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Scottish Premier League Update

Ali Hannah on Gordon Strachan, the Champions League & Brahim Hemdani

Gordon Strachan | Champions League | Brahim Hemdani

Gordon Strachan: Acceptance at Celtic

It was a watershed in Gordon Strachan’s relationship with the Celtic support: within minutes of clinching the SPL title courtesy of a 1-0 win over Hearts last week, Strachan’s name was chanted by the 60,000 supporters crammed into Parkhead.

He has finally been accepted as one of them.

Having secured the title with six games to spare - not since 1962 has a Championship been clinched with such a distance still to go until the end of the season - Strachan has done what few observers believed he could achieve given the appalling start to his Celtic regime.

Having recovered from the abject 5-0 defeat to Artmedia Bratislava and an erratic 4-4 draw with Motherwell on the opening day of the campaign,Strachan's team have been the most consistent team in this SPL, as reflected by their lofty status.

This weekend the trophy will be handed out to Strachan and his players when they have finished business with Hibs at Parkhead, but with five games remaining Celtic can still hit the 100-point mark should they win all their games.

It is a landmark that both the Hoops manager and captain are desperate to get to.

“I remember the last time we were presented with the championship trophy, Dunfermline beat us,” recalled Neil Lennon.

“We want to win every game from now on in, and I imagine we will be back to full strength for this weekend’s game.

“We still have plenty to play for. We are trying to get 100 points and we will have a say in who finishes second in the championship because we have Rangers at home and Hearts away, so there is no letting up for games like that.

“Going for 100 points is a motivation. It gives you something to play for, otherwise you will lose your focus and the season would peter out.

“We don’t want that to happen after the year we have had.”

It is doubtful if Strachan will allow anything to darken his mood at the minute but the bottom line is that Old Firm fans are relentlessly demanding.

Not only will he be expected to achieve the same feat again next year against what many will predict to be a stronger Rangers side, he will also be expected to restore Celtic's credibility in the Champions League.

To do so means that the Parkhead side will need to significantly strengthen their current squad but in times of financial prudence it will be difficult for Strachan

“It would be nearly impossible to do well in both,” he said. “Barcelona are up there at the top of their league but of the final four in this season’s Champions League I think they are the only league leaders.

“Arsenal were written off for two and a half months in the Premiership as knackered, gone. It is very, very hard. The Champions League is not a cup, it’s another league. It’s two leagues that are running together.”

Evidence for Strachan’s observation about the demands of running simultaneous campaigns is close at hand: Rangers’ feat in becoming the first Scottish club to make it out of a Champions League group phase contrasted with a tired domestic campaign which has resulted in their poorest attempt to win the league since the SPL was established in 1998.

When Strachan was asked to identify Celtic's most important victories en route to winning the league he did not even mention the defeats of Rangers in November or February.

“I haven’t mentioned an Old Firm game? That shows how weird I am, eh? It just shows I’m not obsessed with the Old Firm,” he said.

The probability of a more daunting Rangers challenge under Paul Le Guen, though, deepens the suspicion that Strachan’s second season will be more difficult than his first. The demands do not change on an Old Firm manager, only his ability to satisfy them. By Strachan’s own calculations the club have saved “a right few millions” on the wage bill since he took over last July.

The removal of Paul Lambert’s £34,000-a-week salary, for example, funded the wages of three new players. “One player left in the summer and his wage covered the arrivals of Shunsuke Nakamura, Artur Boruc and Maciej Zurawski.

“So for one man moving on we got his wage to cover three players and we still had money left over,” he said. “Those three weren’t cheap, but we still thought they were good business and that was the only way we could get them in.

“There is still a bit of pressure to bring the wage down, but I think they [the club’s PLC board] are happy that it is coming down. Peter [Lawwell, the chief executive] is happy with the figures and the projected figures. There is no pressure to move on people like Alan Thompson.”

Thompson has been largely peripheral in Strachan’s first season and as a high-earning relic of the Martin O’Neill era he seems expensive and expendable if Celtic were inclined to find a buyer or persuade him to take a pay-off to leave.

Similarly Strachan’s willingness to retain Roy Keane, John Hartson and even Nakamura, who fancies playing in Spain, will be tempered by contemplating the money their departures would generate as he continues the long-term policy of reducing the average age of his squad through additions like Kenny Miller and Gary Caldwell.

Chief scout Ray Clarke has provided Strachan with between 15 and 20 names of further signing targets and Strachan will use the next few weeks to watch as many of them as he can.

“Some of them are names I don't need to go and see because I know them, others I do need to see. I don't know how many of them on the list are going to be at the World Cup, but I will be in Germany myself.

“I don’t think I will be able to get a world-class player, wherever I go. I just know we have to keep improving.”

Champions League

It isn’t just a covetous eye that Gordon Strachan will cast over the Champions League fixtures when the semi-finals get underway.

As a swashbuckling Arsenal side of youth and energy played the kind of football at Highbury on against Juventus in the last round that Strachan has admitted is his vision for Parkhead, he would have been forgiven a scratch of the head and a long sigh.

It's not that Strachan has any affinity to the Old Lady of Italian football, but simply that Arsene Wenger's side played in such a fashion that was reminiscent of Liverpool last season; their best is reserved for the Continent.

They have played like a team who could win the cup and therein lies the rub: for Celtic to automatically make the group stage of Europe's premier competition, they require a team who qualify automatically from their own league to also win the final this season.

After the debacle of last season, when Liverpool won in Istanbul but then had to find a scenic route into the competition to defend their title, there has been a revision in the rules.

Since they have little chance of finishing in the top two in the Premiership - thereby guaranteeing entry into the group stage - Arsenal need to win the Champions League to go directly into next season's tournament as an automatic entry.

Even if they finished fourth in the Premiership and also won the European Cup, they would still take Celtic's place, since the holders have a spot reserved in the group stage. Scotland's position for automatic entry is precarious sitting at the bottom of the pile, it's their place which will be sacrificed should this season's winners require a helping hand into the tournament.

Similarly, Villarreal would cause a problem if they were to go on and lift the trophy. Should the worst case scenario unfold and Celtic go into the third qualifying round,

Strachan might find himself waking up in a cold sweat after the Bratislava nightmare. But, for Hoops fans, it is worth remembering the words of Martin O'Neill. When queried as to what his biggest achievement was in the five years he spent at Parkhead, the Northern Irishman liked to point out the difference in where Celtic were on the European map when he arrived as to where they were when we walked out the front door for the last time.

"We must have made some sort of progress because, in my first year, we started off in a qualifying game for the Uefa Cup against Jeunesse Esch," was his remark, and it is hard to disagree.

This season, Celtic could go a step further than just automatic qualification and end up in Pot 2, thereby avoiding some of the most daunting teams.

The permutations are particularly complex and a genuine prediction of which pot Celtic will go into is difficult to envisage until the third qualifying round has been played in August.

As things stand, if the Hoops can cling on to their automatic group place, there is a chance they can also make it into their highest seeded position yet.

But there are a lot of anxious hours in front of the TV to endure before that can be determined.

Brahim Hemdani

It’s not that he is reluctant to peer towards the beginning of a new era, it's just that Brahim Hemdani doesn't believe the old one has quite ended yet.

In recent weeks, given the political turmoil at Tynecastle, there has been a sense in the Ibrox stands that the circus off the field at Hearts has all but made Rangers' job of overtaking the Georgie side a mere formality.

Hearts defeat at Parkhead last week ensured that Celtic put the ribbons on the SPL trophy but despite the results, it was the performance of the Edinburgh side which caught the eye.

Despite losing an early goal to Celtic, they refused to buckle and by the end of the 90 minutes it was all that Celtic could do to hang onto all three points. Since then they have gone onto hammer Dunfermline and there has been no indication that they are prepared to relinquish their grip on the second place which would open the door to Champions League football for the first time in their history.

With Paul Le Guen all set for Ibrox and the promise on new players, a new era and fresh success on its way to Rangers, Hemdani has warned that it is imperative for Alex McLeish’s side to secure the second Champions League spot for the new manager.

It could be that the second spot in Europe's premier competition is not decided until the final day of the season when Rangers and Hearts meet at Ibrox but Hemdani knows Rangers, who have struggled to 1-0 wins in their last two games, cannot afford to let their concentration dip in these last five games.

"The crowd are getting anxious at times, but it is always the same when you play in games like that because everyone knows what is at stake,” said the midfielder.

"It is another game and the points difference is the same and we know we only have five games left.

"But that is a lot of points that can still be won. We know we are three behind Hearts and we know exactly what we have to do.

"The most important thing now is to take second place and get into the Champions League.”

Le Guen, apparently, has requested tapes of all Rangers' reserve games, as well as the obvious first-team matches.

But, if Hemdani is concerned that his fellow-countryman is appraising the playing staff, he's not letting on. The former Marseille midfielder said: "I don't actually know him that well.

"I know who he is and I am well aware he has an excellent pedigree because he did so well with Lyon, in French as well as European football. "At Lyon, he won titles and I'm sure he will be coming here hoping to be just as successful. But it is always the same in football.

"There are always changes at most clubs over the summer, but when the new manager comes in we'll just have to wait and see what his plans are.

"But I'm sure he will be having a look at videos and at games so that when he arrives at the club he'll have an idea of what he wants to do.

"It's not as if he has asked for my advice - he is the manager and he'll do as he wants when he gets to Rangers.

"If he wants to talk to me, that would be fine, but, so far, I haven't heard from him and neither have the other players, but that is normal because we still have work to do this season before we start thinking ahead."

McLeish, got the news he didn't want last weekend when it was confirmed that Rangers will host Hearts on the final day of the campaign, a game that could well settle the second Champions League place.

It is a fixture he hoped would be played earlier, but the Ibrox manager is confident that the Light Blues will make second place. McLeish has queried whether the Hearts squad will cope with the pressure during the frantic five last games of the season, after leading Rangers for so long.

"It's going to be difficult but with our form there's nothing to fear," said McLeish.

"Hearts have good players with experience, but they also have a Scottish Cup Final to look forward to and maybe they haven't been through this kind of pressure together.

"Being so far behind in the league hurts. But if we can overtake Hearts after being 16 points behind, and add that to qualifying from our Champions League group, I'd consider it to be a successful season."