Scottish Football Is On The Up

Scottish Football is on the up. This season’s first 2 rounds of SPFL games attracted crowds of almost 250k, up 7% on last year. Now considering only 5 or 6 years ago there were famous warnings of “Armageddon” for the Scottish League, things are starting to look pretty good. We’re all aware of the English twitter trolls who love to claim that their 90 year old nans could win our league blah blah blah. The idea that our league is easy, or a to a poor standard, or just as uncompetitive is frankly nonsense. A prime example is the plethora of talent which has struggled in our top league while thriving in the money ridden English Championship. Joey Barton of course being the best example going from English Championship POTY to SPFL Premiership Joke of the Season. But it’s not just Barton. Players such as Martyn Waghorn, Joe Garner, and Barrie Mckay have left Scotland after all having pretty poor seasons for pastures further south. Each one of them has scored on their debut after struggling to find the net all season in Scotland. The uncompetitive claim is another unfair criticism of our country’s football. Yes it’s true that Celtic have a monopoly on the league title at the moment. But since 2010 there have been 6 different Scottish Cup winners and 6 different League cup winners. This is not a sign of an uncompetitive league is it?

But its not just about what’s happening on the pitch. There is a rich and growing undercurrent of fan driven media which is continually generating interest in our league online. This for me is key in the growth of Scottish football – fans know what fans want best. The coverage we get on BT sport is also a huge positive, and this season has seen Sky have to up its game to compete (even launching the transparently named “SPFL Matters” show). This can only be good for the game, and perhaps this added competitiveness between the TV channels can be translated into a better TV deal.

The future is bright for our game, it is passionate, it is funny, and it has a soul – something which many modern leagues have lost.

Celtic vs Fans vs Fans vs Rodgers

 

Its been a long time since my last blog, but this season I’ll be trying to do one a week. I was going to wait til the Scottish league season started, but the week we’ve had has been impossible to resist.

Celtic have a big problem just now. The closing of the Green Brigade section over “safety concerns” has impacted on innocent fans and split the Celtic support into a million bits. Since the safe standing section was opened at the start of last season it has been a huge success, anyone who has visited Celtic Park in the last year knows this. This week has been a bit of a roller-coaster for Celtic and their supporters. Rodgers’ men comfortably defeated Linfield to progress to the next round of the Champions League qualifiers last Wednesday, but the events in the stands have been dominating the headlines for the last week.

Celtic ultra group the Green Brigade displayed some ill thought out banners relating to the IRA, and associating their manager with the paramilitary group.

Where do I even start with this one? As someone who rallies against dinosaurs killing Scottish football, I felt like I couldn’t leave it alone. If you love your football club so much that you would declare yourself an “ultra” why would you then spend a lot of time and effort on a set of banners that you KNOW will result in your club being punished and that you KNOW will reflect poorly on your fellow fans?

It’s easy to get bogged down in political and moral debates regarding these things, but regardless of your political, or moral viewpoint on the banners the fact is that no fan worth their salt would deliberately get their club into bother.

It takes time to make a banner. A design as to be produced and agreed upon, materials sourced and purchased, then it has to actually be crafted. Are you telling me that in the whole process not one member of the Green Brigade thought the club would get in bother for it? If they did not, then they are just stupid and if they did then they are extremely arrogant.

Imagine going to a football match ready to unveil a banner you know will get your club in trouble, and doing it anyway. If that’s what the Green Brigade think a “true fan” would do then they are extremely mistaken.

The whole affair has led to a bit of a rift in the Celtic support. To me it seems to be split into 3:

1. People who think the Green Brigade are omnipotent, and should not be questioned, and that the whole thing has something to do with EBTs #stripthetitles
2. People who fundamentally disagree with the Green Brigade’s politics and demand they be disbanded, split into a million bits and sent to all 4 corners of the world.
3. People who think the club have done the right thing in banning them for 2 games and that they shouldn’t do it again. (sensible types)

The Green Brigade bring a huge deal to Celtic part, and have been part of some really worthy causes in the last few years. This should not excuse them from scrutiny or judgement. For a group who describe themselves as anti-fascist, they are worryingly intolerant of their fellow fans’ opinions. I don’t have an answer to this situation at all, no one really does. All I want is for Scottish football to thrive, and to do that we need to be focusing on football. Every time an incident like this occurs, our game just feels like its being held back. Lets start to move Scottish football forward again.

 

 

PS. Aberdeen were fantastic on Thursday night, hopefully we can manage to have 2 Scottish teams in the groups of UEFA competition this year!

 

P.P.S. Rangers fans also let Scotland down by being charged for throwing objects onto the pitch in their humiliating tie vs Progrès Niederkorn. We need to move on from this behaviour, and grow up a bit as a country

This is the last time I’m going to write about fans rather than football because its so dull.

Celtic’s Hotel could help them Check-in with Europe’s elite – and help Scottish football in the process.

Celtic announced this week plans to build a hotel and museum complex at their stadium in an effort to expand their reach and their profits.

Rangers announced this week that they look set to be fighting it out for 3^rd place in the Scottish Premiership as they were beaten by a team that hadn’t won a league game in months.

It’s a sorry state of affairs if you are a Rangers fan, but as the debate rages on who will replace Mark Warburton as manager (and his magic hat as director of football*) Celtic continue to just go about their business. For once the Scottish media was actually pretty open minded as the plans were announced – I had expected to have to write an article defending Celtic and their hotel/museum plans. This may be due to every opinion piece writer being too busy trying to get themselves or one of their mates the Rangers job. Celtic have had to look at ways to increase revenue in a league where they have hit the ceiling, and they must break through that ceiling to gain relevance in Europe.  It actually reminds me of Juventus and their recent badge change which was criticised from a lot of people who would call themselves “traditionalists”. But it was pointed out in a brilliant piece by James Horncastle that this was not just as simple as a ploy to make more money – but a well thought out decision which would help the Old Lady (who now seem to comfortably win the league every year) keep up with their new competitors in Europe. This is where Celtic find themselves now, in a sort of weird in between place. Huge finances and a massive gap between themselves and the rest of Scottish football – but not even nearly rich enough to compete with the rest of Europe financially. This will be a long term goal for Celtic and a few things need to happen for them to get there:

• Regularly reaching the Champions League group stages and the money that comes with that – this is pretty obvious.
• Actually putting a dent in the group and earning enough points to be in Europe after Christmas – The only way Celtic can now progress any further as a footballing entity is winning games in Europe and progressing to later stages of these tournaments.
• Get over the British snobbery about the Europa League – this is an important one. I know many fans who regard the Europa League as a “diddy cup”. It is not at all – Atletico Madrid, Sevilla, Chelsea – all Europa League winners in recent seasons and all having subsequent huge successes (be that domestic or European). European competition is European competition at the end of the day.
• Understand Scotland’s place in Europe. Before the Monchengladbach game at Celtic Park many fans were EXPECTING to win. The tone going into the match was as if Celtic would OBVIOUSLY beat this team. This was complete ignorance on Scottish Football’s part once again, underestimating a team because they didn’t know anything about them.

Now there is one more thing that plagues Scottish football that must be addressed before any team can progress, not just Celtic. What I would call “Short-termism”, the quick fix, everything better overnight. That is not how the real world works. To avoid talking about these things again and again every couple of years it must be understood that it MUST take time for things to change for the better long term.

The progression of Celtic in European competition is a must for Scottish football as a whole, as we must improve the amount of qualification spots we get in European competition, not just for the huge financial benefits it would bring our clubs, but because our game needs to have a profile, and needs to stay relevant.

 

*as a wee side note I am loving the constant mince chatted about directors of football this week.  No big manager would take a job knowing there is a director of football in place apparently – someone better tell Pep Guardiola!

Resigning, Signings and Re-signing?

Friday night was one of the most bizarre evenings in Scottish football’s recent history.

 

The events leading up to Rangers’ clearly hurried statement are still unclear at the time of writing, and many stories are doing the rounds claiming to be what ACTUALLY happened. There will be a lot written in the next few days about these events but that’s ultimately unimportant now. The only thing we know for certain is that Mark Warburton is no longer the manager of Rangers.

Many Rangers fans have been critical of Warburton for almost a year now, thinking that things have never been the same since the Championship title was tied up last April. Many others have defended Warburton til the end, adamant that this was always a long term project and that to be 2^nd at this point in the season having only just been promoted was a great achievement. Indeed, Warburton’s situation was not helped by the fact that Celtic under Brendan Rodgers have incredibly only dropped 2 points all season and sit at a mightily impressive 70 points compared with Rangers’ 43. It could be argued that Rangers and Warburton have been simply unfortunate to come up against record breakers.  However, at this point last season Ronny Deila’s Celtic were on 55pts, as were Aberdeen – while Hearts were on 44.

The truth is that Warburton underestimated the task at hand, and in truth was actually quite lucky that Aberdeen and Hearts struggled to find the form of last season (the latter having to go through a change in manager and style at a very delicate time of the season). Whoever sanctioned the “going for 55” banner needs sacking as well, giving expectations way above what was realistic to the fans. I think that the league and a lot of the “lesser” teams in it were taken for granted and that was reflected in the summer transfer window.

His recruitment could almost be described as lazy.

Barton – undoubtedly a player of talent but a man whose reputation was known to everyone. Chat about this signing has been done to the death -we all know this was a disaster.

Rossiter – Hot prospect at Liverpool yes… but well known as injury prone.  He missed a combined total of 419 days in the 2 seasons prior to him joining Rangers. Signing a 19yo who had been injured for more than a full year is not just a risk, it’s a blunder. I shudder to think the amount spent on wages and medical bills for a player who has barely played a match.

Kranjcar, Senderos, and Clint Hill.  – I’m lumping these three together because they don’t really seem to fit the mould of what Warburton was supposed to be doing at Rangers. These guys are all over 30, all on (allegedly) decent wages, and all rather rusty. Hill and Senderos only played 15 and 14 games respectively the previous season, while Kranjcar was playing in the American lower leagues.

 

Gilks and Hodson – These signings actually made sense, but were criminally underused. Hodson is a good defender and decent attacker – a much more stable option than either of Rangers’ first pick full backs. Gilks in my opinion is a safer pair of hands than Foderingham and it is no wonder he wanted to leave because he’s too good to be playing second fiddle.

 

Windass and Crooks – touted heavily as great signings, Windass has showed some promise but ultimately as much as the English talk their lower leagues up, Accrington Stanley to Glasgow Rangers Is a massive step up. I challenge any Rangers fan to be able to pick Matt Crooks out of a lineup.

I genuinely believe that about 80% of the problems Rangers have had this season has been the summer recruitment. There was also the issue of unrealistic expectations, and cries of “We’re back” “The Rangers are Coming” and “Going for 55” backfired big time – no matter what way you look at it.

Warburton promised so much, and seemed like the real deal. He spoke well, he seemed to be focused on youth and development, he wanted to play entertaining football and he seemed to be a pretty decent guy.

But he was missing one key thing that you need to have to manage Celtic or Rangers.

You need to “get it” and no matter how much he said the right thing – he didn’t get it. He would say that losing a game or drawing a game was unacceptable but no one really believed that he felt it.

I have deliberately not mentioned “tactical naivety” or “plan a” because that has been discussed plenty.

What next for Rangers then?

It would appear they are looking to get in a Director of Football along with the new coach, enacting what the Scottish Media cringingly call “The Hearts Model” as if the whole of Europe hasn’t been doing it for decades. This is probably a wise move, and separating the new boss from the transfer goings on that ultimately helped towards Warburton’s downfall. Alex McLeish is also being touted by a number of fans, but could surely only be a short term option til the end of the season.

Many hope for a clear plan of where to go next, and experience of building a strong Scottish Premiership team. The natural choice for that would be Derek McInnes, but can Rangers actually afford compensation? Tommy Wright of St Johnstone could also be an option, as he has done great things on a small budget – but again, compo? At this point it looks like McLeish will be the manager at least til the season ends, but with the squad at his disposal 2^nd or even 3^rd may be a very difficult target.

All we know is that in about 2 weeks time after the new manager settles in and gets his first win, we will undoubtedly be met with “We’re back” “The Rangers are coming” and “going for 55” once more.

Rangers’ true problem is repeating the mistakes of their past continuously, and unless that cycle stops the reality is they will be playing catch up to Celtic for a very very long time.

Mark McGhee’s Alternative Facts

 

Picture the scene: The opposition are running through the middle, your team’s player is struggling to keep up – BANG. Your player goes in hard, wins the ball, then takes the man. Danger averted right? WRONG here comes the referee – straight red card and an early bath.  “BUT HE GOT THE BALL” you scream.

We’ve all been there, I’ve been there, it’s the automatic reaction, he got the ball how can it possibly be a foul, never mind a red card?!

Then you see it later. You realise that although your player got the ball he also nearly broke the other guy’s leg. Or you realise your player was nowhere near the ball and you were shouting like an idiot and making a fool of yourself over a really dangerous tackle (me).

Unless you are Mark McGhee.

If you are Mark McGhee you decide to offer an “Alternative Fact” as is so popular in the current year.

After McHugh’s tackle on Hearts’ Don Cowie at the weekend McGhee proclaimed the referee’s decision to send him off a “joke”. McGhee went on to describe this tackle as “great” and “clean”.

After the game McGhee said:

“I’ve watched it over and over – it was never in a million years a sending off. It’s a joke. It was a great tackle. He cleanly won the ball. It’s just a ridiculous decision. It’s cost us the game.”

Haud the bus there Mark.

Now first of all I need to say I HATE screenshots of tackles, they by definition cannot show the full extent of what happened because they are simply a screenshot.

However in what world can a tackle that contained this moment:

This @snsgroup pic proves McHugh reckless tackle for doughnuts @Elblondiso & @craig_killie. Red card for serious foul play #HMFC #Motherwell pic.twitter.com/XZvP4J9UKg

— Barry Anderson (@BarryAnderson_) February 4, 2017

Be described as clean? It cannot, because it isn’t. Neither can it be described as a great tackle, because it’s a foul. Is Mark McGhee seriously suggesting that this was not even worthy of a free kick? Of course due to McDonald’s red for a similar challenge last week which Motherwell have bafflingly appealed the club released a statement essentially asking for instructions on how to tackle from the SFA.

Wait what’s that I hear in the distance? Oh no – here come the dinosaurs!

“The slide tackle is dead” proclaimed former Motherwell Player Craig Paterson in The Times.  He went on to say “McHugh took a large chunk of the ball on his way through, but that is no longer enough to satisfy referees in their quest to protect players from foul play.” Oh how dare they Craig eh? Imagine the referee trying to protect players from foul play, the spoilsport that he is. Now please do not think I’m defending Andrew Dallas, a referee so incompetent he booked a random Hearts player for 2 Motherwell players tripping over each other, but we need to criticise the right things. The referee’s job is to protect the players and to protect the rules of the game, to criticise him for protecting the players makes a mockery of the whole sport. Also, it was not “foul play” but SERIOUS foul play which got McHugh sent off – defined in the laws as follows:

“A player is guilty of serious foul play if he uses excessive force or brutality against an opponent when challenging for the ball when it is in play. − “Using excessive force” means that the player has far. exceeded the necessary use of force and is in danger of injuring his opponent.”

Don Cowie was down for a good couple of minutes being treated after that tackle by McHugh, and therefore the tackle clearly was in danger of injuring an opponent. Notice there’s no mention of “getting the ball” by the way? That’s because the rules do not make any exception for getting the ball first if excessive force was used, no matter how many times “back in my day that would have been applauded” is said.

In an absolutely baffling article in the Evening Times proclaimed that “Tackling is now banned from football” and hilariously goes on to dismiss Ian Cathro’s side’s victory from a flukey opener and “2 late goals” as if they shouldn’t count since they weren’t scored til the end.

“it was a robust challenge which, apparently, is now illegal.”

No, it was always illegal Neil, it is not hard to find if you read the laws of the game.

Wake up and smell the cameras boys. These tackles were fine to let go in the “old days” because the referees were not surrounded by 10s of HD cameras eagerly awaiting their first slip up. There was less risk in letting something you were not sure of go, because in “your day” the tackle wasn’t instantly available in the palm of every fans’ hand with a twitter account and a phone. Referees are actually attempting to enforce the rules now, which they haven’t done for a long time – and to some people this change is just too much. Ah well, we should probably help the referees out shouldn’t we?  Maybe they should be given access to (whisper it) video technology. That’s a whole other kettle of fish to be discussed another time perhaps, no doubt Mark McGhee would accuse the camera of not showing what actually happened.

Why Cathro Matters

There is an epidemic in Scottish Football. An epidemic which has spread throughout the media commentators, press and TV pundits. An epidemic that has been rife within the fan bases of every club for a very long time. Archaism. We are haunted by dinosaurs. Society expects its older members to generally be much more attached to the old way of doing things, the tried and tested, the way things used to be. The young are expected to challenge the old guard’s way of thinking, offer new ideas and solutions to old problems, and more importantly offer new solutions to new problems. But Scottish football is not so. Scottish football, to take a step back and look at it from the outside, is ruled by the old way of thinking. This has come to the fore even more in the last few weeks with the appointment of Ian Cathro as Hearts manager.

A 30-year-old man who has never played the game professionally getting the Hearts job. OUTRAGE.

The papers were immediately overflowing with sanctimonious headlines and “opinion pieces” by mainstream hacks and former players. The airwaves screaming about Football Manager, laptops, and respect. Even current players like Kris Boyd were offering their two cents (the fact that he is even paid to write a column being the most incredible thing to come out of reading it for me).

Keith Jackson of the Daily Record declared the appointment a big gamble. “The danger is Cathro will lack credibility inside his own dressing room” Jackson wrote. Of course it’s fine to write about football, judge players and managers, and hold the footballing talking points in the palm of your hand as the head sports writer of a major newspaper, without having ever played the game professionally. Jackson arrogantly declared:

“ It would all be so simple if only it was played in theory. Or on HD digital tablets. Ian Cathro would have hipstered his way to six points from his first two matches as head coach at Hearts”

“Hipstered his way to six points” is the key phrase for me here. What a dismissive and frankly idiotic thing to say about Ian Cathro. First of all to use hipster as an insult is ridiculous. Football is basically run by hipster managers at the moment. Klopp, Simeone, Conte, Pochettino, Luis Enrique, PEP GUARDIOLA. All of them once the apple of the football hipster’s eye (although a few have now moved on to become ‘not as good as they used to be’ or to translate: successful). So Cathro is just a daft hipster that’s never kicked a ball.

Who’s next?

Craigan.

Steven Craigan said the appointment of Cathro was “brave” on BT sport, appearing to go along with Jackson’s idea that Hearts have taken some massive risk here by appointing a guy that has already coached in 4 different countries for Dundee United, Valencia, Rio Ave and Newcastle. At Rio Ave and Valencia he was the ASSISTANT MANAGER. But no Scottish football rejects all logic and reason. He’s never kicked a ball!!!

Now Boyd.

Boyd claimed Cathro couldn’t manage a team because he had “never experienced that environment”. He then backed up his nonsense on 5 live by saying that Cathro’s background was “developing kids”.  Now this actually gets to my point (lucky you). This shows a complete ignorance of the matter at hand. YES Ian Cathro has worked as a development coach. But he has since been an assistant manager for 2 clubs, one of them being one of the biggest clubs in Europe. He has then also been a first team coach at one of the biggest clubs in England, Newcastle United. This man lives and breathes football. This man cares so much about football that he has spent his 20s doing coaching badges, travelling the world working and developing his own skills.

A young Scottish man with this commitment and drive should be applauded and encouraged by Scottish football. We should be opening our arms to him, listening to his ideas and finding out what he has to offer our game.

Cathro has received huge criticism for his interviews, referred to as bumbling by one pundit. But on the contrary, his interviews are a breath of fresh air. Every single game ends with a Mark McGhee, a Derek McInnes – name any Scottish ex player basically- churning out the clichés. Cathro actually tells you what he thought about the game, he articulates himself well, and makes an effort to give proper answers.

New ideas, fresh ways of doing things, actually talking about football instead of just clichés and football jargon.

A challenge to the old way, the dinosaurs and the established order. Scottish Football needs its prejudices and methods proved wrong –  and Cathro is the man to do it.

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