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Rangers cannot afford to lose Kris Boyd but cannot afford to keep him either

Graham Spiers

 

Few situations at Rangers have been odder in recent years than the current case of Kris Boyd. The facts are, the prolific striker wants to remain at Rangers when his current contract expires in June, and his club also wish him to stay put. Yet Boyd, almost inevitably, will soon be bidding goodbye to Ibrox, possibly even in January.

The history of football is littered with cases of players who, at crucial junctures, have made the wrong decision in terms of a career move, and lived to regret it. Boyd, in the weeks and months ahead, has to carefully weigh up this pitfall, though the circumstances may be out of his hands.

Buy out by Rangers fans is no more than a dangerous pipe dream

 

Graham Spiers

This is how Alastair Johnston, the Rangers chairman, put it to the club's AGM on Monday afternoon about any potential new owner at Ibrox. "There will have to be substantial, regular, reliable and unencumbered cash made available if this club is to move forward," he said. With this statement, Johnston took a spear to the dreamy, gilded notion of some Rangers fans buying out the club for themselves.

I don't agree with Johnston on a lot of things, but on this point, he is surely right. It is hard not to grimace over the sheer disaster it would be for Rangers to have well-meaning fans acquiring the ownership rights to the club, but then being unable to significantly move Rangers forward in any financial or ambitious way.

As Johnston added: "It would be akin to paying a transfer fee to bring in an impact player, but then not having the funds to pay that player's wages."

Craig Levein: should I stay or should I go?

 

Graham Spiers 
 
Scottish football fans of a certain vintage cannot help but admire Dundee United - unless, of course, you are a Dundee FC fan. United, in their flaming tangerine-and-black strips, became a force to reckon with under Jim McLean in the 1980s, and the memory lives long. Even those of us from Glasgow with Old Firm leanings, or fans of Hearts or Hibs in Edinburgh, could not stem their welling admiration for United in those years.

Ten things wrong with Scottish football

Graham Spiers

George Burley has gone - done in by the Scottish Football Association after one setback too many. If, like me, you have a perverse love of Scottish football, then you'll know this Burley palaver is just the latest in a long line of afflictions. The name of Scottish football should be Job.

Below, set out in no particular order, is my top ten of things that are wrong with Scottish football. If anyone actually knows of a cure, simply drop me a line at The Times and I'll kindly pass it on to Gordon "Smudger" Smith at the SFA.

Old Firm bigots show true colours on Remembrance Day

 
 
Graham Spiers

Some final thoughts on the annual Old Firm hijacking of the poppy, as crass and contrived and insensitive as it all is.

For those of you unfamiliar with this scene, the problem is rooted in the cultural and political narrative surrounding Celtic FC. Increasingly, Celtic boasts a multi-dominational fanbase, in which some estimate that up 25 per cent of the club's support is now Protestant, but this hasn't stopped a core of political hardliners from objecting to the wearing of the poppy, given what they see as its symbolic link to a previously corrupt and cruel British political regime.

Ahead of TheGame: Scottish football in poor state

In today's e-mail bulletin we asked "Rangers and Celtic sit bottom of their respective European groups. Is this a fair reflection of the standard of Scottish football?"

Graham Spiers responds: "Unfortunately, it is a fair reflection of the current state of Scottish football. The game in Scotland is going through one of those periods at the moment and the clubs are becoming very self conscious about how poor the quality of football has become.

"Rangers and Celtic, as the poster boys of the Scottish game, are bearing the brunt of that criticism. To make matters worse, Celtic have been on the end of a damning statistic from Uefa this week, which has them down as the most shot-shy of all the 48 teams in the Europa League. They have had 13 shots on target in their three games so far.

"It isn't any better for Rangers. It was humiliating to be at Ibrox for their 4-1 defeat by Unirea Urziceni - a real wake-up call for the game in Scotland. Walter Smith has said the Scottish game is in meltdown and it is hard to see any reason to go against that view. The self-esteem of the game in Scotland and of the Old Firm is at an all-time low, but the current results and standings in Europe, although cruel, is a realistic reflection of the state of the game."

We also reported on Newcastle's decision to rename St James' Park and how the design of modern footballs is increasing the number of stunning goals.

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Why Barcelona model won't work for Rangers

 

Graham Spiers

 As Rangers FC lurch on in their financial crisis - seemingly unwanted by the business community and with the club's bank, Lloyds, pressing for recovery of its debt - an old dream has once more surfaced among a group of fans. Members of the Rangers Supporters Assembly and the Rangers Supporters Trust have started promoting the idea of a kind of "fans' collective" clubbing together to save Rangers.

In their sights they have an obvious, if perhaps illusory, example. Over the years quite a few football supporters in Britain have dreamed of implementing the so-called "Barcelona model" at their club, whereby a register of members is formed and a purer form of football democracy is installed, with club chairmen and boards being democratically accountable.

Middlesbrough a major comedown for 'stressed out' Strachan

Graham Spiers

Middlesbrough FC for Gordon Strachan? Strange choice of club by the former Celtic manager. I find myself in the highly unusual position, writing from a Scottish perspective of English football rather than the other way round, of being able to say, what a comedown for the former SPL manager. Middlesbrough are less than half the size of Celtic - in esteem, in history, in fan-base, in size of stadium, in size of crowds - so it all adds up to a very odd choice.

By the way, this isn't just my own vacuous opinion. This view, for large periods of the past four years, appeared to be Strachan's own opinion, too. On numerous occasions he stated that, if or when he returned to England after Celtic, he would want to go to a big club, and not one forever mired in the survival stakes of the Barclays Premier League.

In fact, here is Strachan verbatim on the subject when I interviewed him for The Times 18 months ago. "To be honest I'd had my fill of trying to keep clubs up [in England], of trying to stave off relegation," he said. "It’s like I had the pack-drill for that: same tactics, same motivation, the same desperate survival plans. I had years of it at Coventry and it can be very stressful. I don't want to do any of that any more."

So when you go back down south, I asked him, it will be to avoid all of that? "Yeah ... I don’t miss all that fighting against relegation," Strachan said. "I’ve been there, done it, and it was stressful work. Unless you are with the big four in England, there is only so high you can go."

European ambition forces Rangers to backtrack over Bougherra

Graham Spiers

Football managers today evidently can't be too swingeing when asserting club discipline, as the recent case of Walter Smith and his Algerian defender, Madjid Bougherra, makes plain.

Last week Bougherra failed to return to Glasgow from international duty with his country until Friday evening - at least three days later than expected. It left him axed from the Rangers side which beat St Johnstone on Saturday in Perth and caused quite a few reporters to enquire later of Smith if Bougherra, having been dropped at the weekend, would be in danger of losing his place for Rangers' Champions League clash against Unirea Urziceni at Ibrox on Tuesday night.

SFA open doors to those of 'disparate origin' playing for Scotland

Graham Spiers

Good on Gordon Smith, the Scottish Football Association chief executive, for legislating to make Scotland "a more inclusive society". Smith has just successfully pushed a new ruling through Fifa's statutes whereby, in future, kids of disparate origin - Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, wherever - will be able to play for Scotland.

It is an overdue move, but Smith still deserves applause for finally making it happen. Unlike just about every other country in Europe - and certainly unlike England - Scotland still lacks a melting-pot of ethnic diversity among its footballers and, all moral arguments aside, the country is the poorer for it on the field of play. Smith's legislation will surely help to heal this wound.

In a nutshell, Smith has reversed the SFA's attitude to the modern, complicated "nationality" argument. Until now all four home-nation FAs have ignored Fifa's dubious rule whereby a player of any nationality, having been settled and working in another country for two years, can then be eligible to play for that country's national team. By means of shorthand let us call this the "Eduardo ruling", after Arsenal's Brazilian striker who, having moved to Dinamo Zagreb from Rio de Janeiro when he was 17, now plays for Croatia.