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Scottish Premier League Update

Ali Hannah on the latest from the Scottish Premier League, July 2009

Celtic | Rangers | Round Up

Celtic Roundup

He arrived as something of a Messiah.

Tony Mowbray was unveiled as Celtic manager in June and there was barely a dissenting voice heard among the Parkhead support. There was none of the uncertainty that had met with Gordon Strachan's appointment and with a Championship just lost there was an air at Mowbray's official unveiling that he was the man to usher in a new era.

The press were charmed by his answers. The representatives of the club support who had somehow blagged their way into the press conference were quick to renew their vows in front of Mowbray.

In short, much is expected of the new manager and his side this season.

For a man who was relegated last season with West Brom and won just 8 games out of 38 and conceded 67 goals, it says something of Mowbray that he arrived in Glasgow not just with his reputation in tact, but on the back of a season in which the West Brom support continued to sing his praises. Well, until he left for Celtic, that is.

Mowbray's arrival was quickly followed by the addition of Mark Venus and Peter Grant and just as Martin O'Neill's management team was made up of three very different characters, so too is Mowbray's.

Grant, though, was part of a Celtic side that suffered throughout the torturous times in the 90s and he has more reason than most to strive for the celebration parties at Parkhead. He is relishing being part of the new era at the club and is firm in his belief that Mowbray can return the title to Celtic.

Much has been said of Mowbray's philosophy and idealism, but Grant believes that the new manager also has the wherewithal to get the kind of result needed on a wet November night in Motherwell when three points are all that matter.

"I reckon that Tony is the only manager who has ever been relegated from the Premiership but whose stock has risen at the same time," said Grant. "We would go to places like Anfield and Old Trafford and the Emirates last season and after the game everyone would be wanting to come and talk to us and tell us how well we had played.

"Tony stuck to his principles even when things got tough not through stupidity but because it was what he believed in. But at the same time he is also smart enough to change it about in games if it isn't working.

"He has been at this club as a player. He doesn't need to be told the traditions upon which the club has been built because he is well aware of them. I think that is why his vision of the way he wants the team to play has been so well received.

"But there is an infrastructure already in place here and we want to build on that. This is a team that has won three titles out of four. We know there is a start and we know that we have to be successful.

"We know that it won't be enough to play well and win plaudits. We all know that at Celtic it is all about winning. It is all about success. And ultimately that is what we will be judged on."

There is a belief in some quarters that Celtic lost the league last season because they didn't score enough goals. The penultimate game of the season at Easter Road when Gordon Strachan's side desperately needed to win to return to the summit of the SPL springs immediately to mind, but in actual fact the club were undone in the race for the Championship not because of the lack of goals, but because they could not keep them out.

Celtic actually scored more goals than Rangers last term but where the Ibrox side were far stronger was defensively. It is an issue that Mowbray will have to address and despite the fact he wants to build a side that is all about attack and creativity and fluency he is smart enough to know that everything stems from the back.

"He is a people's man and could talk about the game until the cows come home," said Grant. "He wants to talk football all the time and the players will benefit from that. He likes to try and keep things going at training but he isn't against stopping it for a chat or pulling players aside and trying to explain things to them.

"The players here will find that he is talking, talking, talking all the time. He wants everybody to get better and he wants to get the best out of them."

If things were different in a financial sense, it would have expected that Celtic would have brought as many as six or seven players into the club this summer. No-one needs to be told that those days have gone and it is nigh on impossible in the current climate for any SPL club to be writing blank cheques. As such it will be the work that Celtic put in on the training ground that will need to make a difference when the nitty gritty of the season gets underway.

"Once we get everybody fit then we think we will be alright," said Grant. "We think we are making progress all the time. There are obviously things we have seen that we aren't too happy about but we can only get better and improve by working on the training ground.

"We have had a lot of games and lot of travelling in a short period of time and we had two massive games in a very short space of time so I think it is fair to say that it has been a tough baptism.

"But there is a progression there and we feel as though it will take a wee bit of time to get to where we want to go.

"I've hardly had time to draw breath, to be honest. We have been constantly travelling. But I don't think we can fault anyone for effort or for endeavor and hopefully we can get better as the season goes on."

Grant, who went nine years without winning the title during his time as a Celtic player, has seen the vast changes that have taken place around the club since he left for Norwich with a lump in his throat 12 years ago.

But while the club has a stadium and a training ground that befits the stature of the club, there is plenty that hasn't changed. The expectation levels remain high and there is no room for excuses, regardless of the football on offer.

"We have said many times that there is no second place here," said Grant. "It is all about winning."

Mowbray and co will follow in the footsteps of John Barnes this week when they head to Pittdrie to open their SPL account. It is there that they will hope the similarities of the two regimes end.

Celtic kick off the season with an away trip to Aberdeen and Grant believes that the arrival of one of his former team-mates in the Granite City will ensure it won't be an easy canter for Celtic.

"Pittodrie is always a tough ground for Celtic to go to," he said. "In all the years I was here as a player I could never remember going up to Aberdeen and finding it comfortable. There is always an edge to the games because of the whole Glasgow thing and I am sure that Mark McGhee will have his side ready for us.

"Being away from home is always difficult for your first game but we need to get on with it. As I said, the bulk of this squad have been here for a decent length of time and I am sure we won't need to gee them up for a game against Aberdeen . They will know themselves how tricky they can make life.

"They have a new manager too and there will be a few points that will fancy they have to prove. As starts go, it is one of the hardest we could have asked for. You always want to go into the first game of your season with everybody fit and raring to go and I honestly believe that we have the rudiments of a squad that are capable of holding their own anywhere, but you have to go out and prove that."

It's not all they will have to prove this term.

Rangers

Last spring, after weeks of exhaustive media scrutiny, George Burley crossed his fingers and tried to tell everyone they had heard the last of Boozegate.

When Allan McGregor and Barry Ferguson fell from grace in the eyes of both their national and domestic sides, no-one at the SFA emerged from the carry-on looking particularly clever. The ramifications of the event rumbled along for quite some time with Rangers suspending the duo, and the situation ultimately called time on Ferguson's Ibrox career when he made the move, somewhat reluctantly, to Birmingham City last month.

Of course, neither player will play for Scotland again and it was at Hampden yesterday morning when the true fallout of the whole sorry mess became particularly apparent. With a crunch trip to Oslo next week for a World Cup qualifier against Norway that will go a considerable distance to determining Scotland 's fate in Group Nine, Burley was forced to name a squad of three goalkeepers who have but five caps between them.

As expected, Craig Gordon is nowhere near fit and will not make the game next Wednesday night which leaves Burley with David Marshall, Neil Alexander and Jamie Langfield from which to chose.

Alexander would appear to be the most obvious choice for the role given the first-team experience he has enjoyed recently and, although he lacks international caps, he has featured in a UEFA Cup final for Rangers and was a commanding custodian for the Ibrox side towards they end of last season.

Burley would not be cajoled into naming his first-choice for Oslo. However, given that Langfield has never been capped at senior international level and Marshall has been continually overlooked when he has been in Scotland squads under Burley, it suggests Alexander will be favourite for the gloves.

"Neil came into the Rangers team at the end of last season and was outstanding, and I remember him from my time at Ipswich Town as well," said Burley. "He has done very well at the highest level.

"You have to make a decision who is going to be the best on the day. Neil was outstanding for Rangers at the end of last season and I can't remember him making a mistake. If you lose a keeper like Craig Gordon, it is a big blow, but we have others who can come in. We haven't got a goalkeeper that has got international experience, that's the bottom line. But we have keepers there who have good experience at different levels in club football and that is what we have to choose from."

Rangers pair Steven Whittaker and Steven Naismith were somewhat surprise inclusions, but the omission of Ibrox captain David Weir raised a few eyebrows. The veteran defender had a torrid afternoon last October when Scotland played Norway at Hampden up against John Carew. Perhaps mindful of that, Burley has left out the 39-year-old and called Steven Caldwell, brother of Celtic defender Gary, into the squad after an impressive season with Burnley .

Burley broke the news to Weir by telephone on Monday afternoon and while he has not called time on the Rangers captain's international career, he has essentially said that unless Weir is going to play then he won't call him into the squad.

The two Caldwells look certain to line up together against Norway as Burley believes that Steven has the aggression and energy required to keep a lid on Carew.

"Steven has developed as a player," said the Scotland manager. "He has really blossomed in the last year under Owen Coyle the Burnley manager, who made him captain. I spoke to Davie Weir and he is one of the best professionals that has ever been and what he has achieved in the last few seasons with Rangers is phenomenal.

"He is coming up for 40 but he is still playing, and I watched him at the weekend. We have other young players, like Darren Barr and Christophe Berra, and Gary Caldwell has established himself in the team.

"But I felt it was time to bring in Steven because of the type of aggressive and committed centre-half that he is.We are playing against people like John Carew who are big and strong and tough and I felt it was the right time to bring him in.

"David was disappointed but he was tremendous. David just loves playing. I spoke to him yesterday and he understood the decision.

"We will still be in communication with David, but he is coming up for 40 and it is time to have a look at Steven. A few years ago he struggled a bit with Scotland , but he has shown me enough that he has got stronger and he is certainly the type of centre- half now that you don't want to play against because of the aggression he has when he plays the game."

Burley added: "We will have to be tough and strong because they put a lot of high balls into the box and we will have to be able to deal with that.

"We can't let Carew boss us about. He is one of the best strikers in the Premiership. He is mobile, he is strong, he is quick and he is not easy to handle and that is one of the areas I feel where we have to do better than we did at Hampden. But it is not an easy assignment because he is a top-class striker."

SPL Round Up

It has been a month to forget for Scottish clubs in Europe .

The SPL were left wringing their hands and staring with dismay at one another as Motherwell, Falkirk and Aberdeen were all put out of the Europa League at the first hurdle.

Aberdeen 's demise was the most painful after a whopping 5-1 defeat by Sigma Olomouc.

New manager Mark McGhee was feted as a returning hero by an Aberdeen support who couldn't stomach predecessor Jimmy Calderwood because of the cup-tie humiliations their team suffered under him. McGhee was supposed to eradicate that. After a solitary 90 minutes, all McGhee has done is ensured that a stuffing by Sigma will recalled much in the same way as the cup losses to Queen's Park, Queen of the South, and at home to Dunfermline, in recent times.

In some respects, the new Aberdeen manager has been fortunate there has been a needless move to lump together the three European defeats suffered by Scottish teams this past week. The notion that Motherwell losing 3-0 away to Steau Bucharest or Celtic failing to capitalise on territorial domination in going down 1-0 at home can be bracketed with the peppering of the Pittodrie side's goal is preposterous. However, the rush to claim than the Scottish game has sank to a new low is a little bogus.

In 1994-95, Scotland lost all four European representatives pretty swiftly. Rangers were beaten home and away by AEK Athens in a Champions League qualifier, Aberdeen were ousted by Latvians Skonto Riga, Dundee United lost out to Slovakians Tatran Presov and Motherwell went down valiantly against Borussia Dortmund. Much of the 1990s were like that. Clubs lived within their means and, without the country producing high-calibre players, these means proved pretty meagre.

Essentially, only by posting record debts around the time of the new millennium did Celtic and Rangers gain credibility for themselves and the country in the continental domain. Those days have passed. Give it a couple of years, then, and Scotland probably will be looking at having one team having to pre-qualify for the Champions League and three others in the Europa League. Even dropping a full 30 places in the UEFA rankings from the current position of 13th would allow for four representatives from Scotland .

Much talk has been given to rejigging the start date for the domestic season in order that Scottish teams do not go cold into European ties. Couldn't do any harm. Essentially, though, it might be considered akin to improving the sign-posting on problem roads. These might prevent a few accidents but won't strike to the root cause of why these accidents happen. McGhee won't be devoting too many waking hours to the long-term health of the game in this country. He will be having nightmares about the sickly nature of a side that didn't simply fall apart the other night.

"Like every team, when you lose a goal your head goes down a bit but we did try to pick ourselves up again," said teenage striker Chris Maguire, who earned some credit on the night by being one of the few players willing to face the press in the immediate aftermath of his career "low point". "But they kept coming at us after that and made it difficult for us."

Maguire, who arrived as 59th-minute substitute when the scores were tied at 1-1, could come up with no adequate answers for an outcome "devastating after (us] working so hard to get into Europe ". It was almost unfair of us asking him to explain away the inexplicable. For, even in these chastened times for the Scottish game É even if Sigma finished third in a Czech top flight stronger than our own...even if they were three competitive games further on in their season and even if McGhee's squad has contracted with no replacements yet for the departed Scott Severin, Jamie Smith and Lee Mair, Aberdeen should have been able to sustain a challenge in Europe for longer than 65 minutes.

McGhee admitted he picked the wrong team. In mitigation he pointed out that injuries and lack of bodies almost forced him to select a back four so misshapen, with few options Stuart Duff at centre-back and Derek Young at right back, it was bent completely out of shape by the end.

McGhee said on Thursday night the job at Pittodrie is more difficult than he envisaged.

It is the great unmentionable among the club's faithful, but ultimately Calderwood's record might be a devil to improve upon. So often, it is the sort of stoicism in short supply at the club that is what allows teams to come through close cup ties.

Ali Hannah

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