Contrassting European Fortunes

IF FOOTBALL is indeed “A results-driven business” why are so-many people trying to avoid admitting, Celtic got a doing at Villa Park on Wednesday night. You can come up with all the excuses under the sun, it will not alter the fact, Aston Villa won, and won well; and but for Kasper Schmeichel's heroics and a penalty miss straight out of Benny Hill, it might have been another Borussia Doetmund result for the Hoops.

OK, I get the financial disparity, to a degree; Celtic pay way over the Scottish odds to bring second and third-rate non-Scots into our pathetic wee Premier Division, while Villa pay even-further over the odds to bring second, and the odd first rate player to Birmingham. Let's face it, if your choice is Barcelona, Madrid or Milan over Birmingham or Glasgow – if you're confident you will be a first pick, it's a no-brainer, but, if you're going to be a squad player, then if youj can jemmy a better deal out of the club from either UK city – you set your agent's default position to “bleed them”.

Even back in the days when England had a maximum wage and Scotland didn't, so the Old Firm could compete in thr UK transfer market, Celtic still sold stellar talents such as Jimmy Delaney, Bobby Collins and Paddy Crerand to English clubs (ok, Crerand went just as England began to have a cash advantage) but they were still, financially, a small club, willing to sell their best assets to a high bidder. That is still the club's management model.

There are players in the current Celtic side who are – by Scottish standards, Superstars; however, in English Premeirship of European terms, they are journeymen. Celtic's greatest-ever XI comprised 11 native Scots, all born within 40 miles of Celtic Park. Last night, they had only two Scots in their starting line-up, even Villa, from the league with perhaps the highest proportion of non-natives in Europe, had five English players in their starting XI.

Celtic's whole club DNA was built on recruiting and polishing young players from “The Celtic Family” - built on the efforts of countless teachers and janitors at Roman Catholic schools, mainly in West-Central Scotland, whose goal in life was to produce at least one boy good enough to some day wear the Hoops.

But, since a Dublin-based billionaire seized control, this proud tradition has been dumped in favour of over-priced, over-paid mercenaries. The result, sure, guaranteed European football every season, but, squads lacking the quality of those Jock Stein managed.

Celtic will not win the European Cup this season, in fact, given the draw they have been handed, they are unlikely to survive the Play-Off round. Sure, they will almost certainly win the Scottish title again this season' they could even pull-off another Treble, but, as Wednesday night at Villa Park showed – this is a poor Celtic squad, playing in a really-poor domestic league, who have perhaps over-achieved in reaching the European stage they have.

I HONESTLY cannot see Rangers winning the Europa League this season, for the simple fact: the cry is no defenders every time the opposition crosses into their box. And when you consider the lineage of Rangers Central defenders, this is a potentially tenure-ending condemnation of Manager Philippe Clement.

Just consider the men who have been the bulwark of the club's defence over the past century – a defence which once merited the newspaper-awarded designation: “The Iron Curtain”.

From Davie Meiklejohn in the 1920s, via Jimmy Simpson a decade later. Simpson passed the torch on to Willie Woodburn and George Young, who in turn bequeathed the job of securing the back door to John Greig and Ronnie McKinnon.

They in turn were succeeded by Colin Jackson and Derek Johnstone, then John McClelland and Davie Macpherson. For all the changes which the

David Murray/Graeme Souness years brought, the club still stood by excellence in central defence from the likes of Terry Butcher and Richard Gough.

Twelve names there, ten of them Scotsmen, covering the best part of a century of defensive excellence. I could have named other great Scottish defenders to have played for thee club – Alan McLaren or Colin Hendrie for instance.

But today, Scottish players are an endangered species around Ibrox, although John Souttar, who returned from injury on Thursday night, is maintaining the tradition of Scottish internationalist central defendders at the club.

That jersey can weigh heavily on newcomers to the club. I can remember when Big Corky – George Young – retired in 1957, the club did not have an in-house replacement, so they did what the club had long done, and signed the then current Queen's Park pivot, John Valentine.

Received wisdom had it that Valentine had all the necessary attributes to be a Rangers' centre-half, but, it never quit worked for him and after the disaster of Hampden in the sun – Celtic's 7-1 League Cup win in 1957, he was cast forth into the reserves and shortly afterwards off-loaded to St Johnstone, a club he served with distinction.

The unfortunate Valentine was replaced by St Mirren veteran Willie Telfer, a true Bluenose from Larkhall, but he was never more than a short-term stop-gap, well thugh he filled that role.

The long-term successor was thought to be Airdrie's Doug Balllie, a big lump who had won his first Scotland Under-23 honour as a teenager. Sadly, Doug never really recovered from a serius roasting from the young John “Yogi” Hughes in his first Old Firm game. Doug never replicated his Airdrie form with Rangers, but, he did mature to be a unique and long-serving talent in th press box.

Between the short-lived Baillie time and the arrival of Greig and McKinnon, the most-regular Rangers centre-half was the unsung Bill Paterson. He made over 100 first team appearances and won four domestic medals during his four years at Ibrox, but is pretty-much forgotten today.

A Kinlochleven man, he won a Scotland B cap during his time with Doncaster Rovers, in a 1-1 draw with England in 1954. He and fellow defender Jimmy Dudley of Westy Bromwich Albion were the only members of that Scotland B team not to go on and win a full cap. He later played and coached in Canada.

Paterson;s success demonstrates, you don't have to pay big money to get a good centre-half, maybe somebody should tell that to the current Rangers' management.

What the current Europa League campaign, and the current domestic campaign has shown is – Rangers badly need a big centre-half, or perhaps the football equivalent of the American Football Defensive Co-ordinator; somebody who can sort-out the team's answer to crosses into the box, get every defender made aware of his responsibilities, and ensuring that do their job.

If they can sort out this glaring weakness, who knows, the club could yet have a good season.

The secret to having a good, winning team, is supposedly in that team having a solid spine: a good goalkeeper, a dominant centre half, a midfield play-maker and a sharp striker.

The current Rangers team is not that far-away. Getting the centre-half job sorted out would be an improvememt, it would also, I suggest, help if they could get Igamande and Dessers playing together. I have a feeling these two, if they could get on the same wavelength and sort-out who is doing what, when, could become as potent as the legendary Brand and Millar combination of the 1960s, or the perm two from three combination of Hateley, Johnston and McCoist in the 1990. . And with Vaclav Cerny as a 21^st century Davie Wilson, the Bears may dream of better to come.

 

Of Mice And Mince And Men

AS BIG TAM memorably said all those years ago:”You can never shay never” - but, at half-time in Wednesday night's game from Celtic Park, I reckoned there was a better than even chance that Celtic would fail to score. As it happened they didn't, but, courtesy of an own goal which I don't think even Ally McCoist, Gary Lineker or Alan Shearer would have had the gall to claim, they got the win on the night.

With Scottish referees, the game would have been overer by half time with Celtic 5-0 up, but, VAR and officiating standards are higher in Europe, hence their problems. It's not the first game I have seen whereby one side made and missed all the chances, and I did have a slight fear that Young Boys might get lucky and nick the win, but, Kasper Schmeichel justified his new contract and the Hoops roll on.

A win in their final league stages game, at Villa Park next week, will almost certainly put Celtic into the last 16 of the European Cup, anything else and they will need to negotiate the play-off round. A big obstacle in Birmingham might well be a fired-up Super John McGinn, the Villa skipper, who is battling to fight-off a hamstring injury so he can play against the team his grandfather was once Chairman off and which he has supported all his life.

John McGinn v Calum McGregor in midfield – that's a “haud me back” match-up for sure.

I HAVE TO admit, I've got a wee thing for bad movies; you know, the sort of film which has the critics screaming that you have to watch in, so you do, and 10 or 20 minutes in, you decide: “This is mince.”

That was my mind set as I readied myself for Thursday night's big feature – Manchester United v Rangrers in the Europa League. The Guardian has, in the past week, run a feature, the thrust of which was: “Is the current squad the worst-ever Manchester United team?” Naturally, this blatant clickbait worked, but, whatever your view, it has to be admitted – they are not a vintage Old Trafford outfit. That said, this blog's view of the current Rangrrs' squad is well known.

So, this game was always going to either be a classic, or, more-likely, a yawn festival.

Well, not perhaps a genuine classic, but certainly an entertaining match-up, won in the end by a touch of quality from probably the best player on the park. Over the piece, United deserved to win, if only as the better of two poor teams. I would like to think, given how well the youngsters he deployed off the bench coped with appearing at “The Theatre of Dreams”, Philippe Clement might be the happier of the two managers, but, the truth is, given a choice between trusting their home-grown kids, or buying more over-priced foreign shite, the High Heid Yins at Ibrox will still go for option 2.

I said, when the club was exiled to the lower reaches of Scottish Football, they ought to have gone with their best youngsters, retaining two or three experienced players to give them a lead; then, by the time they got back to the top flight, these kids would have grown-up, knowing what it meant to be a Rangers Player, but, that advice fell on deaf ears – a series of bad players and poor managers followed and they are still paying the price for this and are well behind Celtic.

At least, last night Jack Butland and Harry Maguire demonstrated why they are unlikely to be hearing from Herr Teuchel any time soon. Best bit of the entire TNT Sport overkill around the game – Ally McCoist's half hour sit down with Sir Alex Ferguson. Coisty is demonstrating that Lorraine Kelly doesn't have the East Kilbride monopoly on TV excellence, he's a natural.

Speaking of Sir Alex, received wisdom within football is that he was never more than: “A journeyman player.” Well, in the course of the McCoist interview, the graphics showed his games and goals statistics from hs several clubs. This sent me to Wikipedia after the transmission.

Okay, at times Wikipedia cannot and should not be trusted, however in the case of icons such as Ferguson, the stats are generally good and these showed, over his playing career, Fergie scored goals at the rate of 0.54 goals per game, better than the accepted 0.50 goals per game which has long been the benchmark for an international-class striker.

His highest scoring rates were during his time with Dunfermline Athletic (then regularly battling at the top of the Scottish game and competing in Europe) and during his short spell at Rangers – so you have to conclude, he was one of those players who played better with better players around him.

Yes, he had to wait until his 80^th birthday to be awarded the Scotland cap his endeavours on the 1967 World Tour earned him, but, the stsatistics show, he was a better player than perhaps given credit for. He was never given the chance to show what he could do against first tier opponents, but, if you leave aside the obvious one-cap outliers such as East Fife's Harry Morris and Charlie Fleming, then Fergie's 0.75 gpg in a Scotland shirt puts him right at the top of the post-World War II scoring averages, well ahead of several more-storied internationalists.

 

Disaster For Scotland - The King Is Dead

THIS WEEK began badly, with the news of the death of my fellow Ayrshireman, legendary Scottish Rugby Union Captain Peter PC Brown. It has ended with equally sad news, with the passing of the one, the only Denis Law.

You can argue all you like about Scotland's Greeatest-Ever Player “The Tartan G.O.A.T.” but, what you cannot argue against is Denis's right to be in the conversation. He was our youngest debutant of the 20^th Century, when first capped, against Wales in 1958; he set a national record when winning his 55^th and final cap, against Zaire in 1974. He scored a record 30 international goals, a mark which still stands while individually he was the first Scot to win the Ballon D'Or in 1964. Had he been English, I am sure he would have been knighted, but as a Scot he only got a CBE from the British Establishment.

He joined Huddersfield Town as a 15-year-old from Aberdeen, a fisherman's son. He had a sight impediment, which required surgery to correct it and, aged just 16, he was in the Town first team, encouraged by the coaching of one Willie Shankly.

Some wanted him in the Scotland squad for the 1958 World Cup, but, the selectors of the time would not pick him, although, still only 18, he was in the team in the first international after those 1958 finals.

Huddersfield could not hold him, but Manchester Cioty had to pay a record transfer fee to entice him away. Perhaps his finest moment in a City shirt in that spell came when he scored seven goals in an FA Cup tie against Luton Town – six in the first game, which was abandoned, then another goal in the replayed game, which Luton won. But, City were the second team in Manchester at the time and in 1961, he was signed by Italian side Torino, alongside England centre forard Joe Baker, of Hibs.

His time in Italy was short-lived and disappointing. He and Baker were injured in a car crash, while Law relished the story of the Turin taxi driver, taking a party of Scottish football writers to a game in that city, who was disparaging about him. The taxi-man adored Baker but said: “Law, all he do is kick people.”

Football at the time was tough and the slight Law belied his lack of physique with his quicksilver speed, his instincts in the penalty area and his ability to meet fire with fire when defenders kicked him. This landed him in particular bother following Scotland's disastgrous 3-9 loss to England, at Wembley in 1961.

Law was dropped after the game, allegedly for kicking the future Sir Bobby Robson, right in front of Queen Elizabeth II, sitting in the Royal Box. Law always insisted, Robson had kicked him first.

He was soon back in the national side, where he and Jim Baxter were the outstanding talents in a golden age for the side, marked by three successive wins over England and a wonderful 6-2 win over Spain in the Bernabeau; and, of course, the day Scotland beat World Champions England, at Wembley in 1967.

Years later, interviewing Denis, I asked him aboujt that game. He said the result still annoyed him; a survivor of 1961, Law wanted to score goals that day to emphasise how good that Scottish side was, but, as he said ruefully: “I was over-ruled by Baxter and Bremnerf, who wanted to humiliate them 1-0.”

Law and Baxter were picked for the FIFA side to face England in the FA Centenary International in 1963, the year in which, back in Manchester, with United, he helped them win the FA Cup, their first trophy since the days of the fabled Busby Babes.

Law, Munich survivor Sir Bobby Charlton and a young Northern Irish genius named George Best formed The Golden Trinity during a golden era for a United team managed by Busby, capped by the European Cup win in 1968. Law was Club Captain, but injury kept him out of that game and as the years of abuse he took at the hands of uncompromising defenders took their toll, over the final half dozen years of his playing career, he was as often injured as playing.

He ran down his career back at City, sold by Tommy Docherty, memorably scoring his 303 and final club goal with a back-heeler, in a Manchester Derby – he did not celebrate.

The gap in his Scotland record was the national team's failure to qualify for the 1962, 1966 and 1970 World Cups. He was passed his peak when Scotland finally did get the non -qualifying monkey off their backs in 1974 and perhaps there was an element of a sympathy selection when Willie Ormond selected him for the opening game, against Zaire. But, at least, it meant he got to strut his stuff on the game's highest stage – it was his final match.

Law opted out of a post-playing career in coaching. He had a lengthy career as a media talking head, as well as working diligently for several charities. His daughter Diane, one of his five children had almost as long a Manchester Unitd career as her father, as a popular member of the club's Press Office team.

Another great Law story was told by Fred Eyre, once a club-mate at City. Eyre was never more than a journeyman player, before setting-up his own office equipment company and becoming a millionaire. Eyre's first order for his new company was for a load of stationery, unfortunately, he had broken a leg and was wondering how he might get the order from his van to the customer – when who would appear down the street but Denis, who readily agreed to help his old team mate out by carrying in the order.

Eyre always insisted: “When the customer saw who my van driver was, they immediately gave me a massive order for new desks and chairs and I never looked back.”

Denis fought and beat Prostate Cancer, but he could not beat Alzheimer's, he has gone now, but, to those of us fortunate enough to see him in his pomp, for club and mre-so for country, the sight of The Lawman in full cry was something to behold.

We shall not see his likes again – he was a very-special player and a very-special man.