covering football, by far the best call I ever saw made by a match official was at a Scottish Junior Cup tie between Arthurlie and Hill o' Beath, at Dunterlie; the tie, a replay, was poised at 1-1 with seconds to go, when the visitors from Fife forced a corner.

The ball came over, up went the players and the ball finished up in midfield; however, I thought, from my vantage point behind that goal, I had seen it fisted there by a 'Lie defender, as did one or two of the H-O-B players. Then, the linesman who had been back at half-way and right in front of the Arthurlie technical area was spotted with his flag raised. The referee, a young boy named Willie Collum who was, to my mind at the time, barely out of nappies, went across, conferred with the linesman and gave the penalty, which H-O-B converted to win the game.

Cue outrage from the 'Lie fans, backroom staff and committee, until one of their defenders admitted, he had indeed fisted the ball away. That decision showed the positive nature of events when the three officials work as a team - which doesn't always happen. I haven't seen too-many examples of such team work, ever, but there was a terrific one this afternoon at Dens Park, when a Dundee "goal" was rightly chalked-off for offside, on the say-so, not of the referee, or the in-line assistant, but either the other assistant or the fourth referee - the two officials who had the best view of events.

We are quick to criticise, often too-quick, Scottish referees, when they get it wrong, but this call, like that long-ago one at Dunterlie, shows that, when Scottish referees get it right - they are as good as any. I've tried refereeing, it's a hard job, which is why I am loath to criticise football's third team - because without them, the other two could not function.

WELL done the 'Bot. Being from that part of God's County, I have been encouraged from the cradle to despise and abhor Auchinleck Talbot - but, credit where it is due. To hold Hearts to a single-goal defeat was a wonderful performance, which will have done wonders for the standing of Junior football and hopefully brought closer the day when we have a proper working pyramid in Scottish football.

I have been saying to other football writers for years now - the juniors is a better grade of football than you think - results such as today's at Tynecastle back that up.

It is time we had real competition at a lower level in Scotland. Why should some teams be "senior" for ever when they contribute nothing to the senior game - open the doors, let the fresh air of ambitious clubs from the Junior, Highland and East of Scotland Leagues have their chance to replace some of the dead wood in the lower ranks of the SFL.

Have an 'Eart Guv

2012-01-06T00:02:00.000-08:00

MORE than half a century ago, when I first got into senior football, Hearts were a team to admire. Under manager Tommy Walker, for a spell of just over a decade they were the team to watch in Scotland. Sure, Rangers won more trophies than any other club in that period, but, aside from that brief two or three year period when Jim Baxter's magic held Scotland in thrall, if you wanted sexy football and goals, you watched Hearts.

The "Terrible Trio" of Alfie Conn Senr., "King" Willie Bauld and the under-rated Jimmy Wardhaugh set the standard, only to be eclipsed by that force of nature called Dave Mackay, but the likes of goalkeeper Gordon Marshall Senr., full back Bobby Kirk, left half John Cumming - who but for the presence alongside him of Mackay would have been judged "exceptional", the youthful Alex Young, Ian Crawford and Jimmy Murray - the scorer of Scotland's first goal in the World Cup finals were superb players in their own right and well-nigh unstoppable as a team.

The 132 goals Hearts scored in winning the league in 1958 tells you all you need to know about the attacking football Walker espoused - Hell, they even "stole" the supernova that was Gordon Smith from rivals Hibs to help them win the league in 1960: mind you, that was a more-defensive team - they only scored 102 goals in that campaign.

But Kilmarnock arrived at Tynecastle one Saturday afternoon in 1965, ground-out the 2-0 win they needed to pip Hearts for the title and with a certain Mr Stein working his magic at Barrowfield, the Hearts flower wilted and was cut back. Sure, there have been brief flourishes in the years since, but in the past 45 years or so, Hearts have mainly been - just another diddy club, living off the Old Firm's left-overs.

Long-suffering Gorgie guys perhaps thought Vladimir Romanov was the answer to their prayers, a mega-rich saviour who would provide the cash to allow them to slug it out with the big two in Scotland and gain a reputation as if not a megaclub such as Real Madrid or Barcelona, the Milan duo, Bayern Munich or England's Big Five, then as an upper class European club, capable of regular appearances in the knock-out stages of the two big club competitions.

Today, these hopes are in tatters - the promise of European successes merely empty words and there is genuine concern for the future of what ought to be, the Number Three club in Scotland at the very least.

Those of us who are Hearts admirers, or who care for Scottish football HAVE to be concerned at recent events around Gorgie. Forward though we canna see - we can only guess and fear. But, I genuinely believe Hearts could soon be history.

Look at the facts, the club's debts are conservatively estimated to be somewhere upwards of £50 million; the average home attendance is somewhere in the region of 12,000 fans; there is no money in Scottish football, very little cash other than gate money; Romanov has alienated a lot of people around Edinburgh who might, for whatever reason, be expected to ride to Hearts' rescue.

The owner has announced that he will no longer underwrite the costs, which way exceed the income. Hearts have lived beyond their means for years and it has to stop. It is difficult, nay impossible, to envisage some other dyed-in-the-wool Hearts-loving multi-millionaire turning up in Kaunus in the near future, waving a sufficiently-large cheque to take over the club; then having the additional cash available to tear down and rebuild the main stand, or to find and fund a new ground more-suited to top-flight football in the 21st century. I don't see a Hearts equivalent of Sir Tom Farmer out there.

Romanov may well close the club and sit on the Tynecastle site until it can be re-developed for housing, or a supermarket or offices. He might, as he has threatened, let the highly-paid players go, suffer the losses and let Hearts continue, with young players and free transfer men, stumbling along at the level of a Dundee, or Falkirk, or Partick Thistle. Who knows, but whatever happens, some long, hard years lie ahead for the Gorgie faithful.

But, just maybe, somebody with the good of Hearts at heart, can put together a plan which will allow fresh management, with a means of, over time, easing Romanov away from the club and see Hearts returned to local management and to a position whereby they can go toe-to-toe with the Old Firm. Football has always offered a place for romantics - who all too often quickly become realists once they understand the madness of the game's economics and politics.

Is there an elder statesman out there, with the contacts and the vision to rescue Hearts? Over to you George Foulkes.

2012-01-05T07:33:00.000-08:00

SO - Lee McCulloch has lost his appeal against his two-game suspension which followed his red card against St Mirren, yet another incident which has perked-up the already boiling pot of passion which is Scottish football.

The referee saw the incident between McCulloch and Carey, decided McCulloch had to go - he went; fair enough say I. The referee is the sole judge of fact, we must accept his decision.

But, it is at this point that football's justice and disciplinary system lets the game down. When McCulloch struck Carey, it was during the jostling match which nowadays preceeds the arrival of the ball into the penalty area from a set piece.

Imagine, if you can, what would have happened had their coming-together happened outwith football. Let's say McCulloch and Carey were in a late night taxi queue, it was cold and maybe drizzling; a taxi arrives, McCulloch moves towards it and Carey grabs him from behind, so McCulloch hits him, Carey goes down, but, instead of a football referee - a policeman arrives on the scene and arrests McCulloch, who is taken to the nearest police station and charged.

In the real world McCulloch has been accused of an alleged assault; but he remains innocent, until his guilt is proved in a court of law. In football, however, the minute the red card was brandished, McCulloch was guilty. In the real world, the police and procurator fiscal would be required to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, to a panel of justices of the peace, a sheriff, a sheriff and jury or a senior judge and jury (dependant on the severity of the assault) that he was indeed guilty as charged.

In the real world, McCulloch would have had the opportunity to bring forward cctv evidence - similar to the Sky Sports footage widely shown after his red carding, while his lawyer had the chance to argue his case.

Certainly, Rangers had that opportunity when the offence was dealt with by the SFA's disciplinary system, but, their protocols fall some way short of the standards expected in the real world.

Have, if you can get hold of the clips, another look at the incident. It is clear that Carey grabbed McCulloch first - there is also a presumption that, having been hit on the back side of his head, behind his left ear, Carey fell to the ground clutching his face. It could be argued that he was guilty of the original foul which kicked-off the incident and that, by going down clutching his face - Cartey was guilty of a degree of simulation. McCulloch will sit out two games for his crime, Carey escaped penalty for his two crimes. Is this justice?

Take another somilar incident, from the Manchester City v Liverpool game earlier this week. When Yaya Toure rose to head home one of the City goals, a Liverpool defender could clearly be seen, with both hands round another City player, preventing him from getting up to the cross which Toure met. City got the goal, but maybe the 'Pool defender should have been at least yellow-carded. Mind you, you see similar bouts of wrestling whenever a free kick or corner is delivered into a penalty area in every game, the same old jostling, pushing and wrestling goes on; and as these unpunished incidents continue football becomes ever less a gentleman's game - it is now a ruffians' game, played by ruffians.

We need a zero tolerance approach to policing the game. We need, at the top level, a new protocol, whereby whilst the referee is still the sole judge of fact (as far as the duration of play is concerned) - where there is television coverage, this may be reviewed post match by a review body, whose memebrs have the power to cite players who got away with fouls and to call them to taks; who may have a reviewing brief as regards referees' decisions and the power to decide that the yellow card given should have been a red, or red-yellow; who can call-up and discipline managers for comments made before, during and after matches.

That way, we would still punish the guys who go too far, as McCulloch did; but the guys who caused the bother, such as Carey, would no longer be getting away with things and hopefully, we would have a better game.

The International Football Associations Board, IFAB, meets next in March, in Cardiff. This is the body which makes new laws and reviews existing ones. Much is made of the fact that the four United Kingdom football associations each has a seat on IFAB. To my mind, they do very little with the power this gives them. If the UK associations really are, as they like to think themselves - the guardians of the game's soul, I would suggest they get together before hand, adopt a common pose and use their block vote to push through this zero tolerance approach to football's disciplinary ills - before it is too late.

Then, they just might justify their positions on IFAB.

2012-01-04T11:54:00.000-08:00

IN RECENT months I have let this blog slide, partially because I have begun to despair of Scottish football and the state it has got itself into; but also, because I have been working hard on a series of books which I hope to have published in the near future. However, I have kept abreast of football developments via our much-maligned media and through my secret shame - a devotion to the Rumour Mill on The Scotsman.

For those of you unaware of the Rumour Mill, this is the natural home of the one issue obsessives from both sides of the Old Firm divide. Here, if a single Rangers fan posts that, to his certain knowledge, the world is more or less round - then within minutes a Celtic fan will post that this is bunkum, the world is not roundish, but square, and painted green and white in any case. Then, off the go - tit-for-tat, ad infinitum. Here too you will find the Rangers fan who only posts on Celtic issues, and his mirror image from the other side, who only ever posts on Rangers issues. If this is where we are at, in this 140th year of organised football in Scotland then - We're awe doomed, doomed ah tell ye.

The formation of the SPL, the Greed is Good league, has done nothing other than make the age-old tribal battle between the Old Firm, even more tribal; and this isn't healthy for the game, or the two clubs. If I have a wish for 2012, it is that decency and common sense will prevail and we will return to the days of honest rivalry, friendly banter and good competition - what we are seeing today, particularly on the internet, just aint healthy.

THE MORE I see of Craig Whyte's reign at Ibrox - the more I worry. Let's be honest here, Sir David Murray doesn't have a good record in sports management. He nearly ruined Scottish basketball through his stewardship of MIM then Livingston Bulls - where his model was unsustainable. He brought the same management model to Rangers - where it was equally unsustainable, and in both cases, he walked away, having spent a fortune for little return. He never attained the true European respect for MIM which he desired and 2008 not withstanding, his European record with Rangers was disgraceful.

Murray was an entrepreneur - he craved success, adulation and a high public profile. In the end he was forced to sell for £1, a club whose single shares at one time commanded a price tag of upwards of £10 PER SHARE. If that is not failure and mis-management, what is?

Murray has now sold the club to Craig Whyte - a Venture Capitalist. As I have explained before, VCs are the diametric opposite of entrepreneurs, they operate in the shadows, despise publicity and are in it for the money they can make, rather than public acclaim.

For these reasons, Whyte's purchase of Rangers doesn't make sense. If we take him at his word and he was a Rangers' fan in his younger, poorer days - although one mutual friend assures me he (Whyte) only ever claimed allegiance to Motherwell - then, perhaps he does have a dream of taking the club forward. If he's only in it for the money - I don't see where it will come from, since nobody with any sense would try to make a pile out of the game up here.

Classic VC behaviour would have been to have sold-on the club's few saleable playing assets: McGregor, Jelavic, Naismith, Davis - and go with the young boys. But that modus would demand an experienced manager, with a track record in developing and enjoying success with young players. Walter Smith never fitted that bill, Ally McCoist doesn't. Indeed, perhaps only Sir Alex Ferguson does, and there is no way he will ever manage Rangers.

The club's current travails - inconsistency, turgid football, comes as no surprise. If he really wants long-term success, he (Whyte) would perhaps be as well telling McCoist: "We sell our big earners, we get rid of the dead wood and we go with the kids". After half a season in the SPL, they will either be ready for next season, or can be jettisoned and replaced for next season.

McCoist's early days as a manager have not been exactly stimulating for the fans - perhaps in more-sensible time, he would have been able to rebuild for the long term, the fans might have accepted a few seasons in Celtic's shadow, with the promise of better days to come. In today's over-heated atmosphere, where Rangers HAVE to beat Celtic (and vice versa) with no other challengers on the horizon, that isn't going to happen.

These are difficult times for Rangers, for Celtic and for Scottish football.

How are times hard for us? I can hear the Celtic fans asking.

Simple - Rangers, without being in any way as good as Rangers teams of yore, have won the last three SPL titles. If, in their current state of disarray, they make it four-in-a-row, what does that say about Celtic? If they don't, and Celtic win the SPL - the feat in no way, given the paucity of opposition, makes them anything like worthy successors to the Lisbon Lions. Aye, we live in hard and difficult times.

2011-09-19T02:38:00.000-07:00

THE first Old Firm clash of the new season has come and gone. As far as I know Glasgow has not been sacked in the aftermath; the Riot Act did not require to be read from the steps of the City Chambers and life goes on pretty much as normal.

Rangers now have a four-point lead over their arch-rivals at the top of the two-horse race which is the SPL, but, if anyone thinks it's all over - they will surely have a few rude awakenings between now and May 2012.

The ratio of good goals to comedy cuts was three to two, there were some excellent passages of play and little in the way of controversy. One hopes the politicians who attended, in pursuit of the rapidly being discredited anti-sectarian legislation learned a thing or two, but, having a healthy scepticism where politicians are concerned, I doubt it.

Of course the fact that the match earned such a good "press" ought not to deflect us from the main concern in Scottish Football in this year of 2011 AD - the fact we are shite.

We have, as we have always had in Scotland, one or two players who are better than average and it was arguably the contributions of two of that apparently dwindling number of Scottish-based professionals: the two Steves, Davis and Naismith, which made the difference yesterday.

Certainly there was the rare sight of Allan McGregor making a mistake, but, by the law of goalkeeping averages, he was due a howler, but, over the piece, Davis and Naismith as much as anyone made the difference.

Rangers will push on from here, Celtic will re-group and continue the chase; the rest - well with each successive year in which it boils down to Celtic or Rangers, Scottish Football goes backwards and becomes more and more irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

Let's face it, for all their excellence yesterday, neither Davis nor Naismith is going to get anywhere near anyone's who has any lengthy relationship with the Ibrox club's All-Time Rangers XI. Similarly nobody in yesterday's Celtic contingent is going to challenge for a place in the AT Celtic XI. Indeed, I might suggest you'd be down to about the seventh or eighth teams before any current player's name would be thrown into the selection mix - yet still they dominate.

The onus falls not on Celtic or Rangers to lift Scottish Football our of the current doldrums, it falls on the other ten clubs.

If they raise their game - the Old Firm will be forced to raise theirs in response and we might see Scottish clubs in Europe beyond August on merit rather than on the whims of what passes for football "justice".

It our current masters are not regularly and seriously challenged, the increasingly vocal successors to Private Fraser and Victor Meldrew will b ecome ever-more vocal and their protestations that we are all doomed will be accepted as fact.

One Old Firm remembered for the football rather than the arguments does not signal the end of the bad times. It doesn't even signal a sighting of the light at the end of the tunnel.

Scottish Football is more than the Old Firm; it is time for the rest to remember that and do something about the status quo, if the good times are to return.

Call Them Out

2011-09-08T03:12:00.000-07:00

SOME years ago, when we still had sufficient footballers of the quality which at least partially endorsed Scottish football's collective self-image - ie players who could trap something livelier than a bag of cement, whose second touch wasn't a desperate slide tackle, intended to regain the possession their initial mis-kick off either shin had lost them and who weren't labouring under the misapprehension that tactics were small, white mint sweets - during a late-night "brains trust" amidst a bevvy of football writers, I threw-in a curve ball.

"Why not", I mused, as we discussed the impending announcement of the Scotland squad to face San Marino, Andorra, Luxembourg or England, one of the real diddy teams of Europe: "Select Auchinleck Talbot en bloc?"

After the shouts of: "Taxi for Socrates"; "Nae mair drink fur him"; "Ye aye were a bag o' piss, but wi that yin ye went too far"; had subsided, I was invited to explain my: "Rush of shite to the brain".

Simples. The perennial minnows of European competition - Andorra, San Marino, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Malta, Faroe Islands and the like have lang syne adapted their game to their talents. They "park the bus" and defy their allegedly more-talented opponents to break them down; they break-up play, waste time, frustrate and seldom if ever cross the half-way line, for fear of an immediate nose bleed.

So, my plan was, embarrass them into having a go, by deliberately selecting a team, some way below our optimum squad and thereby inviting our opposition to answer our slur by attacking us.

I reckoned that if a team of part-timers - postmen, electricians, white van men, couldn't entice a team of waiters, barmen or fishermen to break the habits of a life time and have a go - nobody could.

I further reckoned that the likes of any given Auchinleck Talbot side, given the chance to represent Scotland at the top level, would show a bit more passion and commitment than the over-hyped and over-paid "stars" of the SPL or EPL.

These guys would be fans who would metaphorically die for the jersey and since there wouldn't be that much difference in ability, our perceived greater organisation would carry the day.

Craig Brown, when I suggested this ploy to him, didn't laugh out of hand; but then "Granpaw Broon" has never been anything less than a gentleman - he maybe thought I was mad, but was too well-brought-up to say so.

I would be tempted to offer this pick our diddy team scenario as a potential means of getting the required three points from our up-coming clash with Leichtenstein, except, if we do put out a diddy team, Craig Levein would be as well sticking with what he's got in his regular squad - we have sunk that far.

THOSE Celtic fans who remain concerned as to the possibility of their club being re-instated to the Europe League are, I feel, right to air these concerns. Little if anything is ever black and white where football politics is concerned; UEFA and FIFA have a long and tarnished track record in reaching puzzling decisions, so why should the menage a trois between UEFA, FC Sion and Celtic be any different?

On the face of it, Sion broke the rules when they signed the players when banned from so doing and ought to be flung-out on their ears. But, on the other hand, given they had signed them before they kicked a ball - they ought probably never to have been allowed to play them.

Then there is the disputed definition of the length of the ban; something doesn't add up there. Finally, there is what I see as the main bone of contention. The way Sion are using the Swiss courts to embarrass UEFA and FIFA.

Both these organisations are Swiss-based, therefore, they would, one would think, be tied to Swiss civil law. The two governing bodies are sticking to their assertion that they are the law as far as football is concerned, and the Swiss law cannot intervene in football matters.

Against this, there is the convention that every organisation within any given country ought to be law-abiding as far as the law of that country is concerned and the perception that the laws of the land ought to carry more weight and hold primacy over the laws of the game.

In which case, if the Swiss civil courts say the players can play - UEFA and FIFA have to bow before this and let Sion field these players.

It's a complex one, but, if I was Celtic-minded, I wouldn't be checking out Ryanair's and Easyjet's prices to Madrid just yet.

POOR wee Robert Earnshaw, missing that golden chance to put a spoke in England's wheels at Wembley the other night. Never mind wee man - the day will come, perhaps when you are old and bald, when the thought of the miss doesn't flash through your consciousness at least once every ten minutes.

Do We Really Want To Succeed?

2011-09-06T02:41:00.000-07:00

ONE of my oldest friends in journalism switched off his laptop at the end of the 2009-2010 season, to concentrate on other things, such as (so far very successfully) fighting-off the cancer cells which were attacking his body, completing his grand tour of every state in the USA and keeping fit.

Last season, as a favour,he helped-out his successor by covering a couple of games, but otherwise he is happily out of the football coverage rat race and, he says, all the better for it.

This now retired gentleman tells a great story about his time as the Scottish Football Writers Association's liaison officer with the SFA. His first meeting inside Hampden in that post involved the planning meeting for a World Cup qualifier. My mate arived with a dossier on what the football writers might require to allow them and their friends following the opposition to fulfill their role properly; he had some suggestions to put forward, but never got the chance.

"The bulk of the meeting was taken-up with a discussion as to which wines and of which vintage would be served at the post-match banquet", he recalls.

"For the SFA that was the most-important thing, making sure they had the right trough in which to place their snouts".

As far as I know, a couple of decades on, little has changed at Hampden. The football and the needs of the guys working at it come a long way second to the requirements of the "blazers", as the Hampden High Heid Yins are called.

To take a slight diversion here - I always preferred the now somewhat old hat description of the rugby equivalent of the "blazers" - the 'Alickadoos', as in: "Him, all he can do is talk".

Let's face it, Scotland, particularly now Craig Levein is down to the bare bones of his squad, are by no means a shoo-in to beat Lithuania tonight. We ought still be able to get a draw, but I am far from confident in our ability to beat them.

If we don't, it's not so much Goodnight Vienna as goodnight Warsaw and Kiev; we'll have to endure another early summer of wall-to-wall televised "Ingerlund, Ingerlund, Ingerlund" in nine months time.

But, the blazers' bandwagon will roll on. Our guys who have secured their places on the various UEFA sub-committees, our own committee-men, the very guys who have presided over our tournament qualifying travails, they'll be OK, out there in Poland and Ukraine on their UEFA/SFA funded "jollies", meeting and greeting, quaffing fine wines and eating fine food - they'll be fine. It will be the usual suspects, the PBI of the Tartan Army, back home growing frustrated in their confinement to Scotland, who will be suffering.

When we fail- that failure may well be signalled tonight, or when, as past Scottish form suggests it might be by only drawing with Leichtenstein, or when the Spanish matadors are awarded Darren Fletcher's ears and McShagger's cojones after the final game - the disapproval of a nation will rumble down on the head of poor Craig Levein.

He will be castigated left, right and centre - he might even be forced from office, signalling the start of a lengthy process before the next patsie is unveiled to a somewhat disinterested world at Hampden - whereupon the whole sorry pantomime will start up again.

Or he may limp on, forced to carry the nation's aspirations on a rickety wheelbarrow, with a flat tyre, holes in the side and unequal-length forks.

The guys who got us into this mess - the directors who actually run our clubs and our game, they will escape censure and will get back to doing what they do best - arguing about Sauvignon over Shiraz, over Merlot and whether they have cheesecake or profitterols for dessert.

They don't have to worry about results, about what pot we are in for tournament draws, about national co-efficients. So long as they get their accustomed five-star luxury, everything is fine.

And until we shake them up, force them to make the necessary changes - we will get nowhere other than an ever-lower place in football's European and world pecking order.

The fact that none of us, press or fans, are taking to task the ment at the top, the ones we ought to be taking to task forces me to again consider the question at the top of this post - and conclude: WE DON'T REALLY WANT TO SUCCEED.

Otherwise, we'd have done something long ago.

Don't Blame The Referee

2011-09-04T08:54:00.000-07:00

MY friends of a Celtic persuasion - yes, I have a couple - have been somewhat jubilant since Peter Lawwell was voted onto the new SFA Professional Game Board; feeling that after what they have perceived as generations of por-Rangers bias within Hampden's corridors of power, bringing a Celtic big wig on-board would mean a new and better future for Scottish football.

Well, at least, in the wake of Saturday's disappointing draw agbainst the Czech Republic, we can sign-up for Celtic-style revisionism and excuse-making. It was indeed a conspiracy, we were unable to win because of a perverse follower of the Princes of Oranje - Dutch referee Kevin Blom.

Mr Blom might not agree - he came across during his time in Scotland as the sort of arrogant prat who is ideally suited to life as a referee - but he didn't have the best of games at Hampden. To me, he got the really big calls - the Czech penalty he awarded and the Scottish one he didn't - wrong. But, that said, I thought he also got it wrong on an earlier possible Czech penalty. So, not the match official's best game.

But, at least his inadequacies allow us to play the old Scottish "We wuz robbed" card.

After around 50 years of such post-match bleating, I'm a wee bit fed-up with reading how Scotland was robbed, didn't get the rub of the green, was shunned by Lady Luck. Poor us, it's no fair, we never get the breaks.

Maybe, in not getting the benefit of so-many contentious calls, we get what we deserve, which maybe isn't a lot. Perhaps it's time for us to to stop feeling so hard-done-by and realise: we get the luck we deserve. I honestly don't think we here in Scotland exactly buy-into Gary Player's old aphorism: "The harder I work, the luckier I get".

Take a look at our team yesterday. Hutton didn't look match-fit; Fletcher got bye on sheer class; Naismith wasn't fully-fit; Scott Brown proved, yet again, at international level he's a liability - with a silly booking. Kenny Miller also copped a stupid yellow card - but, don't worry - it was all the referee's fault.

OK, the Berra booking was a joke, but when are we going to stop self-harming through picking-up needless bookings? When are we going to realise, the sort of clumsy challenges which are allowed every week in the SPL will not be tolerated in Europe.

Rugby internationals today are so-often settled by what the referees will and will not allow: fair enough, that's rugby's problem, but, when will our football teams, like our rugby teams, start playing the referee? Have him watched, find-out his wee foibles, what he will jump on, what he will allow. It's called preparation. You know what they say: "Fail to prepare - prepare to fail".

There is one way to avoid the sort of situations like yesterday, when refereeing errors cost us. That is, simply, take the referee out of the equation. Control the tempo of the game, take your chances, score your goals and the referee cannot influence matters with his mistakes.

But that would call for players with technical qualities over and above those of the current Scotland squad. It would call for greater concentration on the essentials of football - ball control, touch, vision, team work, the ability to make your passes, your crosses and your attempts on goal matter.

These are qualities Scotland hasn't shown, when it matters, much of late. Until we get back to playing the game properly, we aint gonna qualify for the major trophy finals.

Blame our own inadequacies, the way we've allowed Scottish football to stagnate, deteriorate and repeatedly fail; the way we've stopped producing truly world-class players - but, don't blame the referee, that's no excuse for our own failings.

Don't Throw Stones - The Window's Closed

2011-09-01T04:49:00.000-07:00

SO, that's the transfer window closed for another four months; for the remainder of 2011 managers will have to piss with the cock they've got (forgive the profanity - but in Scotland at any rate they do generally piss-about).

It says much for the poverty (in every respect) of Scottish football that there were no 'jings, crivvens, help ma Boab' moments, even during the frenetic final hours, as one club or another pulled a veritable rabbit from the hat with an eye-popping signing. It might well be that you need the sort of silly pocket money sloshing around in England for a club to be so self-indulgent.

I have never been a fan of the window. Certainly it mitigates against the former fashion, whereby a rich club, or a club with an indulgent bank manager, finding itself in trouble in or just above the relegation zone, could perhaps buy its way out of trouble. But, for me, it would be better were transfer activity to be kept strictly to the close season; on midnight, on the eve of the first competitive game of any new season, the window closes - thereafter, you go with what you've got.

Perhaps, if we had the winter shut-down we deserve, it could re-open during that closure, but, again, at midnight on the eve of the re-start, down would come the grilles - if I had my way.

So, who are the winners and losers from this window? Only time will tell, of course. For instance, Celtic's new Moroccan left back might be the business, but he could just as easily flop.

Rangers had already recruited well in advance of the last day shenanigans, spending the final hours off-loading. Messrs Little and Fleck now know, they have to impress during their loan spells, or they have no Ibrox future. Beattie being off-loaded was hardly surprising. On form and talent, he should have blossomed in Glasgow, sadly for him - he didn't.

Clearly, Alistair McCoist has been told from the top: "Go with the kids if we have a spate of injuries". His squad is lighter than Celtic's in terms of numbers, but he has versatility in his squad. Kirk Broadfoot has his critics in Scotland, but, in our domestic league he can play in every position across the back four; Steven Whittaker has yet to find his pre-new contract form, but he too can fill-in on both rear flanks, as a second centre half and as a midfielder; Lee McCulloch and Kyle Bartley can both switch from midfield to defence if required, while, where a big target man was called for, McCulloch could do a job as well.

Maurice Edu is another capable of playing in various roles, as are Steve Davis, Steve Naismith and Kyle Lafferty. Of the kids, Jordan McMillan is a versatile player, as he has shown with Queen of th South - so the lack of numbers at Ibrox ought not, in the purely Scottish context of this season, be a problem to McCoist.

Neil Lennon does have numbers at his disposal. His problem is, too-many of his players are either - unfamiliar with the particular demands of playing for the Old Firm in a domestic context, or as yet unproven. With a highly-demanding fan base, desperate to see an end to Rangers' run of SPL titles, the Celtic new boys will not be permitted the luxury of easing themselves into Scottish football.

On paper, Celtic has the stronger squad and ought to be stronger than last season and capable of over-taking Rangers. On grass, things might become tricky if there are any more St Johnstone-type performances.

I do feel, when push comes to shove, Lennon might regret the lack of a true-green, brought-up in the faith Celtic fan in his squad; a Neil Lennon, a Roy Aitken, a Tommy Burns. Celtic NEED a guy like that, Rangers, in Davis, Lafferty, Broadfoot and McCulloch have several of that type and in the end, they could maybe tip the balance away from a football-wise, more-talented Celtic squad.

After all, the most-important part of a sportsman's being is the six inches between the ears; the part which refuses to countenance defeat and here, I think, Rangers are collectively stronger than Celtic.

You will notice, I do not mention the rest of the SPL. I do hope for a consistent challenge to the Old Firm from Hearts, Motherwell and Kilmarnock. I discount Dundee United, they have sadly been too-weakened by departures to mount a challenge I feel. But, unless Paulo Sergio can work miracles at Tynecastle, and Stuart McCall can keep his first-choice players on the park, I fear another two-horse race.

But, the window is now closed, the clubs have to get on with things - let's go.

I HAD intended steering clear of the fall-out from the Neil Lennon assault case, but, needs must.

I have maintained from the start, attempting to hurry through anti-sectarian law was guaranteed to end in tears. It is a highly-emotive and divisive subject. From what little I know of Scots Law, it appears the case against Watson failed because the Crown Office failed to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that his actions were motivated by bigotry or sectarianism.

Given that only one witness mentioned any kind of religious bias by the accused and the lack of corroboration - that leg of the prosecution case was always going to fall and with it the assault charge.

Several persons with legal training have maintained that existing law is good enough to tackle such cases, but, the reformers are in charge, so reform we must apparently have. They (the reformers) have fallen at the first hurdle.

Had the Crown Office prosecuted under existing assault charges, it seems likely they would have won; indeed, there is anecdotal evidence Mr Watson would have pled guilty to assault - had the sectarian element of the charge been dropped.

Own goal by the Crown Office then.

Where now for football and for the two clubs (three if you include Hearts) who, apparently have a sectarian element within their support.

Until the clubs bite the bullet and pro-actively root-out the bigots themselves, the law will not leave them alone. Rangers, to be fair, have taken action against a reported 3000 fans, banning over 500; Celtic do not appear to have been so energetic in pursuing the bigots; Hearts are, apparently still in denial.

That's a poor start, so the clubs HAVE to do more. If they do, legislation might be avoided. The ball is in their court, and if they kick it properly football will stay out of the law courts.

Time For The Scottish Inquisition

2011-08-29T01:56:00.000-07:00

AS every Monty Python fan can tell you: "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition".

OK, in the wake of last week's European disasters, lots of people are looking, but still. Maybe it is time for a Scottish Inquisition - certainly nobody expects questions to be asked about the state and future for the national game, even at this time of deep depression and distress after last week's triple knock-out blow in the play-off round of the Europa League.

Sure, the fans' forums have been red-hot, the big-name sports writers have pontificated and postured, but, even allowing for the fact that knee-jerk reactions don't often amount to a hill of beans, a wee bit of reaction, of: "We feel your pain" from the "blazers" within the Hampden corridors of powers might have been expected.

Of course the managers, particularly Neil Lennon and Alistair McCoist, have been slap bang in the cross-hairs of the snipers' "rifles". That comes with the territory, it's one of the prices they pay for the kudos and big-money which comes the way of the two Old Firm bosses.

However, the guys who should be in the firing line will not be seen - these guys are the REAL power brokers: Craig Whyte at Rangers, Dermot Desmond at Celtic and Vladimir Romanov at Hearts. Romanov may speak in riddles, on the rare occasions he does communicate with the common herd. In any case, as a Russian oligarch, he doesn't do interviews, he issues proclomations.

Desmond also rarely comments on Celtic matters, he leaves that to Chief Executive Peter Lawwell, who is now also, of course, an SFA "blazer". Whyte, will maybe be allowed this season to bed himself in, as the very new owner of Rangers. There is already some unease about his ownership of Rangers - does he have the money it will take to freshen up the squad? What are his true motives? Even - is he a true Rangers supporter? These questions are being asked on the forums - but not in the press conferences.

Is there nobody among the serried ranks of the main Scottish football writers who is prepared to face-up to the real power brokers, the guys who actually own and run the clubs, rather than the front men who are installed as "team manager" or "first team coach" and ask them the hard questions?

Sure, we get sound bites from Messrs Regan and Doncaster, but what the fans, and I sometimes think some of my fellow journos, conveniently forget, these men (Regan and Doncaster) run the secretariats - the bodies which administer their leagues, the key decisions are taken by the club directors: Rod Petrie, Michael Johnston, Stewart Gilmour, Stephen Thompson, Stewart Milne, Geoff Brown and Co. We don't hear too-much on the big issues from these guys, unless it directly affects their club.

It's not so much: why are we so bad? Don't give them the opportunity to fob-off the interrogator with platitudes and evasions - be specific, be insistent, don't be put-off, go for the jugular.

Why do we have to put-up with third-rate imports? Why do so few of our better young players fail to make the grade? Are you happy with your club's youth development department? If so, what are your goals for these kids?

Why have so many of the Celtic Under-19 team which won the SPL U-19 League been freed as "not good enough"? Even the fact that they have been allowed to leave - what does that say about the rest, the U-19 teams from the other 11 clubs?

Why was Ally McCoist allowed to recruit his ready-made American and Australian imports, when his home-grown kids had already this season shown themselves capable of playing a big part in beating the then league leaders? I mean, it's not as if Rangers are going to be involved in Europe this season.

Why have imports, who made no contribution last season been kept-on, rather than moved-on to create a vacancy in the squad which could have gone to a young, talented and hungry Scots boy?

When will someone ask that question of the men who run the clubs, rather than the managers they employ to handle the daily grind?

What is the strategic goal and plan for reaching that goal for our big clubs, our big league and our international side?

Why, when we have such a highly-regarded coaching course, is the standard of coaching within Scotland so poor?

It is time somebody asked these questions, and kept asking them until he or she got a credible answer?

It's time for the Scottish Inquisition.

When Will We Ever Learn

2011-08-26T00:03:00.001-07:00

"It matters not who won nor lost - so-long as you beat the English". Max Boyce, Welsh "entertainer".

"Never mind, they'll forget this result once we beat England". Unnamed SFA council member following Uruguay's 7-0 defeat of Scotland in the 1954 World Cup Finals.

"The Scottish football public will not pay to watch that sort of stuff on a weekly basis". Unnamed Scottish football writer, walking away from Hampden after seeing Real Madrid beat Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 in 1960.

"Youse is shite and ye'r oot o' Europe, ha-ha, ha-ha". Various "cyber-warriors" from both sides of the Old Firm divide, on various web sites last night after the final whistle in the Europa League games.

Yes, that's the level to which we have fallen - that's the way we clutch at failiar old straws, the comfort blankets to which we have always clung. So long as Scotland beats England, Celtic beats Rangers, Hearts beats Hibs, Auchinleck Talbot beats Cumnock - all is well with the world.

Rewind 500 years: so long as Campbell beats Macdonald, McLeod beats McNab, McGlumpher beats McRassler - it matters not that we live in grass-roofed hovels, which we share with our cattle, without running water, adequate sanitation, windows and that we are scraping a living from poor, rocky ground - so long as we perceive ourselves as better than the clan next door - we're fine.

Scotland - here's tae us, wha's like us.....and we all know the answer to that.

"Maribor - they're the equivalent of Hibs". Celtic fan posting on a Scottish newspaper website this morning.

Maribor 6 Hibernian 2 - result from the third qualifying round of the Europa League competition, season 2010-2011.

See, our capacity for self-delusion, for refusing to face the obvious si quite wonderful; we forgot all about that result from exactly a year ago and dubbed the Slovenians "a pub team". Can I drink in that pub, it's clearly better than the one I frequent here.

"FC Sion - they're Swiss, easy for Celtic". Received wisdom in Scotland when the draw was made.

2011-2012 Europa League, play-off round: FC Sion 3 Celtic 1

2002-2003 Champions League, third qualifying round: FC Basel 3 Celtic 3 (Basel win on away goals)

1993-1994 UEFA Cup, first round: Celtic 1 Young Boys Berne 0 (Celtic through via an own goal)

1991-1992 UEFA Cup, second round: Celtic 2 Neuchatel Xamax 6

1973-1974 European Cup, quarter-final: Celtic 6 FC Basel 5

1969-1970 European Cup, first round: Celtic 2 FC Basel 0

1966-1967 European Cup, first round: Celtic 5 FC Zurich 0

1963-1964 European Cup-Winners Cup, first round: Celtic 10 FC Basel 1.

So, you have to go back to the days of Jock Stein, the Lisbon Lions and the Quality Street Kids to find days when Swiss teams really were easy for Celtic. In the last 20 years, Celtic have met Swiss opposition four times, winning just once - via an own goal. Easy, aye right.

And the lessons of history are equally harsh across the city. Rangers beat Maribor 6-1, over two legs in the Champions League, second qualifying round, in 2001-2002. Tor Andre Flo got three of the goals, Caludio Cannagia bagged a brace and Klaus Nerlinger got the other goal. Rangers promptly lost to Fenebrache in the next round, dropped into the UEFA Cup and had a good run all the way to the last 16.

But that was the Rangers of the big-money buys the de Boers, Lovenkrands, Amoruso, Konterman, Ricksen. Would any Rangers fan like to tell me they'd have today's bought-in "stars" before even "bomb scare Bert" or Flo?

Some Celtic fans on fans' forums since last night have been (rightly) laughing at the "wearrapeepel" attitude which still afflicts the cheap, and expensive seats at Ibrox.

OK, Rangers are no longer "rapeepel", haven't been for ages - but, they are still the reigning Scottish Champions, have been for the last three successive seasons; they are still rated above Celtic in Europe - they might be bad, but, reality says: you're worse.

So, we're at our lowest ebb. What do we do?

Short of ripping the whole thing (Scottish football) up and starting again, there's nothing we can do which will bring long-term improvement. We've got to face facts, come late June, early July of 2012, our best teams will be setting-off to try to qualify for Europe alongside the representatives of the wee countries we have long laughed-at.

Maybe they should start preparing now - after all, one of the great sporting aphorisms is: "Fail to prepare - prepare to fail"; we haven't been paying much attention to that recently, have we?

At least Rangers thanks to Sir David Murray's management incompetence, have some young players coming through - Celtic simply jettison most of their young talent as soon as they become too-old for the Under-19 League.

If I was Ally, I'd be looking NOW to have a settled European squad of mainly young players, following a strict preparation schedule - geared to having them hit the ground running for the 2012-2013 European qualifiers.

Yes, he's bought-in some experienced players for this season, now, thanks to the European elimination - these are what he's left with. There will be no new cavalry riding to the rescue in the next week.

Split his squad, keep his best for the bigger games, get the kids into the match-day XI for the games against the SPL's diddier teams; field all the kids, plus the experienced pros such as Neil Alexander, Dave Weir, Lee McCulloch, David Healy and James Beattie in the League Cup. Rangers' optimum XI should still be good enough to win the SPL, but get the rest ready for the qualifiers.

Same with Celtic - they've just jettisoned their future. Neil Lennon has, I feel, th ruthlessly prune his squad and rebuild. Some of his buys have shown, time and again, they lack the bottle for the battle. He too has to start preparing for next season. If he doesn't, we'll be here in 12 months time writing the same old, same old, about further embarrassing defeats at the hands of European "pub teams".

Isn't it time we stopped repeating past mistakes and moved on?

What Will It Take For Reality To Strike

2011-08-22T05:34:00.000-07:00

YOU take a week off and what happens - you return to find the world, if not turned upside down, has perhaps moved slightly on its axis.

Looking at the Europa League first leg results - what can one say. Hearts losing to Tottenham was hardly a surprise, even if the 5-0 score line was a real kick up the back-side to everyone around Gorgie.

Rangers' loss in Maribor was perhaps something of a self-inflicted wound, losing a last-minute goal undid what was, up until the ball hit Allan McGregor's net, a good result. One would hope that Rangers can make home advantage pay in the second leg, but home advantage in Europe is perhaps not what it once was for Scottish clubs, given Celtic's travails against Sion at Celtic Park.

That 0-0 draw was seen as a "one-off" disappointment for Celtic; such results happen. Then, on Sunday, St Johnstone travelled to Kerrydale Street, took an absolute hammering, but still won 1-0. Another one-off? Maybe, but, two bad results in a row for Celtic have the doom mongers in full song.

Of course, Sion might still be thrown-out of the Europa League, Celtic could still turn the tie around and win in Switzerland on Thursday, while Rangers, after sweeping previously table-topping Motherwell aside with what was hardly Ally McCoist's first-choice line-up, will surely be expected to beat Maribor at Ibrox - or could we maybe see another bad night in Europe?

If I was a Celtic fan, I wouldn't be putting too-much faith in UEFA giving Celtic the equivalent of a Junior football "protest" ticket to the Europa League group stages, should Sion beat them on Thursday. I would, similarly, not be too-confident of the squad's ability to put away the chances which they have hitherto been squandering.

Let's just say, if we have more than one club still in Europe on Friday morning, I for one will be surprised. And if we have none and are set for life among the minnows for a year or so, I will not be surprised either. We live in interesting times.

Rangers' comfortable win over Motherwell was achieved on the back of the club being denied, through injuries and visa/work permit problems, a considerable number of what we should consider first and second picks. This worked-out well for the likes of Jordan McMillan - who was, until Sunday, probably most armchair selector's fourth-choice right back. Ross Perry would similarly be ranked behind four or five players for one of the centre back slots - while young Gordon Wylde was at the heart of some: "Coisty doesn't rate him, He's fallen out with the gaffer, He's going to be moved-on" headlines and innuendo.

McCoist is perhaps on the way to re-considering his previous ideas as to his optimum XI; he has another three new boys to ease into his squad, but, top of the league and unbeaten since Malmo's win at Ibrox last month, he is in the fortunate position of being able to tinker on the back of a run of form.

Neil Lennon is now the man under pressure. His comments after the St Johnstone debacle have, naturally, been spun to just short of the graphics crew slotting the cracked club crest into the page plan; it will be interesting to see how some of his squad react to being publically grabbed by the goolies by an upset manager. The next two games are crucial to Celtic's season.

As to Hearts - they are already out of Europe. It will be interesting to see what sort of squad Paulo Sergio fields at White Hart Lane and what he does to quickly get his club into the top six and challenging the big two - the very least his club owner will demand.

The early weeks of the season have shown that there are some coaches in the SPL - Danny Lennon, Kenny Shiels and Stuart McColl being in the van, who are prepared to put their faith in football in an effort to get close to the perennial big two.

I am disappointed at how things have gone in Europe, but not overly concerned. I feel better days are around the corner. Now, if other clubs would follow the McCoist lead and let young Scottish players show what they can do - I'd be even-more confident about the future.

Things were bad last week - this need not be our usual state. I asked at the top, what it would take for reality to strike; hopefully, last week's poor results were the wake-up call.

Sort Out The Set Pieces And You're Half Way There

2011-08-15T07:04:00.000-07:00

THERE are several types of football: American, Association, Australian Rules, Canadian, Gaelic, Harrow, Rugby Union and Rugby League being the most-popular. Of these, Association Football, or the real game, stands out - because it is the most-continuous and flowing. Play only becomes static after a foul, a goal or a corner kick - otherwise play is continuous over the 45 minutes of each half.

In Rugby League, teams re-group following the fifth tackle in each phase of play, in Rugby Union they can re-set themselves after each scrum, line out or breakdown (ruck and maul). In American and Canadian football, there are a set number of plays (downs) to move the ball a set distance, while in Australian Rules the players re-group after each clean catch or thereabouts.

So, in these games, teams consciously practice set pieces; they have control of the ball - they know what they are going to try next, the opposition might hazard a guess, but they have to react quickly to counter whichever more the team in possession comes up with. Everything stems from controlled possession at a set piece, with the intention either to control the next attack or to gain field position from which to launch an attack from the next set piece.

Watching the highlights of the SPL games on Saturday and Sunday, I was struck by how little control our teams appear to have over set pieces - free kicks, corners and so forth, also, how little attention they appear to pay to defending such moments in games. Peter Houston, for instance, was not happy as Rob McLean's studio guess on Sunday night's highlights programme, with his Dundee United side's efforts at set pieces during Saturday's defeat at Celtic Park.

Yet, it stands to reason, if a corner kick is seen as a good attacking opportunity for the team winning one - surely the defending side should put more effort into organising their efforts to prevent goals from corners - I don't think they do, from some of the shambolic defending I saw over the weekend.

I have said before and will doubtless say again - we are not professional enough in Scotland; we do not work hard enough at the basics of team play or indeed at the technical aspects of football. Until we do, our game will struggle.

I DO not pay a great deal of attention to the English Premiership: over-paid, over-rated and over-hyped, that's my take. Certainly, when Manchester United are on-song, they play some wonderful football and although they weren't operating at peak efficiency, there were some wonderful moments in the highlights slot from their meeting with West Brom, on MOTD2 on Sunday.

There has been a lot of comment about their new Spanish goalkeeper David De Gea. He is very young for a goalkeeper, only 21, but, he looks the part, he will mature and get better and if he made a slight error in conceding Albion's goal - no keeper is ever faultless.

The big question around him is: how will he react to the in-depth analysis of his every move? Glad though I am to see him still playing in Scotland, I still feel SAF may regret not going for Allan McGregor - there is a top-class keeper, made for the Old Trafford cauldron. And, he's one o oor ain.

HOWZAT For The Way To Win

2011-08-14T04:03:00.000-07:00

I CAN make this confession today, a couple of decades ago it would have been well-nigh possible for a Scotsman to say: "I like and enjoy cricket". Even then, Scotland had one of the highest players-per-head-of-population figures in the world when it came to England's game - those Jocks who enjoyed the thwack of leather on willow simply tended to keep quiet about it though.

Cricket was an effete English pastime, a rather meaningless way of filling-in the weeks while real sportsmen - full backs, wing halves and inside forwards rather than batsmen, bowlers or wicket-keepers - reinvigorated themselves for the new season.

But, these days are past and as someone who has had as much fun and entertainment on the huge West Terrace at Headingley as on the blessed slopes of Hampden, I can say not before time. Be he from a mining town like Barnsley, a mill town such as Accrington, a farming town such as Taunton or a stockbroker living in the commuter belt of Surrey, Middlesex, Essex of Kent, an English cricket fan can be every bit as passionate, knowledgeable or commited to his team as any Old Firm, Hearts or Auchinleck Talbot fan.

So, I am delighted to see England become, officially the Number One Test Match-playing nation. It's not like winning the World Cup: let's face it, a World Cup of test match cricket would last longer than the 100 Years War, so, it's never going to happen - but to be THE best, at the purest form of the game - will surely swell the chest of every Englishman.

There are many reasons why England got there, and there are few lessons which Scottish football can learn from their success - but, there are some.

The main lesson is - the way the English do not over-play their top talent. County Cricket, for so long the mainstay of English cricket is, to be honest, about as gripping as your average SFL Second Division game, and is watched by a similar fan base of the old, the indolent and the very, very few who still care.

One-day cricket is true knock-out, knock-about stuff, with a guaranteed outcome, even if Duckworth-Lewis (don't ask) is hardly a penalty shoot-out, but does give a winner.

Twenty-20 is the cricket equivalent of three-and-in and has about as much relevance to the real game. No, Test Cricket is the real deal.

And England are best, because, as far as possible, they keep their main men fresh for the real game. After the mental high of Edgbaston, Strauss, Cook, Broad, Anderson & Co will not be asked to turn up tomorrow to play county cricket at the English equivalent of Station Park, Forfar, Bayview, or Ochilview. Instead, they will rest, recuperate and prepare to twist the knife in the next test.

If, as happened to captain Strauss earlier in the summer, they are out of form and need a quiet run-out somewhere, telephone calls are made, arrangements put in place and it happens. Someone, somewhere within the England and Wales Cricket Board, oils the wheels to make England the best.

Now, look at the SFA, where you often get the impression someone, somewhere, is moving the goalposts to try to derial Scotland. 'Twas ever thus. In 1950, we scored a spectacular own goal, when we knocked-back a guaranteed place in the World Cup finals in Brazil. Four years later, we allowed Rangers to go off on a club tour to North America, which coincided with the World Cup finals in Switerland.

In 1962 and 1966 we went into crucial "must win" World Cup qualifiers without players, injured in meaningless league games which ought to have been postponed. Things have improved since then, thanks mainly to FIFA initiatives, but, today still, what our clubs want takes precedence over what the national team needs - and with most of the TV money going to the clubs, this will not change shortly.

Also, all of the English cricketers play for English clubs. Just think back over the 130 years since the first Scottish amateur accepted a job down south, provided he played for Darwen, or Accrington Stanley, or Preston North End. The English clubs have never been keen to let their "Scotch professors" return north on international duty. Of course the afore-mentioned FIFA rules mean they have little option today. But, unless we have our top men, playing in Scotland and in a culture where Scotland, rather than the Old Firm, Aberdeen, Hearts of Hibs, is the priority - we will never again be woprld-beaters.

Of course, introducing a football version of cricket's centrally-contracted core of the international side will never be easy. The Rugby Football Union in England has tried it, but has yet to reach the sort of agreement the ECB has with the Counties. But, I am sure it could be done; and if it was - perhaps we would see Scotland back in at least the second pot in World Cup or European Championship draws, and perhaps, in time, in the first pot.

Mind you, for that to happen, as well as the internal organisation, we would need one other thing which we don't have at the moment - a squad of talented players. England beat India at cricket because they had the bowlers - the strikers of that game.

Anderson, Bresnan, Broad and Tremlett were better than what India had. English football is in a bad way because they lack quality strikers - in cricket parlance Rooney is an all-rounder rather than a specialist striker.

How much worse off are we? A new Denis Law and proper organisation and what might we achieve?

Let's Become Borrowers

2011-08-12T02:36:00.000-07:00

THE news that Hibernian were signing young Airley from Newcastle United on a six-month loan deal set me thinking this morning. Might this be the way ahead for Scottish football and a means of making the SPL better?

By common consent, our top-flight league is considered fairly mediocre by European standards. OK, we are still within the top 20 of the 50-odd national leagues within UEFA, but we are a long way off the overall standards in the big leagues.

Increasingly these big leagues are recruiting their new blood from the poorer European nations, Africa, the traditional South American recruiting grounds of the Italian, Spanish and Portugese Leagues and now, in greater numbers, Asia. They bring in callow youths, feed them up, school them, then the bigger clubs send them to lesser teams to have the rough edges polished off, before re-calling them if they think they'll make it and selling them on if they think not.

The top English Premiership clubs have bought into this, the squad lists in the Premiership Academies reads like a League of Nations, with French, Spanish, Italian and Eastern European names are frequent, if not more obvious than Smiths, Jones and Macdonalds. Once through the Under-19 age group, these kids are either loaned-out or moved-on. So why shouldn't we up here get more of these kids on loan?

OK Airley is at Hibs, Kyle Bartley is at Rangers, Fraser Forster was at Celtic last season; but why don't we have more on-show up here? We are proud of our super seven Scottish-born Premiership managers, so why don't we approach King Kenny, Sir Alex and the five commoners, Messrs Coyle, Kean, Lambert, McLeish and Moyes to send us some of their youngsters for a year or two's tempering in the fire of the SPL?

Might they tell us, what some English critics have been telling us for years: "Your league's shite Jock"? I would not doubt their lack of patriotism - so maybe it's time we asked them to help-out the folks back home by sending us their youth, that we may teach them the right way, the Scottish way, to play football.

I watched a youthful Manchester United squad rip Ayr United apart in a pre-season friendly. None of these kids is anywhere near a first team shirt at Old Trafford; but I see no reason why Sir Alex might block-out a season at his beloved Pittodrie, under the tutelage of two men he surely trusts as being able to look after the kids and bring them on - Craig Brown and Archie Knox. It makes sense to me. And if Jack and Victor could bring them through, why not other Scottish managers?

STILL on the subject of player development, I was researching a historical piece this week, one which is due to be published in about two months, and I had a Eureka moment - let's use the juniors more.

Once upon a time would-be footballers followed a well-trod path. You started playing at school. If you were presumed to be any good and were lucky enough to get a Schoolboy cap - you had every chance of being whisked off to England, aged 14 or 15, for a ground staff job at a big club there. Then, it was up to you - if you made the grade, in time you'd get into the first team and perhaps win Scottish caps.

If you failed, you came back up the road and joined your local junior team. Getting into the juniors was also a stepping stone for your less-talented friends, who might leave school, play secondary juvenile or juvenile football, even churches league football, and in time get the call to a junior side.

The juniors was the ultimate finishing school; it made a man or an exhibit for medical students out of you and if you survived, there was every chance you could step-up to the senior ranks - but, in getting there you had survived a hard and at times lengthy apprenticeship.

Then, in the mid-sixties, it began to change, boys clubs began to become more important than schools in teaching the basics, schools football withered and all but died when the teachers went on strike in the early 1980s. Ground staff jobs gave way to apprenticeships, and somehow, we began to lose more talent than we developed.

The English clubs grew rich on the back of TV money and suddenly Scottish recruits were dull, over-familiar, buying continental became the thing.

Some boys still went down the boys club route into the junior ranks, where they were increasingly competing with one-time boy wonders who hadn't made the senior grade and been dumped - while all but the lesser Scottish senior clubs stopped scouting in the juniors, prefering to recruit drop-outs from the bigger clubs's disjointed youth development ranks.

But, I feel, in today's fiscally-challenged Scottish game - it is time to look anew at the juniors.

The SPL no longer runs a Reserve League and increasingly all but the very best youngsters are released once they are too-old for the U-19 team. Some of these players might be "late developers" - look at Steven Dobie, released by Rangers at 20, eight years later, after a peripatetic career in the lower leagues here and in England, is in the Premiership with Swansea; others simply not good enough; still more needing more time.

How might it work if an SPL club, say Kilmarnock, had half a dozen players coming out of their U-19 team, whom they couldn't immediately put into their small SPL squad, but whom they wished to keep tabs on. They could surely find a way of keeping them within the club's sphere of influence, by perhaps loaning them out to a local junior club, let's say Irvine Meadow.

These players could perhaps train two or three days per week with Killie - on reduced wages; train the other two with the Meadow, for whom they would play on a Saturday - but could be re-called to Killie if needed.

I'd call that win, win all round. That's just a sketched outline of what could happen; making it happen would need more thought. But, I could see such a scenario benefitting both the junior and the senior club - not to mention the player, who would be getting regular games. I feel we ought to be looking at such schemes more.

One of the things which got me thinking about the desirability of a spell in the juniors was reading 'The Ghost of White Hart Lane' Robert White's book, co-written by Julie Welch, about his late, brilliant father John White.

"The Ghost" - John White - was never more than nine and a half stone, wringing wet, but he and the equally slight "Slim" Jim Baxter formed the best Scottish central midfield pairing I have ever seen. Together they destroyed teams, while the Spurs midfield trio of the wonderful 1961 double-winning side: White, skipper Danny Blanchflower and Dave Mackay was sensational.

White's career included a spell with Bonnyrigg Rose Athletic, Mackay played for Newtongrange Star, as did the almost as celebrated Alex Young, Baxter played for Crossgates Primrose, Kenny Dalglish played for Cumbernauld United, Jimmy Johnstone for Blantyre Celtic, Billy McNeill, like Jock Stein before him, served Blantyre Victoria.

A spell in the juniors didn't hurt these icons - let's bring it back.

Scotland Flowering

2011-08-11T02:19:00.000-07:00

OH Flower o Scotland, when will we see yer like again? I'm not that bothered about the return of King Robert the Bruce and his coterie of mainly Norman barons, who master-minded Bannockburn and sent Proud Edward's army homeward tae think again. I'm looking more for the likes of Baxter, Bremner, Dalglish, Johnstone, Law, Mackay, Souness and Co - the footballing legends we grew up with.

To be fair, they, wonderful talents though they were, never exactly put the world to rights and put Scotland back to where it hasn't been for well-nigh a century: the best team in the world. Indeed, realistically, we may never take-on Brazil or Italy or Germany in a World Cup final - but we can dream.

And that dream maybe came a wee bit closer last night, when we beat Denmark, at Hampden. OK, it was "only" Denmark, it was "only" a friendly, it was the sort of night which could even define "dreich" to an Englishman - but: WE WON.

Friendly wins have been rare for Scots fans to celebrate lately, ditto competitive wins, although, our record when a game actually matters has long been better than when it doesn't. But, for purely morale reasons, going into the sharp end of the Euro' 2012 qualifying process, this one was a good one.

It, of course, wasn't perfect, Allan McGregor made what might well be his only mistake of the season in conceding the Danish goal; a vote among the members of the Tartan Army would probably find a majority agin playing 4-5-1, but, we are maybe starting to get back to where we want to be.

We won without skipper Darren Fletcher, Scott Brown was forced off early - a couple of years ago without these two, we'd really have struggled. Today, guys such as James Morrison and winning goal scorer Robert Snodgrass are looking as if they belong in the international arena, ditto Stevie Naysmith. We still need a viable alternative to the ageing Kenny Miller, but Phil Bardsley might well have made the number two jersey his own last night, Stephen Crainey looked assured on the other flank while Danny Wilson and the much-maligned Gary Caldwell looked the part in the middle - we have a defence.

Craig Levein has little room for manouevre in the remaining qualifiers, one bad night at the office could still derail us en route to the play-offs; but Private Fraser and Victor Meldrew are now talking to themselves.

And, looking ahead to the World Cup 2014 qualifiers, buoyed-up by the good showing of the Under-21s - we can look forward confidently.

SPL honcho Doncaster was trying to be chipper this week in the wake of the publication of the latest PWC report on the finances of the SPL clubs, which I blogged on yesterday.

He used statistics wonderfully, when he pointed-out that Scotland has the highest "per-head of population" football attendances in the world - because 1 in every 63 persons living in Scotland attends an SPL game each week.

Aye Right. Take away those who attend games involving Celtic and Rangers and the figures don't look so good. Stop trying to kid people Mr Doncaster, without the Bigot Brothers, we'd be a lot lower down the order.

Until the other clubs get their acts together and begin to really challenge the big two, in a manner we have not seen - the all-too-brief flowering of the "New Firm" between 1978 and the Souness Revolution apart - for half a century, we are going nowhere other than down the drain.

The paucity of ideas and ambition in the 40 senior clubs other than the Old Firm is the biggest stumbling block to Scotland getting back among the top football countries in Europe and the world. Until this is addressed, we will struggle.

Forgive Us Our Debts

2011-08-09T23:05:00.000-07:00

WE should all know where this post's headline comes from; and if the newly-published PriceWaterhouseCooper report on the finances of the SPL clubs is any guide, prayer may well be a major strategy in the management of our top football clubs.

An overall profit of £1 million by the 12 clubs isn't all-that-impressive; things get worse when you consider that only Rangers - on the back of a good European run - and Dundee United actually turned a profit by their own endeavours, while the figures were somewhat massaged by the largesse of "Mad Vlad" at Hearts and Jamie Moffat at Kilmarnock in writing-off £8 million and £1 million in debt to them as individuals. Remove Rangers' European run from the picture, which the abject, indisciplined performance against Malmo has already done and things are looking so bleak that Private Fraser and Victor Meldrew look like optimists.

And it isn't going to get any better - soon.

Let's look at how things have gone since the end of last season. Rangers changed hands just before the title was secured, a brave new dawn was breaking - or so we were told. A "tired, threadbare, average" squad had just completed a hat-trick of SPL wins and added the League Cup for good measure. Celtic, under Neil Lennon, had re-grouped, battled Rangers every inch of the way in the league race, but still managed - by imploding at Inverness and by Giorgio Samaras's penalty miss at Ibrox - to lose a title which seemed theirs for the taking, albeit they had the consolation of a Scottish Cup win. Hearts, having at one time looking like the potential meat in an Old Firm sandwich at the top of the table, fell away to be the best-best-of-the-rest, but in horse racing terms "a distance" adrift of the two in the photo-finish up front.

Hearts have (again) changed managers, with Mr Romanov's insistence in actually implementing some of the tried and tested business management techn iques I've been discussing these past two days concluding that Jim Jefferies maybe wasn't doing that great a job. The great and good in Scottish football's chattering classes were initially aghast at this suggestion, before realising, maybe the so-called mad one had a point.

Rangers' new management has shown remarkable naivety in their transfer dealings to the extent: "Let's all laugh at Rangers" has become the most-popular game on the Scottish football websites; and when they have managed to recruit, "I'm not impressed" has been the general reaction of fans and others at their efforts. They have also lost the near-mythical "Walter" as manager and it is fair to say successor Alistair McCoist's early efforts have to some extent mirrored his early days as a Rangers player some 30-years ago. That said, if he goes on to have the success as a manager he enjoyed as a player, his statute will eventually go up alongside that of John Greig outside Ibrox Stadium.

Across the city Neil Lennon, emerged stronger and wiser from an at times horrible and amazingly stressful and trying season, with his first trophy landed and high hopes for this season. He has continued his policy of building slowly and steadily - recruiting mainly young players who should improve. But, as ever with the Old Firm, questions remain. These mainly concern the mental fortitude of his squad, the lack of a top-class goalkeeper and the belief that, for all he has a bigger squad than Rangers at his disposal - the quality isn't there. The fear among some Celtic fans is that, when the going gets tough, he doesn't have the same number of hard yards grinders-out that McCoist has. But, time will tell.

Hearts should again lead the resistance from outwith Glasgow. Like Celtic, they have a big squad, which lacks depth. The absence of the talismanic Kevin Kyle was keenly felt at the end of last season; he has yet to kick a ball this. Also, they are having to try to give new manager Sergio a crash course in Scottish football's ways. Things will be tough down Gorgie way until Christmas I expect.

Dundee United - minus David Goodwillie and last season's midfield, will struggle; likewise Kilmarnock - because they will toil for goals, so don't be surprised if Stuart McColl's Motherwell emerge as the provincial standard-bearers. The rest, who knows what will happen?

One thing we do know is - the fans will increasingly ration their attendances. Going to football today is an expensive business, and the punters have long ago decided they will not pay out good and harder-to-earn money to watch rubbish.

Gates were down last season, they will likely drop again - unless the clubs can come up with a better product, at a better price - and there is little chance of that.

In times of acute financial peril, as now, you cut your costs, pull-in your horns and live frugally. Slashing squad sizes, giving youth its chance, coming up with new marketing and pricing strategies, offering greater value for money and added-value: these are the things successful businesses such as Tesco are doing to ride-out these hard times. I do not see Scottish football following this successful business model, so maybe, indeed - prayer is the only answer.

TONIGHT, Scotland take on Denmark at Hampden in a friendly international, aimed at helping Craig Levein prepare his squad for next month's crucial European Championship qualifiers. The build-up has been good; few call-offs, good harmony within the squad, players keen to don navy blue.

But, this is a friendly. Scotland doesn't DO friendlies that well, so it could and probably will all go pear-shaped early doors tonight. Not that I am all that worried by this. Come next month and the Czech Republic - when it matters, the bagpipes will strike up and we will get tore right intae them - with much more ardour and belief than we showed in the first match, last season.

It is good to see so-many English Premiership players in our team, although we still lack genuine quality in key areas, but, this is Scotland - come oan lads: Gerrintaerum.

What Would A Business Doctor Make of Scottish Football?

2011-08-09T00:12:00.000-07:00

WHERE is the old fart going with this one? You might well ask; but bear with me please as I carry-on from where I left-off yesterday, with my piece about businessmen not taking care of business when that business is football.

I got the idea for this post from reading a copy of Des McKeown's excellent book, ghosted by my old mate Bill Leckie: 'Don't Give Up The Day Job'. This tome is a diary of a year in the life of office equipment sales director and part-time footballer McKeown. It was written a decade agom but is still relevant today, by which time McKeown, still flogging the stationery, is a valued member of the BBC Sportsound team.

One of the questions Des asked in his excellent book was: "When will football adopt good business practices, such as the annual review"? Of course, not all businesses go in for "the annual review" - certainly journalism doesn't. I well recall, again some ten years ago, when the big newspaper group which then paid me my pittance decided editors would have to conduct a twice-yearly review of the performances of their journalists.

The man to whom I then answered was decidedly old school, definitely not in favour of this, but, he had to go through with it. I should say here, had it been done properly, at least 20% of the editorial staff would have been out of the door, but, no chance of that. In my case, the interview consisted of him asking me how I thought I had done: me pointing-out how much more work I, as a one-man-band sports department did in comparison to the general news staff and how much-easier my job would be if he told the News Editor, who shared his bed, to keep her nose out of stuff she knew hee-haw about. I then added that I was being grossly under-paid and over-worked.

The review was then abruptly terminated as I was given a two word instruction, the second word was "Off". The review was never repeated.

Now, supposing reviews became common-place in football. Just what might be said between say a Scotland Under-21 internationalist, whose season had been spent warming the bench for an SPL side, whose squad comprised mainly cheap foreign imports, taking the money, kissing the badge but making it quite clear Scotland and the SPL was a convenient staging-post en route to the riches of a bigger league such as the EPL, and his manager; a man with no genuine man-management training, a coaching certificate, obtained more than a decade before and never updated by a refresher course since?

"Well Shuggie son - your warm-ups are impressive; you're out there quickly, your stretches seem deep and full. You're never late for training, you come on all the nights out, you put up with the wind-ups and awe that other pish - but, you're too-young and I cannot justify putting you on - maybe next season, keep it up son. Anything you want to ask?"

"Aye gaffer - how come that big Greek tit, who couldnae hit a coo oan the erse wi a banjo and scores aboot wance every five gemmes gets tae stert every week an ah'm stuck oan the bench, in spite o haen scored fower late equalisers and twa last-meenit winners aff the bench?"

"Well son, that's Scottish fitba - ye hae tae serve yer time."

"Right boss, OK."

Not that long ago Scotland was the destination of choice for English managers seeking to augment their squads - today, while admittedly the number of Scots in the EPL is growing by the season, this is far from the case. Where once the likes of Liverpool, Arsenal, Everton and Manchester United raided each year's Scottish Schoolboys Under-15 or Under-16 team for their future stars, today, zilch - they shop for future talent in Spain, France or Africa.

The English sides would have Scottish scouts, scouring the provincial clubs for: "the next big thing" - if a Dundee United or Hibs player got into the Scotland squad, it was only a matter of time before the big money move to England. Today, their successors have to arrange their own move South via a Bosman.

Look at the British motor industry. When we had an Empire, or a Commonwealth we were commited to: Austins, Rovers, MGs, Rileys, Hillmans and Sunbeam cars were commonplace on the city streets of Africa and Asia, while AEC and Leyland buses carried the poor into these cities, where the nation's goods were delivered on AEC, Leyland, Guy or Bedfor trucks and vans.

At home, a Leyland or Foden or ERF or Atkinson truck, powered by a Manchester-built Gardner engine hauled the goods up and down the A1 or A6. In Scotland, our own, Glasgow-built Albions had a strong local customer base: while the smaller Perkins-engined Bedfords or Morris Commercials, or the Slough-built Fordson trucks and vans plied our city streets. Hell, we even sent Ford Transit vans around the world.

But, the British manufacturers refused to move with the times: Volvo, Scania, MAN, Iveco, Renault and Mercedes trucks are everywhere today; sure, Alexanders of Falkirk still make bus bodies, but for chassis built by these foreign firms, no longer for British-manufactured AEC, Bedford or Leyland chassis.

These firms stopped investing in technical development, the British worker would not move with the times and our manufacturing industry foundered. Our bankers, who had supported British expansion, settled for American-style "casino banking", betting millions on currency movements and ignoring their British clientele.

Well, I would suggest - the Scottish clubs stopped investing in their raw materials, the kids. We ignored the traditional wee, red-headed Scottish wing half, who could play a 60-yard pass onto a sixpence, but could also, when required, tame a much-bigger, more physically-imposing opponent with the ferocity of his tackling. We stopped playing pass and move, we settled for a couple of generations of "players" who could run all day through a ploughed field, but couldn't trap a bag of cement, guys whose second touch was a frantic slide tackle to try to recover the ball which they could easily mis-kick off either shin.

We settled for mediocrity and that's what we've got.

The SFA boasts of the quality of its coaching courses. Well it sure doesn't boast of the quality of the management - and I don't mean the managers - of its clubs. I don't blame the team managers: the Scots bosses up here grew up in the era of only putting-in four, two-hour training sessions per week. Few if any of them came through the school which said: "Fail here and you're back down the pit or into the ship yard or the foundry on Monday". They had an easy life as players and they are happy to continue that easy life as managers.

If they fail, and most do, there is always the old pal's act of a gig on BBC Sportsound, where the rules are: "Don't criticise, don't be too-opinionated and remember, never criticise the Old Firm". Obey these and you've got an easy wee gig for years.

Just, don't demand too-big an improvement, don't ask for more from your players, don't question the status quo - get through it. The mugs on the terraces will put up with it.

Except, times are hard, the mugs are not putting up with it, they are voting with their feet, to find ways of watching better football on TV or on the internet.

Scottish football is dying and unless we get business doctors in to sort out the way the clubs and the game are run - in a few years we will not have a Scottish Football to worry about.

I can hardly wait to read the first prognosis from the first business doctor to properly analyse the management of a top Scottish club - it will, I bet, make fascinating reading.

The Football Business Is Like No Other Business - Aye Right

2011-08-08T03:23:00.000-07:00

THE headline above is: "received wisdom" in the world of Scottish, indeed British football. The last two words are my retort.

Football clubs, at least at the "professional" level (the quote marks are my jaundiced view of the majority of our SPL and SFL clubs, are almost all limited liability companies - subject to the same company laws as haulage contractors, hotels, retail shops, engineering companies - any business you care to name.

They are owned by their shareholders. In the world of commerce, shareholders invest in companies in the hope of receiving a monetary return on their investment, through the company's management's ability to make profits. In football, by and large being a shareholder invests through a desire to belong, perhaps out of loyalty to the team. They do not seek monetary reward, the occasional cup success, a high position in the SPL, promotion through the three SFL divisions to that top-flight is enough reward.

These general rules do not, however, apply to the Old Firm - where nothing less than non-stop, continuous success - and above all finishing above the other half of the OF, is all that is required of the club management.

Look at the players, the work force of the football "business". No five-day, 40-hour weeks for these guys; two hours of "training", four days a week, plus 90 minutes of "work" once or twice per week, for which, even in Scotland, those considered to be the best receive a weekly salary far in excess of that earned by the spectaors on the terraces and in the stands who fund their life-styles.

These men are by and large "full-time professionals"; except, this is a profession which doesn't require a minimum nationally-accepted standard of knowledge of the chosen subject. You don't have to pass examinations to be admitted to this "profession"; there is no requirement to keep abreast of current developments, no refresher courses, or requirement to upgrade your qualifications periodically. Once you are in, you are there until somebody called "a manager" decides to kick you out.

These managers can obtain professional qualifications, which are universally recognised - but there is no requirement to obtain these qualifications prior to taking up a managerial position.

These football clubs do not even have to make money. They are apparently not subject to market forces. Football teams are supposedly part of the entertainment industry, but are allowed to continue operating even when their seat occupancy rates are so low that, were that club a cinema or a theatre, they would be closed down, their premises closed and perhaps knocked-down and re-developed.

So, given these apparent paradoxes, it is no surprise that the likes of John Boyle, who made millions from the holiday business, Sir David Murray, who made billions from steel, hotels, property and service industries, should flop in the world of football.

It has been suggested that businessmen park their business brains in the cap park the moment they take over a football team. I would go further, I could give you examples of otherwise successful businessmen who came a cropper once they crossed the line from sports fans to sports club owner.

Given the masses of proven examples of this, the fact that billionaire venture capitalist Craig Whyte has hardly set the world on fire in the early months of his time as owner of Rangers FC, should surprise nobody. The fact that, already, less than six months into his ownership of this club/Scottish institution, Mr Whyte is under fire is simply further proof of the truth of my heading to this post.

Now, the question is - can Mr Whyte change this seemingly eternal truth? If he can, he might usher-in a new age of better management, of more success and of untold riches for him and Rangers. But already, it looks like being the same old, same old. Rangers and Celtic will continue to rule in Scotland, while being very small fry in Europe and beyond.

Can We Do The Three Card Trick?

2011-08-05T09:01:00.000-07:00

SO that's the Europa League play-off round draw then - not too bad and we just might pull-off the three card trick of having three Scottish clubs through to the group stages.

No, I haven't finally misplaced the few remaining marbles I have; I can see Celtic, Hearts and Rangers all qualifying for the group stages. But, what about Hearts - facing a side from the English Premiership? you ask.

So what, it's only Spurs, a team with a flaky defence, no idea about consistency and, we understand, Mr Redknapp has already said he will be using his fringe players in Europe. Such are the riches to be had from the Premiership, unless their teams are in the Champions League, which brings even-greater riches, they're not too bothered. 'Arry will approach Europe from the viewpoint of blooding kids for the Premiership, that's his main focus.

His season kicks off with a home match with Everton, then they go to Hearts, then Manchester United, then entertain Hearts, before entertaining Man City. I reckon I know which of those games 'Arry rates as the least-important and they don't involve teams from the North-West of England. 'Arry also knows the two matches against Hearts will be played like cup ties, so he will not want his men to risk injury prior to the bigger matches against the Manc sides - Hearts could win this one.

Rangers' trip to Mirabor will be no awayday janut. But, having had their horror shows against Malmo, I fancy Rangers will be able to see-off the Slovenians and advance to the group stages; but here again, only if they are focussed and ready.

Same thing goes for Celtic. We Scots tend to under-rate Swiss sides, but, having been shocked by Neuchetal Xamax and Basle in the past, you can bet Neil Lennon will have Celtic geared-up to winning this one.

LOOKING at this week-end's SPL fixtures, the big game for me will be Sunday's Fir Park clash between Motherwell and Hearts. After Thursday night's terrific win in Europe, Hearts will be buzzing when they visit the league leaders - who will in turn fancy, with home advantage, they can remain top of the table. This one promises much.

Dundee United did well to beat Hearts last weekend, but, that will mean nothing if they cannot make home advantage count against a St Mirren team equally buoyed-up by their home win over Aberdeen. United to win and remain in the mix at the top.

Hibs have had to take a lot of flak in recent months, but, Garry O'Connor started to repay the club's faith in him at Inverness last week, so surely the long-suffering Easter Road punters will have something to celebrate come the final whistle. While for St Johnstone, there is the memory of previous good wins in Leith, but not, I fear, this time.

Dunfermline have to make home advantage count against bottom of the table Inverness - who will arrive on the back of a week of ear-bashing and pain from an angry Terry Butcher. This one, to me, has draw written all over it.

Celtic will be clear, odds-on favourites to beat Aberdeen at Pittodrie - and why not? Can Aberdeen beat them. Doubt it - Celtic to win comfortably.

Finally, the two big friendlies. A narrow defet to Chelsea might be acceptable to the Rangers faithful, but, for the home side - this one is all about putting on a show which persuades the hordes that better times are just around the corner after that CL exit.

While, at Rugby Park, the big question is - will Goodwillie make his Blackburn debut? This should be a football feast, with Rovers edging it narrowly.

IN THE Irn-Bru Scottish League, the most-interesting match for me is the Somerset Park meeting of Ayr United and Hamilton Academical. Last season these teams were two leagues apart. Now they are in the same division.

Part-time Ayr will shock a few sides this season, Accies could be first. Billy Reid's men need to show relegation has barely affected them. If they can win, they should be in what will be a season-long multi-team promotion race. If they cannot, they could struggle.

The other intriguing match for me is at Firhill, where Thistle, dumped out of the League Cup by lowly Berwick last Saturday, face Dundee - the team which would have been promoted last season, but for that swinging 25 points deduction.

This pair should be in the Premier League, and good win for either could be the first step towards getting back there. But, defeat will perhaps signal the start of a long, hard season.

Get out there and enjoy the football, somewhere in Scotland.

The Quicksands Are Sucking Us Down

2011-08-04T02:30:00.001-07:00

REMEMBER the heart-rending tale of the Chinese immigrant cockle pickers who were caught in the quicksands and rushing inward tides of Morecambe Bay a few years ago. There deaths were both tragic and unnecessary.

I appreciate some might call me insensitive for likening that real human tragedy with a defeat in a football match, but I cannot help but think our Scottish clubs go into Europe each year with about the same state of readiness as those poor Chinese workers had as they walked onto those treacherous sands to their deaths.

Scottish clubs have been competing in Europe since 1955. Since that date we have been aware that our European mainland neighbours have better technique than us - but that knowledge hasn't narrowed the technique gap in any way. We have also been aware that the Europeans have a better diet, tend to be physically more-impressive and while, in the early years of European competition, a wee bit of Scottish "dig" and the knowledge that, in the immortal words of the battling butcher Corporal Jones: "They don't like it up em", helped offset the technique advantage the European sides enjoyed over the Scottish.

But, as the song says: "These days are past and in the past they must remain". Today's European player has added British stamina and competitiveness to continental technical ability and as a result, Scotland is sinking to the level of the semi-junior European Leagues.

Not that you will ever find the "blazers" within Hampden's corridors of power, whether that power arises from the SFA, SPL or SFL, admitting how rank we are. Scottish football needs to change, it must change; some of us have known that for years - but, the familiar Scottish refrain of: "But it's aye been done this way" has held us back.

Our background doesn't help us. The late Bill Shankly once said that the secret of winning in England was simple - you recruited enough Scots players to make a difference, but not too-many, in which case they would start fighting with each other.

We do love our "bonnie fechters"; we grow up with the need to debate and dispute and we love to get involved in battles. Too many of us have a hair-trigger temper and how many Scottish players talk themselves into the referee's wee black book? Far too many for my liking.

Look at Steven Whittaker last night. Rangers had been given a free kick - so he thinks it a good idea to throw the ball at his Malmo opponent - red card for Whittaker. How stupid was that?

Rangers are or should be the richest club in Scotland. They ought to have the pick of Scotland's young players - but, how many make the grade there? Of those who do make the grade (by having a first team squad number), how many actually get onto the park?

Rangers have, in the past ten years, spent an absolute fortune in recruiting foreign players who were either - over the hill (the de Boers); over-priced (Tore Andfre Flo) or over-rated (Jerome Rotten). Meanwhile they have seen young Scots players become Scotland Under-21 caps and never train on to be first team players (too many to name); or be jettisoned to go on to perform well in England's Championship or Premiership and to become internationalists (Charlie Adam, Ross McCormack, Stephen Dobbie).

They have signed players who if not unfit when they arrived, quickly became so - the latest being Daniel Goian last night. But, have heads rolled on their medical staff - no, thought not.

Don't get the impression, this is a rant against Rangers. For all their failings both on and off the field - they are still Scotland's top club; reigning champions, highest-ranked side in the UEFA co-efficients. But, in European terms, they are rank rotten, a big club in a small league and with small ambitions.

But, Rangers are the best we've got. What does that say about the rest?

Unless things change, radically and soon - we truly are all doomed.

Vlad The Impaler Strikes Again

2011-08-02T06:45:00.000-07:00

ONE thing you can say about Hearts' owner "Mad Vlad" Romanov - life is seldom dull on his watch. His latest jolt to Scottish football's measured lurch into the new season came yesterday afternoon, when he binned Jim Jefferies. Surprise, surprise - no, the surprise with Vlad will come when he no longer surprises us.

I have a certain sympathy for JJ, he has been a good manager of a provincial club; he has kept Hearts clinging to the coat tails of the Old Firm, he encourages good football, but, at the end of the day his team has had a poor 2011 by the standards his boss expects and if he was handicapped to an extent by injuries, under JJ Hearts no more than flirted with a genuine challenge to the Old Firm.

This is the problem with Scottish football as I see it. Celtic and Rangers, with their massive home supports, have a fiscal advantage which now makes it almost inevitable that they will finish first and second in the league. But, there can be little doubt - they have, over recent seasons, paid top dollar for second-rate players and I honestly believe that a good technical coach, able to properly harness the Scots Presbyterian work ethic to sophisticated tactics, COULD mount a serious challenge to the status quo of Old Firm domination.

Mind you, such a coach would perhaps have just three seasons in which to perform this trick, before either the Old Firm or, more likely any one of some 40 English clubs came in and cherry-picked his squad with better financial packages. Something like: first season - mount a season-long league challenge, reach one of the cup finals; season two - split the Old Firm, win one of the cups; season three - win the league.

Somewhere around the January transfer window in season two, the laptoployal would start print the stories linking one or t'other with the challenging side's top two players and, if they were held on to, by the end of the third season or the players entering the final year of their contracts, whichever came first, the pressure to sell to one of the Old Firm or an English predator would all but impossible.

For all that, for the good of Scottish football, we need somebody to rise to the challenge and become the real third force. Vlad just might be the man to fund such a challenge, but nothing in his past behaviour leads me to believe he will put-up, then shut-up and allow his chosen coach/manager to show what he can do.

But, good luck to Paulo Sergio - you'll need it.

THE on-going David Goodwillie saga intrigues me. By all accounts, Goodwillie ought to have been paraded as a Blackburn Rovers by now. (That's not to say this announcement will not be long delayed).

The fact he still hasn't been unveiled at Ewood Park makes me believe he could still end up at Ibrox. He's clearly a Rangers fan; it is equally clear, for all the riches being spread before him in terms of a reported £1 million-per-year pay deal, he's not entirely happy with the thought of moving to Blackburn. And, having visited that town a few times, I cannot say I blame him; nice enough place I suppose, but rows and rows of red brick back-to-backs and the ever-pervading smell of Asian spices would make me long for the open spaces and clear air of Raploch.

One thing this long-drawn-out transfer story has shown is, Craig Whyte has a lot to learn about running a football club. As I have posted before, he's a venture capitalist and thus, by nature more used to buying cheap than splashing-out top dollar. But, if his manager has identified a player as a "must-have" as Ally McCoist apparently has with Goodwillie - then not to back his manager and get him, immediately raises doubts about Whyte.

Does he rate McCoist? Did he even want him as manager? Are manager and owner on the same wave-length as regards how to take Rangers forward? These are interesting times.

Then there is the third man in any Rangers transfer dealings - Gordon Smith. What has been his input to the Goodwillie saga? How is he getting on with Whyte and McCoist?

If, as currently appears likely, Goodwillie does join Blackburn and Rangers are left with egg on their faces after their succession of raised but rejected bids - does the fact Rangers didn't get him become a resignation issue with McCoist? Only time will tell.

By the way, fair play to Stephen Thomson for the way he has played hard ball with Rangers. We have become too-used to the Old Firm raiding the competing Scottish clubs to augment their own failing youth development programmes. Too often the other clubs have simply rolled-over and allowed the young talent they developed go to Glasgow for buttons.

We're a long way from the stupid fees the bigger English clubs pay for potential, but, if Dundee United get what they want for Goodwillie - they'll have struck a blow against the big two.

Barnum and Bailey It Aint

2011-08-01T08:18:00.000-07:00

RATHER like your kids in the back seat while you drive down the M6 on holiday, a lot of Scottish football fans have been asking: "Is it here yet?" as season 2011-2012 ever-so-slowly cranks up. Once upon a time, when we had an indiginous newspaper industry, rather than being a northern enclave of 'Fleet Street', the likes of the Daily Record had a couple of special pre-set fonts. The first, only used occasionally proclaimed in black 72 point: "THE KING/QUEEN IS DEAD"; the other, used once annually roared: "KING FOOTBALL IS BACK".

Today, football resumes after an ever-shortening summer break with, rather than a fanfare and a blaze of publicity - but by almost shame-facedly creeping in. Mind you, with the state Scottish football is in these days, can we blame it?

Scottish football has been on the downward slope for at least the last 25-years. In that time, the powers-that-be have made a lot of noise, come up with a lot of promises of better days around the corner, but done hee-haw about actually changing things. In increasing numbers the fans have voted with their feet. Aye, the Bigot Brothers still pull-in the fans, but, let's be honest, a lot of their combined following are signed-up for reasons which have little, if anything, to do with a love of football.

When, in the second round of matches, unbeaten Kilmarnock and table-topping Motherwell can only one-quarter-fill Rugby Park - a Rugby Park which, remember, only holds around half the number of fans it once did - why do we bother?

I've seen Killie pre-season; Kenny Shiels's team is far from the finished article, but, they are trying to play good football, albeit without a genuine striker familiar with the expected juxtaposition of a cow's rear end and a banjo. Motherwell's thumping of Inverness CT in their opening fixture even forced a smile onto Tam Cowan's coupon, Saturday was a fine, sunny day - yet - poor crowd, no goals -yawn.

It goes without saying: playing competitive football during the Glasgow Fair is wrong - but, that's the price we must pay for our long, slow, decline into genteel poverty - or ought that rather be paucity of talent, expectation and ambition.

We seriously and urgently need to re-structure out leagues, re-structure our season and re-state our ambition. But, don't hold your breath; we will surely guddle along for a good wee while yet before, if ever, things turn.

Not even the great WG Barnum could drum up interest in Scottish Football as it is today.

SO, WE now know that the Road to Rio will be via: Croatia, Serbia, Belgium, Macedonia and Wales. We might have had it tougher, again, we could have had it easier, but, when it comes to World Cups and Scotland, it was ever thus.

Croatia, who will start the group as favourites to qualify, we have faced thrice since that country re-emerged from the break-up of the old Yugoslavia: all three games, in 2001, 2002 and 2008 have been drawn - 1-1, 0-0, 1-1. So, tight games, probably decided by the odd goal would seem to be the order of the day, but, we need not fear them.

Serbia we have never met before, but in eight matches against Yugoslavia, including World Cup Final meetings in Sweden in 1958 and West Germany in 1974, we only lost once, going down 3-1 in Zagreb in a WC qualifying group match in Zagreb in 1989. Since then, the down-sizing of the once-powerful Yugoslavs to their Serbian rump has weakened them badly. Another two tight games beckon, but two we should win.

Belgium - now the two meetings with them could well be THE crucial games in our group. We've met the Belgians 15 times since the end of World War II and our record reads: won 4, drawn 3, lost 8. We have been drawn with them three times in World Cup or European Championship qualifiers and have barely registered a drawn against them, while we've won just two of eleven games against them in the last 40 years. You might say: "We are due a change of luck against them", but, these will be probably our two toughest games.

Macedonia, provided we heed the lessons of history and avoid the stifling heat of Skopje between May and October, should not overly concern us - but the lesson of that 0-1 2008 loss in the Macedonian capital must be heeded.

Then there is the clash of the Scotia Nostra and the Taffia. First the good news - we've never failed to qualify when we've been in a World Cup group with the Welsh; we can reinforce that with the glad tidings of our win over them last time out, in the Carling Cup, in Dublin in May.

But, that was achieved against a very young, inexperienced and experimental Welsh XI and it was our first win over the Red Dragons in six outings. Also, our record in Cardiff is terrible - two wins in ten visits over the past 50 years.

They will hope to field the likes of Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey against us, but: to modify a famous Shanklyism - if you canny beat two men, ye shouldnae be playin fur Scotland.

The eternal optimist in me believes we can win the group, far less merely qualify for the lay-offs, but, the observer, cowed with repeated under-performance by our brave lads, can equally-easily see us finish fourth in the group.

But, such are the joys of being in the Tartan Army.

Sally - Sally

2011-07-26T23:02:00.000-07:00

POOR Ally McCoist - he waits all that time for the top job - and within two real games, his old "Sally" McCoist nickname is back. Indeed, the way his tenure in the grand office, at the head of the marble staircase has begun - one can almost imagine him gazing at the portraits of Messrs Wilton, Struth, Symon, White, Waddell, Wallace, Greig, Souness, Smith, Advocaat, McLeish and Le Guen and asking: "Why me?"

Of course, as he has admitted, his timing hasn't been right - better to have inherited with the club at a low ebb, rather than on the back of Walter Smith's three-in-a-row run of titles, garnered at a time of fiscal difficulty; but, like Tommy Burns across the city before him, he wasn't going to knock-back the job just because the time was not absolutely correct.

Football at the top level today is, more than ever, a results-driven industry - and nowhere more-so than when these results impact on the game's oldest rivalry, that between Celtic and Rangers. Once upon a time, an assistant manager, taking over either of the Glasgow jobs, would be given a breathing space, to grow into the job; the rival fans would have been prepared to accept a season or two of playing second fiddle, before growing restless. Not today.

McCoist is the fifth Rangers' assistant manager to be promoted to the big job. None of the previous four was required to deliver silverware immediately to the extent McCoist is.

The great Bill Struth, on succeeding the dead William Wilton, at least took over a title-winning side, one which had started to make Rangers, rather than Celtic, the dominant force in the city. When Struth took over, Celtic had won 15 SFL titles to Rangers' 10, although Wilton had delivered two out of the last three.

When the octogenarian Struth was ushered out of the front door at Ibrox 34 years later, the league titles tally read Rangers 28 Celtic 20, with Rangers having added a further seven unofficial wartime titles.

David White, the next number two to become number one was appointed in successon to the shamefully sacked Scot Symon at a time of turmoil, as across the city Jock Stein swung the balance of power back Celtic's way. He never really stood a chance against that managerial genius, and the carping from the sidelines of his ultimate successor, Willie Waddell, then a hugely-influential sports writer, undid him from the start, as the Deedle dubbed him: "the boy David".

Waddell had at least restored some equilibrium before handing over to his assistant, Jock Wallace, who benefitted from Stein's declining powers after his car crash to deliver a treble.

Then came Smith's succession to Graeme Souness, which kept an already rolling juggernaut progressing to nine-in-a-row.

So with three successful managerial hand-overs to one failure, Rangers, when appointing from within, have generally got it right. Another "failure" is therefore probably due.

Rangers are an institution, and there is an argument for appointing a manager who at least knows how that institution works. Struth, Symon, Waddell, Wallace and Greig all got the top job after many years within the club, while Symon and Wallace had earned their managerial spurs with trophies at lesser clubs. Smith and McLeish were fans, who, again, had learned the managment business elsewhere, while Souness led nothing less than a revolution in Scottish football. White had barely got to know the place after arriving from Clyde and there is anectdotal evidence that Symon didn't really want him there in the first place, although he had shown signs of managerial talent at Shawfield.

Advocaat and the ill-fated Le Guen were an attempt at bringing continental sophistication to Scotland, with contrasting fortunes - maybe we're simply not programmed for frites with mayonaisse or French cuisine up here.

So to McCoist. Almost certainly he would have benefitted from a spell as manager somewhere like Kilmarnock or Motherwell - to learn the ropes; but neither club is remotely a Rangers. Maybe the guarantee of Sir David Murray's continued support from the chair would have eased him through the first stressful months - but here he is, flung-in, to sink and swim and with a shiny new owner hovering above him, anxious to show his take-over of the club will be good for Rangers.

I do not envy McCoist his job, he is already under enormous pressure, after a less than stellar start. But, after he arrived at the club from Sunderland, and again when Souness benched him in favour of the Hateley/Johnson strike partnership, it seemed unlikely that Alistair would ever supercede Bob McPhail as the club's greatest goal scorer - but he did. So I would not rush to write-off Ally in the wake of a home draw to Hearts and a one-goal loss to Malmo.

That said, however, with a city financier in charge - creatures notorious for their short-termism, Alistair does not have long to turn things around.

The likes of Struth and Symon were used to seeing their sides struggle through August and September, but still deliver trophies in April and May - McCoist will not be given that amount of time, and while Rangers are still likely to be parading silverware round Ibrox come May, 2012 - unless things pick-up soon, it may not be McCoist who is gathering the managerial plaudits for any such success.

Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush

2011-07-25T05:04:00.000-07:00

WELL, here we are, one round of fixtures into the new SPL season and already some are ready to package-up the season 2011-2012 SPL trophy and league flag and despatch them to Celtic Park; simply because Rangers were held to a home draw by the club which finished third last season, while Celtic beat last season's tenth-best SPL club on their own ground.

This flies right in the face of reality - winning a league flag is a marathon, not a sprint and has been shown in the past, being two points ahead even going into the final game of a season is not a guarantee of eventual title success.

I reckon gloating from Celtic fans and wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Ibrox faithful, this early in the campaign, is simply further proof of how hysterical the age-old Old Firm rivalry has become.

Of course, we are still in mid-summer, Strathclyde Fire and Rescue should be asked to send a couple of pumps along to the next games at Ibrox and Celtic Parks to hose the fans down before they get too-over-excited.

As of now (lunch time on Monday, 25 July, 2011) just about all I can guarantee about season 2011-2012 is that, come the final final whistle next May, the league order will not be what it is right now: Motherwell, Celtic, Dundee United, Hearts, Kilmarnock, Rangers, Aberdeen, St Johnstone, Dunfermline Athletic, St Mirren, Hibs, Inverness CT.

THERE has been much comment about Craig Whyte's decision to unfurl the 2010-11 league flag on Saturday. Well, in terms of Rangers: it's his ball and he can do what he likes with it. On one hand, he got out there and showed his face to the faithful, on the other, since he played no part in winning it, it might perhaps have been better had he asked Davie Weir, the winning captain, or perhaps an Ibrox legend such as John Greig, or Eric Caldow or Derek Johnstone - to pluck three names out of mid-air, to do the honours.

I NOTE also, on some of the newspaper websites that the mutual game of tit-for-tat between the Old Firm fans, has started. There have been sharp-eared Celtic fans hearing sectarian singing during broadcasts from Ibrox on Saturday, while Rangers fans with equally-keen hearing could discern pro-IRA chanting and singing from Easter Road on Sunday. It's all becoming tedious. But will the clubs actually do something about it? Not until a (proverbial) gun is held to their heads - you see - sectarianism sells, always has, always will - until somebody REALLY does something about it. But, don't hold your breath.

THERE is - believe it or not - life outwith the Old Firm and Saturday's Ramsden's Cup (great sponsorship by the way - in the SFL any gold or silver hanging around is clearly very old and superfluous to modern living) threw-up some interesting results.

Good to see Ayr United knocking-out holders Queen of the South at the first hurdle. Brian Reid, encouraged by a chairman and board who did not jettison him after relegation two seasons ago, is rebuilding his United side and between the experience of the likes of John Robertson, Martyn Campbell and the ageless Mark Roberts and the products of a somewhat under-rated Youth Academy, he has a real chance of keeping the part-timers in a First Division which is far from vintage this season.

I just wonder when Reid will start to be mentioned once the SPL managerial merry-go-round cranks-up. He would, I venture, be worth a punt to a middling SPL club seeking a manager who could work with little cash. For Queens - I predict a season-long struggle.

GREAT to see Spartans open their new ground with a match against a Manchester United XI on Sunday. OK, it wasn't the result they'd have wanted, but here is a prototype "community Club" which deserves to and surely will, once we get a proper pyramid in place, be an SFL club.

With their reliance on graduates of Edinburgh University, Spartans' teams havde something other sides in Scotland lack - players with brains in their heads, and that should give them an advantage.

I see the club becoming a Queen's Park of the east and it will be great to see them in the SFL, when it happens.

The Goal Posts Are Moving

2011-07-22T00:29:00.000-07:00

TODAY, for Scotland's full-time footballers, the realisation will start to sink in. Their training session will be slightly different, a change of emphasis will be evident, because, in 24-hours' time the season will kick-off for real. It will matter, if only in terms of the effect on their wage packet, how they perform; win bonuses will now be there to be won, league position will determine the perception of the fans, expectation will have to be turned into realisation.

The transfer window will remain open for a further five and a bit weeks, so there will be some movement around squads and those players who do not hit the ground running might find there security, if there is such a thing in present-day football, threatened. But, while long gone are the days of free movement within an all-year-round transfer market, things are also changing in Scotland, as regards the two big players in that market - the Old Firm.

Rangers' capture yesterday of Hearts' Lee Wallace was a move we've grown accustomed to over the 140 years of Scottish football. In the early days, Queen's Park was the destination of choice of the provincial player who had perhaps gained the recognition of the SFA's selection committee, and who now wished to play, week-in, week-out, with better-quality team mates. But, with the advent of the Scottish League and professionalism, Queen's, for all their great pionerring work, became something of a sideshow, the places to go were Ibrox and Celtic Park, and that has continued ever since.

Anyone's all-time Rangers XI would contain more bought-in than home-grown players. During the Struth Years, from 1920 to 1954, the period when the Ibrox club established itself as THE leading Scottish team there was a steady stream of recruits from lesser sides - Airdrie gave them Bob McPhail and Jock 'Tiger' Shaw; from Queen's Park came Bobby Brown, Ian McColl, Willie Woodburn and Sammy Cox of the original 1949 Treble winners. From the great team of the early 1960s, the next Treble winners - Bobby Shearer came from Hamilton Accies, the peerless Jim Baxter from Raith Rovers, Ian McMillan was another stolen from Airdrie and on and on the recruitment from other Scottish clubs went.

Andy Goram from Hibs, Davie Cooper from Clydebank, Ally McCoist from St Johnstone via Sunderland, Alex Macdonald, also from the Perth Saints, George McLean, Tottie Beck, Bobby McKean, Ian Ferguson and Kirk Broadfoot from the Paisley Saints, Ian Redford and Richard Gough (via Tottenham) from Dundee United, Colin Stein, Craig Paterson and now Steven Whittaker from Hibs; Alan McLaren and now Lee Wallace from Hearts.

But, Wallace's arrival may be one of the last such moves - although I wouldn't rule out Rangers' interest in St Johnstone's Murray Davidson bearing fruit in this transfer window - because, Rangers are now under new ownership. I do not see Craig Whyte embarking on the free-spending of the Murray/Souness era, or backing European recruitment raids as per the Advocaat years.

In fact, with Gordon Smith, a man who has always espoused coaching and home-grown youth development as the way forward as Director of Football, I can see Rangers, who have already done well out of the facility, seeking to recruitment of new players increasingly from within the confines of Murray Park. It will be some time in the future, indeed, if ever, before Murray Park is spoken off in the same hushed tones as Manchester United's Cliff and now Carrington training grounds, or the famed Barcelona Academy, but, over the Whyte years, it will increasingly influence the make-up of Rangers' teams.

Why do I say this? Simple, Mr Whyte may be a Rangers fan of long-standing, but he is also a venture capitalist and such creatures look to develop clubs at minimum cost, seeking maximum return. If Mr Whyte can see one Danny Wilson and maybe one Gordon Wylde per season emerge from Murray Park, he will be delighted. He could then sell one on for a big fee to an EPL team and keep the other; Rangers' squad will become deeper, the team will improve in Europe and who knows, there may be another European trophy to be won somewhere down the line.

A viable production line out of Murray Park will enable Rangers to keep winning in Scotland, get better in Europe, without huge spending on salaries. Certainly, there will still be incursions into the transfer market - which will at least keep my colleagues on the red tops in work over the summer, peddling their fantasies, but I see, increasingly, Rangers becoming a developing and selling club rather than a buying one. And, if, as I believe it will, this strategy works - you can bet on Celtic following suit. The goal posts are moving

Wildlife on SPL

2011-07-20T03:09:00.000-07:00

THE warm-ups are almost over: the clock is ticking and it will soon be Saturday and the big kick-off, happy days - or are they?

I try to steer clear of Old Firm politics, it is a shameful swamp, an oozing plook on the admttedly less than wholesome countenance of Scottish football. But, needs must, so here goes.

Defending the habit of a section of the Rangers' support - of singing "unsuitable" songs may be a case of defending the indefinsible. Certainly any right-thinking person would rather they didn't sing their old battle anthems, but, one man's sectarian ditty is another's traditional folk song. As I have argued before in mixed company - ie catholic/protestant - The Fields of Athenry and The Sash are both Irish folk songs, so how come one is apparently ok but not the other - and in any case, what has either song got to do with Scottish football? Ditto Derry's Walls or The Boys of the Old Brigade or perhaps a couple of dozen more staples of the Old Firm's combined song book.

The fact that, in the 11th year of the third millennium, in a supposedly civilised and advanced country in Europe, the religious and political battles of two or three hundred years ago are still being sung-of as a means of winding-up opponents speaks volumes on how little we have advanced in that time.

Rangers are now paying the price for someone's decision almost 100 years ago, to pander to the sectarianism of a section of the populace of West-Central Scotland, while Celtic's pandering to similar sectarianism on the other side of the religious divide for even longer continues to deny them the respect that club deserves from its achievements on the field.

Let there be no doubt, sectarianism sells - for both clubs and any whitabootery or tit-for-tat dredging-up of past indiscretions merely demonstrates the backwardness of those doing the dragging-up.

Celtic have apparently siezed the moral high ground - more sinned-against than sinning; a situation which perhaps owes more to having better-placed friends in the media and politics than Rangers. To be fair to Rangers, like many a long-lasting "establishment institution", there is perhaps an element of: "Never apologise - never explain" about their pr and media stance and I would suggest to new owner Craig Whyte that a review of his club's approach to public relations and news management might pay dividends.

That club ought to be more pro-active in weeding-out the cancerous core who, regardless of the fines, bans and other impositions placed on the club by UEFA or others, seem hell-bent on taking the Briton's right of free speech to extremes. I despair of their constant add-ons to their songs, regarding the Pope, but, nobody can deny - they do have a right to express these sentiments.

Similarly, I despair of those Celtic fans who voice their support for a terrorist organisation, or who on a weekly basis slander HM the Queen, but, as with their similarly-thick cousins on the other side of the city - they do have a right to express these sentiments.

The Scottish Government and the Police are on the case - I might suggest the government ought to be looking at sectarianism and bigotry in the wider community, beyond football - perhaps, on one hand telling the Orange Order: "You can no longer walk the Queen's highway" and on the other telling the Roman Catholic Church: "We will run the schools and if you want to have your own ones - then pay for them yourself". It might take a century or ten, but, eventually, religious tolerance and free speech will abound in Scotland.

By the way I am not advocating the closure of "Catholic" schools. We have too-many schools in Scotland for today's population and I can see no case for what happens in the Ayrshire village where I live, whereby Roman Catholic children are, on a daily basis, bussed out of their home village - six miles to the next big town for their Primary education (passing four non-denominational schools) and then 22 miles, past four large comprehensives to the even bigger town which has the nearest RC secondary school. Better they be educated alongside the other children in the village from age five to 16 or 18.

But, to get back to football. Both Old Firm clubs MUST become pro-active in cutting-out the cancer. Start with the official supporters clubs; tell them, you self-police - or else. Then, when that body of fans has been sorted, you can more-easily sort-out the freelancers.

Be heavy with the season ticket holders, adopt a three strikes and you are out policy. If someone has coughed-up several hundred £ sterling for a season ticket and by singing the wrong song at the wrong time, has to forfeit that ticket and investment for perhaps a period which includes a European game - he will surely not be so-happy to try it a second time. If he does, he gets a longer ban, and if he still will not come to heel - he gets banned for life. It will work, I am sure.

And, while the clubs are at it - they ought to publish the banned lists in their club publications. I am certain the combination of naming and shaming, plus the financial hit, will work.

Deck's Cleared For Action Cap'n

2011-07-18T02:55:00.000-07:00

THE Open is out of the way - and I defy anyone not to rejoice at big Darren Clarke's success, at long last; so now we can clear the decks for the start of the football season.

Of course, Dundee United are already in European action and can I, at this point, get rid of an issue raised by friend of this blog Sausage Fingers - perhaps the only Arab in the USA who doesn't have his own personal FBI agent looking after him. Following my last post, SF asked me for my views on whether or not to support every Scottish club playing in Europe, even my club's deadliest rivals.

I tend towards the pragmatic Scottish view - you support EVERY Scottish club playing in Europe, regardless; then, if and when THEY come a cropper, you indulge in high-intensity and non-stop piss-taking - simples.

With the rise of the national co-efficient, we are now all in Europe together and we have to be hopeful of long campaigns for every Scottish team, even those we cannot otherwise stand.

I WAS at Rugby Park on Saturday to run my eye over Kenny Shiels's new-look Killie. On walking away from Rugby Park I came up alongside two long-time Killie fans of my acquaintance and asked them what they thought.

"I'm worried", said one.

"It's all going too-well - unbeaten in three games in Ireland, then we come back and play some good stuff this afternoon - I have bother handling promising pre-seasons, it builds an expectation we seldom live up to".

Killie will certainly, this season, try to play something like an old-fashioned Scottish passing game, there were few if any long balls on Saturday and the players seemed comfortable in possession. The same might be said of the St Mirren team I saw out-play then lose to Ayr United the previous Saturday.

Of course, strange things happen in the heat of real battle, rather than the phoney war of pre-season, but, if these standards of short balls, along the carpet, can be maintained, we might just see a half-decent season.

I DON'T know who is driving the story, the player, his agent or "Mad Vlad", but, just as Andy Webster broke the mould to get out of Hearts - and let's be honest, that didn't exactly go to plan in the longer run - maybe Lee Wallace staying at Tynecastle through the final year of his contract, will be the first (or second) crack in football's infatuation with a transfer market.

I don't know all the ins and outs, but in the North American professional sports market, the place which is the true home of the millionaire sportsman, basketball and (American) footballers in the final year of a contract have a greater say in their future than their counterparts in European football.

They also have agents who are perhaps sharper than their European counterparts and better-able to secure lucrative deals for their clients.

Better perhaps for Wallace to run down his Hearts contract, have his agent play hard-ball with Vlad from January and end up with he (Wallace) getting a better wage deal with a new club as a Bosman than through a final year transfer. With no fee to pay, his new club can pey him a better salary.

I see such deals becoming more-prevalant, as the players finally waken-up to the fact that these days, they hold the power - not their clubs.

All it takes is hard-headedness. Look at dear Bobo Balde, who took the money then sauntered away from Celtic.

I Hear The Sound Of Distant Drums

2011-07-14T01:52:00.000-07:00

OK, WE all know that in this week of July, the sound of drums in Scotland are usually of instruments of the Lambeg variety; but elsewhere the snare drums are beating, calling the combatants to arms, with competitive football kicking off with Dundee United in European action in Poland tonight, before on Saturday, come the first SFL Challenge Cup games.

These Saturday games might only involve the "diddy" teams, but they will at least deflect some attention from the Open Golf and further enhance the realisation that the real stuff is just around the corner - if the often-dire SPL matches are indeed the real thing.

I am none too confident about what this new season will bring - but forward tho I canna see, I guess and fear is almost the default position of the Scottish football fan in July.

Have we addressed the institutionalised bias in favour of the two large Glasgow clubs?

Have we seriously addressed the lack of skill in our domestic game?

Are too many of our clubs still living way beyond their means?

Is our league system of two separate organisations still fit for purpose?

Does that system meet the needs and aspirations of the football public?

All these questions - to which we are still getting the "wrong" answers. I say again: We're awe doomed.

Then there is the sectarian question - which I can never see answered in my lifetime.

As to the question of Scotland qualifying for Euro' 2012 - I am not at all confident. We are now in the situation where, to qualify, Craig Levein and his men simply cannot afford to drop another point, prior to "mission impossible" against Spain in the final game. Can you see this happening? Thought so, me neither.

This almost-inevitable failure will set-off another round of public flagellation, calls for a sacrificial victim - then we will carry-on as before - it's the Scottish football way and I don't see any change soon.

That's why, I wish, for once, those drums calling us to arms for the new season would also call us to arms to actually change a flawed football culture which is leading us to nowhere other than oblivion.

Good luck to United tonight, however - we badly need one of the provincial teams to make a greater impact in Europe.

A Gordon For Me

2011-07-11T03:33:00.000-07:00

IF I have a criticism of the Old Firm's management - other than the permanent one of these two organisations not doing enough to stamp out sectarianism and bigotry in Scottish football, it is that they simply do not do enough to promote and encourage young Scottish talent.

Given the breadth of their support throughout Scotland and into Ireland, they have the pick of our best young talent - yet, over the past 20 years the numbers of young players who have come through the ranks at the two major clubs is distressingly small.

Today, thanks in no small part to the financial restrictions imposed on them by their bankers over the past three years - a prudence which I can see continuing on Craig Whyte's watch, Rangers have been forced, reluctantly, to promote from within and this has seen the likes of Fleck, Hutton, Ness and Wylde and to a lesser extent Cole and McMillan, given places in the first team squad.

In the same period Celtic have continued to largely shop in Aldi and Lidl, with only the excellent James Forrest demonstrating to the younger players around Lennoxtown that yes, you can wear a first team jersey.

I have never registered with the: "The Lisbon Lions will never happen again" school of thought, so prevalent in Scotland.

For the first century of football, Scotland was where the embitious English League sides shopped - we have now largely lost that market, hopefully our new Dutch Performance Director's initiatives will help restore that market to us, as well as leading our domestic game to a new dawn of European respect.

But, to today's tale. I see that Craig Gordon, one young, home-grown, world-class Scottish product is available for transfer at his current club, Sunderland. Of course, if the reported interest from Arsenal and Manchester City is more than "paper talk", then Master Gordon and his advisers would be fools to ignore these overtures. He's as good, if not a better goalkeeper than Joe Hart and he is certainly better than anybody at the Emirates, so, given these two clubs could certainly meet and indeed exceed his current level of remuneration - he has to be interested.

However, should the reported interest from the upper reaches of the EPL be silly season rumour, then Celtic's advances ought to be listened to. A move back home would be a good fit for both: he's a quality keeper, well capable of being worth the 12-15 points season which his international rival reportedly keeps at Rangers. Gordon is definitely "Celtic Class", unlikely to be dragged down by the mental demands of being the last line for a team for whose fans victory is expected every week.

He's international class, unlikely to be attacked by nerves in the big domestic games or in Europe - he's a good fit, apart from those English-level wages. However, should Celtic bite the bullet and go after him, he could be as fine a servant for them as another Scottish goalkeeper who played for a club in Edinburgh and one in the North East of England, before arriving at Celtic Park - and Ronnie Simpson didn't do too-badly, did he?

ACCORDING to the Daily Torygraph, shock, horror!!! the European Union is going to push through a bill whereby every international team of every member state of the EU will have to wear the EU flag on their shirts and fly it during games.

Great idea, why doesn't Wee Eck, who rarely misses a travelling bandwagon, climb aboard and insist that that cute blue number with the 12 stars be the only flag flown at Old Firm games - ok, the Celtic fans will not be best pleased with the background colour, but, I reckon, since that flag has meant the farmers of Belgium and Eastern France have been able to enjoy more than 60 years of uninterrupted harvests, while true self-determination and international harmony has come to large swathes of Central Europe, maybe in about 2000 years, peace will descend on the football fields of west-central Scotland. It's surely worth a try.

Stair Heid Rows

2011-07-07T01:35:00.000-07:00

SCOTTISH Football is something of a big village, within which there are numerous wee local areas. At either end there are the big hooses, within which dwell the super rich Celtic and Rangers families, with the various levels of local populace ranged between them.

In that part of the village known as "Ayrshire", there are a couple of wee stushies going on at present, and in one case, things are getting nasty - with the Ayr United and Kilmarnock "families" falling-out over a little local nick-nack, the Ayrshire Cup, over which they had battled for over a century, before the authorities stepped in and banned them from disputing ownership.

This caused great offence to the lesser members of the Ayr and Kilmarnock families - known as "fans" and since the annual dispute was halted, the fans on both sides have sought to bring back the annual little local battle.

The politics are complicated, the Ayrshire Cup used to be organised by the Ayrshire FA, but some years ago this organisation became part of a new body, the West of Scotland FA, and the Ayrshrie Cup went into abeyance, as did the Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire Cups. The Renfrewshire Cup has since been revived, now moves are afoot to revive the Ayrshire one.

To help make this revival happen, Ayr and Kilmarnock were due to face each other in a pre-season game; the hope being, if it passed without major riots in the douce upmarket street of Kilmarnock around Rugby Park, then maybe the Cup could again be up for grabs.

Meanwhile, Killie came up with sponsorship so that the winners of the proposed pre-season game could take away a bauble known as "The Ayrshire Challenge Cup". but for some reason this didn't sit well with Ayr's American-based owner/chairman Lachlan Cameron, who has now called-off the pre-season game.

Naturally this has caused a degree of posturing and name calling from both sides, but it means - Kilmarnock will not be entertaining Ayr United pre-season. The biggest losers here are the fans - who don't really care if the sides are playing for the real Ayrshire Cup, a pretend Ayrshire Challenge Cup, a tea cup out of the players' lounge or even the European Cup.

For them, it's US v THEM, what the game is about doesn't matter. It is all about bragging right and the feel-good factor and no game is a loss to both sides.

AS an aside here - can I just say, a real chance was lost when the West of Scotland FA was formed. The Junior West of Scotland Cup is the number two competition in the Junior ranks, behind only the Emirates Scottish Junior Cup. With Kilmarnock, St Mirren, Motherwell, Hamilton, Airdrie United, Ayr United, Clyde, Partick Thistle, Morton, Dumbarton, Albion Rovers, Queen's Park and a couple of other clubs who could maybe be persuaded to enter their Under-19 teams, a senior West of Scotland Cup - perhaps with the teams forced to field all-Scottish sides, could be a positive addition to the Scottish season - failing that, bring back all the old County Cups.

THE second little local difficulty in Scottish football concerns moves to integrate the Junior Ayrshire and Central District Leagues more fully into the West of Scotland Regional Leagues.

This goes against all sense. In the East Region, which admittedly does cover a larger geographic area than the West Region, there are, below East Superleague level, Lothians, Tayside and two other regional leagues. This makes sense, as it preserves the local rivalries which are so-important to the smaller junior sides.

In the West, the likes of Auchinleck, Arthurlie, Pollok, Irvine Meadow, Petershill and Cumnock have the support and resources to cope with playing right across the West of Scotland. Small village teams such as Forth Wanderers, Royal Albert, Muirkirk, Craigmark and Lugar Boswell cannot afford to finance travel across the same region. Keep them local and let them survive and if not flourish, continue to produce young players for the bigger teams.

Scottish rugby has just decided to become more local, below the top semi-professional level, there is no sense in junior football bucking this trend, particularly in these days of austerity and financial doom and gloom.

The Times Are Definitely Changing

2011-07-03T23:01:00.000-07:00

WHEN I was a boy, this would be one of the few weeks in the year when my spare time wasn't spent on my ultimately futile quest to master a football. Back then, for the week after Wimbledon, my mates and I strung a rope between the two trees which were sufficiently far apart to provide us with the permanent goals for our football pitch, in the "big hoose" grounds.

This was our own Centre Court, where we pretended to be Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall and the other then Wimbledon heroes. This infatuation with racquet, tennis balls and Dunlop Green Flashes only lasted for a couple of weeks, however, before we switched again, digging holes and putting up brush handles as flags on the adjacent field, to become Peter Thompson, Bobby Locke, Gary Player - and later Arnold Palmer, as the Open golf caght our eye.

Two weeks later and it was back to Maverick, and the re-start of the football season.

But, today, football is an all-year-round obsession and while the major newspapers do try to big-up Wimbledon: well they have all these heavy expenses claims of the major sports writers to justify - they are wasting their time. Today, football is the only game in town.

And in Scotland, it is definitely a game on the wane. After the new broom swept through the SFA's annual meeting, I had hoped for genuine debate on where we are going, here in the heartland of the game. My hopes have been dashed, during the off-season, when there is perhaps the best opportunity for considering where we are and where we are going - what has been exercising the minds of the game's intellectual giants, the on-line congregation? Ach, just the usual, tit-for-tat examples of "whitabootery" by the usual suspects with their 24-hour, seven-days-a-week, 52-weeks-per-year devotion to one or other half of the Bigot Sisters.

I say sisters, because, to listen to the fans is like hearing a stuck in the groove recording of "Sisters" by the Beverley Sisters.

They really are like two baldie men scrapping over a comb.

But, thanks to Craig Whyte, I think the times are indeed changing. Being a venture capitalist, the new Honcho at Ibrox is canny wi his bawbees. SDM would surely by now have met Dundee United's valuation of David Goodwillie - Whyte is not so ready to splash the cash, and not merely because there is a risk Master Goodwillie might spend most of this season, and perhaps a few more, as a guest of Her Majesty.

Celtic, with the legacy of the Kelly Kids and the Quality Street Gang - a legacy albeit which has become somewhat tarnished in recent seasons, was once the team which specialised in home-grown talent, this specialisation fuelled in part by the dream of every janitor and every teacher in charge of football at every RC school in west-central Scotland to be, the man who discovered the next Jinky or Kenny.

Today, those young Celts who have dominated the SPL Under-19 league of late find themselves shown the door immediately they turn 20, while across at Murray Park, the kids are being introduced into the first team squad, as Rangers suddenly realise you don't have to spend the mint to prosper domestically and even if the Champions League knock-out stages are an infrequent jaunt, there is still money to be made in the Europa League.

Celtic and to a lesser degree Hearts, might still shop in Aldi - I fancy Rangers' self-sufficiency and husbanding of locally-sourced raw materials might bring them in the longer run, genuine stars on their strip, rather than their own kidding nobody five stars - one for every ten Scottish titles.

Midsummer Murder Polis

2011-06-29T14:01:00.000-07:00

THESE are sad days for the Scottish football fanatic - as the leaking, listing SS Scottish Fitba lies, becalmed in the midst of the close season doldrums. Those poor saps with the sair necks: the True Blues and Green White and Gold brigade who never take off their scarves, even when the mercury hits 30 degrees C are resorted to even pettier games of Whitabootery on their websites of choice.

The even sadder saps, the football writers of the red top tabloids are doing brazen Shane Warne impressions as they attempt to put a positive spin on transfer rumours which defy logic - if logic ever had anything to do with Scottish football, and in particular Old Firm transfer targets.

But, this close season 2011, there has been another topic to become agitated about, sadly, this was not one anyone of a sensitive disposition would want to discuss openly - we refer of course to the sad situation involving Hearts' Craig Thomson, who finds himself on the Sex Offenders register, following some stupid and unwanted attentions on two girls from his native Bonnyrigg.

Thomson, until the day his case hit court, was on the cusp of a potentially good career. Today, that career is in ruins - if he ever plays senior football again, it is unlikely to be in Scotland, where they abuse - verbal on match days, potentially physical at other times - would be intolerable.

Had he been in some other jobs, he might have survived and been able to carry on; however, in a branch of the entertainment industry, wherein youngsters are very important and in which there is media pressure for the top-flight performers to be good role models, there is no way he can possibly continue. This is sad for Thomson, but is reality.

Hopefully the girls will grow up with no lasting ill-effects from the incidents, hopefully Thomson can somehow put this sordid incident behind him and make amends, but the damage has been done to his career and he must pay a high price for his stupidity.

As for Hearts, a club once seen as a paragon of moral rectitude - the story is told of a former Hearts' manager, appearing in court as a witness on behalf of a pre-war Hearts' star, who was accused of spitting in public, assuring the sheriff that his player could not have committed the offence.

"Why?" asked the Sheriff.

"Because no Heart of Midlothian player could be so uncouth", was the response.

Sadly, these days are past. Hearts' image and halo has slipped in recdent years and, under the control of the current Lithuanian loose cannon, it is impossible to see the club's good name being recovered any time soon. The official club statement of last Friday was surely an all-time low for one of the great institutions of Scottish football.

A FINAL word for the moment on the on-going saga of the Team GB football squad for next year's London Olympics. I see the expectation is that, some day soon, England Under-21 coach Stuart Pearce will be named as coach of the men's team.

Well, if Psycho is given the gig, it pretty-well guarantees an early exit. His appointment should also do much to kill-off interest in augmenting the England squad by Northern Irish, Scots and Welsh players who are reportedly interested.

Britannia Waives The Rules - Again

2011-06-21T03:18:00.000-07:00

"BRITANNIA waives the rules" is actually a mis-quote. The original quote, in reference to the New York Yacht Club's long possession of the America's Cup read: "Britannia rules the waves - the NYYC waives the rules" since that august body wasn't above rule-changes if they helped keep that mighty trophy bolted to the floor in the club's committee room.

Be that as it may, the latest example of Britannia waiving the rules would be hilarious, if it wasn't so serious, since Britannia is in this instance, waiving its own rules. I refer to the fact that further petrol has been fanned onto that bonfire of the vanities which is the 2012 London Olympics.

These games are turning into a classic case of demonstrating that those awfully-nice English chaps down in that there Lunnun, the descendants of the men who once ruled over the mightiest empire in the history of the world can no longer run a gird.

Immediately London won the right to host the Games in 2012, it was announced that there would be British football teams competing. I knew then the smelly stuff was going to hit the fan and drop on those of us below for a long time to come.

It seemed all was well when the Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh FAs decided that to compete as part of a single Team GB would compromise their independence within UEFA and FIFA and that consequently, the (English) FA, the game of football's representatives on the British Olympic Association, the body which looks after the United Kingdom's participation in the Olympics, would be able to pick Team GB squads for the men's and women's competitions, provided these squads were made up of "English" players.

FIFA accepted this, job done - but not as far as the BOA were concerned - they want an all-inclusive, truly "British" Team GB and will apparently settle for nothing less.

But, to insist on this inclusive team, cuts across their own rules, and FIFA's.

BOA rules say that the selection criteria for the teams representing each individual sport is a matter for the body which oversees that sport - in football's case the FA. They spoke to the three other FAs within the United Kingdom and after these talks the "English-only" selection criteria emerged. That ought to be enough for the BOA, but apparently it isn't.

The waters are now getting muddier, with Stewart Regan, the SFA's Chief Executive quoted this week as saying there would be nothing they (the SFA) could do, if a Scottish player decided he or she would play for Team GB.

Oh yes there is. The FA couldn't decide: "We're playing Germany next week in a vital World Cup qualifier, our goalie's are shite, so we'll pick Craig Gordon of Sunderland - he's not in the Scotland team just now, he's better than what we've got, so we'll have him".

Couldn't happen - Gordon is Scottish not England. If he's Scottish, not English for the World Cup, or the European Championship and cannot therefore be selected by the FA for such tournaments - he cannot become eligible to be selected by the FA for another tournament, even one for which he is eligible, without the say-so of the SFA.

The BOA is therefore interfering in a football issue which is none of its business. It asked its subsidiary, the FA, to come up with a selection criteria which was acceptable to all four governing bodies of football within the UK, the FA, to its credit consulted and did this, the matter ought to have been left there.

As for Stewart Regan saying there is nothing the SFA could do to prevent Gordon, or Julie Fleeting or any other Scottish player from accepting an invitation to play in London, yes there is - take the BOA to the International Court for Arbitration In Sport - I figure the SFA would win.