The jury is still out on the regime of Gordon Strachan. One of the bigger squads in Scottish football has performed well enough, of late, but there remains a strange air of hesitancy, of uncertainty.
What sort of squad are they really? Can they develop and grow to meet current European standards? Or is it Strachan’s brief merely to perform a perpetual holding operation, on budgets that would raise only a wry smile in Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester and London?
Sir Alex Ferguson’s side will provide one answer later this week. The bookies will offer excellent odds to optimists in the east end of Glasgow, but a dispassionate observer would not rate Celtic’s chances highly.
The traditional comparison with United remains an interesting one, nevertheless. Celtic Park, for my money the best ground in Scotland, has a status the equal of Old Trafford. The Parkhead support is vast and loyal. The brand-name is international; the history peerless. So why is the gulf between Man U and Strachan’s squad taken for granted?
Money, in a dirty word. It is the only fact to matter in modern football. Even saddled with the Glazers and their debt burden, Ferguson commands a wealth unthinkable for Celtic. He can dispose of a Roy Keane or a Ruud van Nistelrooy, deprive himself of a coherent attack, and still wind up as England’s manager of the month thanks to a flawless opening campaign. No hesitancy there.
Strachan, in contrast, has to wheel and deal. It is the test of a real manager. It is the test that his predecessor, Martin O’Neill continues to pass with his re-entry into English football. Strachan has no money to burn, and is employed by a famously parsimonious board but sometimes there is a case for giving a guy a break.
Last week, reportedly, someone asked the coach if his dealings in the transfer market had not put Celtic’s financial stability at risk. The little man was said to be irked, and small wonder. Years of jokes over the Parkhead biscuit tin are transformed overnight into suggestions of recklessness? The hiring of a player from Real Madrid – possibly you have heard of them – is a wee bit ambitious? How Scottish is that?
Compare and contrast. What counts as good business? Picking up Thomas Gravesen for £2 million, plus Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink for £3.4m? Or blowing £18.6m on Michael Carrick, as Ferguson just has? Carrick isn’t a bad player, but he is no Roy Keane. Gravesen has had his psycho moments and is scarcely a teenager but, at £2m, he is bargain. The idea that Strachan has spent neither wisely nor well is ridiculous. The notion that he has imperilled Celtic’s financial stability beggars belief.
What would the reaction have been if he had sold Stilian Petrov and failed to sign Gravesen or Jan V of H? Lack of ambition, the headlines would have said. Lack of vision, lack of investment: same old Parkhead story. The manager himself made the obvious point last week: do the sums. First, £6.5m for Petrov, with another £1.5m to follow. John Hartson, Roy Keane, Stan Varga and Ross Wallace – at least two of the four counting as expensive – removed from the balance sheet. If you want to criticise Celtic, criticise them for failing to spend more. They are quids in.
Such is our charming native parochialism. All our senior clubs, but the Old Firm above all, share two disadvantages that impact, annually, on their one advantage. Problem one: they have no access, as yet, to the cash still washing through the Premiership. Problem two: the best players, as a result, tend to treat the Scottish game as a backwater .
These difficulties are offset, somewhat, by the fact that football in Scotland offers easier access to European competition than England’s top league. The trouble is that problems one and two hobble Scottish teams aiming to make progress in the continent’s major tournaments.
It is still preposterous, for all that, to suggest that you should ever hesitate to pay £2m for a Gravesen. And, by the looks of things , acquiring J V of H will shortly seem a sight easier than holding on to him. As Hibs and Aberdeen have found , he intends to trouble any defence he encounters.
Strachan is entitled to be miffed. Signing Keane was a gamble that did not pay off . But the recent imports are examples of good, even excellent, business. Celtic have banked more than they have spent, and the squad is stronger, in my opinion, than before. What more is a manager supposed to do? Observers of Parkhead would be more profitably employed wondering what the coach could do with £18.6m. Not buying Michael Carrick would probably top the list.
The real problem is familiar and fundamental. How, or when, can a club of Celtic’s stature be raised to the point at which the manager can afford to make an £18.6m mistake? When the jury delivers its verdict on Strachan, his transfer s will form part of the evidence. Meantime, he is surely entitled to expect criticism that is at least coherent.
The doubters cannot have it both ways. Parsimony cannot be translated as recklessness when you have just made a profit. Complaints over a lack of ambition cannot be allowed to stand when you have just done business with Real Madrid. Count yourself lucky that journalists are never asked to manage football clubs.
