Whatever else happens in Glasgow, Gordon Strachan has already shaken the critics. Those who doubted whether his heart was really in management must be silent now. Other members of his profession, who always show a little patience and wait to be sacked, were bemused last year when he walked out on comparative success at Southampton, but they cannot question the depth of his ambition any longer.
Strachan is committing himself to the most exhausting and, if he is lucky, exhilarating job open to him. The new Celtic manager has often said that his real love is coaching, but he will know that he has come to entirely the wrong city if he craves the seclusion of the training ground.
His own reputation will depend on what he achieves at one of the most febrile of clubs and Celtic’s place in the world will rest on the degree to which he adapts to fill a highly public role.
Under Martin O’Neill, who has resigned because of his wife’s illness, the club became the 14th-richest in the world, even though domestic television income is negligible. In addition, the side should be in the tier of second seeds for next season’s Champions League groups so long as it gets through a couple of qualifying rounds.
It has the look of a gleaming legacy but anyone who saw last Saturday’s 1-0 Scottish Cup final win over Dundee United realises that Celtic are mostly rust. Strachan’s inheritance is a team in which the only man with his best days conceivably ahead of him is Craig Bellamy, whose loan spell has ended.
O’Neill preferred to live for the moment and what a long moment it has been. Prior to his appointment in 2000, Celtic had won the Scottish League once in the previous 12 years, but there were three titles under the Irishman. Much more significantly, the supporters had a string of light-headed nights in European competition that saw them knock Liverpool out of the Uefa Cup in 2003 and Barcelona last year. Even this season, with Celtic on an almost vertical downward slope, the side wrestled a draw from Camp Nou in the Champions League.
With virtually all available funds used to keep his trusted players, there were hardly any good signings to rejuvenate a team that O’Neill had formed in 2000. Owing to his wife’s health problems a distracted O’Neill made only leaden moves last year, paying a world record loan fee of £1,5-million for Henri Camara and taking the costly Juninho from Middlesbrough. Both players left in the January transfer window.
O’Neill was Celtic’s best manager in some 30 years but, had he stayed there, it would have been a challenge to tax even him. Now it is Strachan’s worry.
It will come naturally to him, as well, to differentiate himself from his predecessor, since the Scot is likely to place more emphasis on mobility. John Hartson claims that Strachan’s fitness regime at Coventry was the hardest he has known, and those words ought to have been uttered with apprehension considering how ponderous and out of condition the striker has looked since signing a new contract.
There are busy weeks ahead for Strachan as he determines which thirtysomethings must be ditched and which can be revitalised by the introduction of zestful new signings. He needs a team lively enough to respond to the new champions, Rangers. The board will try to fund him, and the departure of certain high earners eases the budget, but the pressure to make the right decisions in this critical summer is crushing.
In the short term it is Strachan’s presentation skills that will be put to the test. While an Aberdeen player he was once attacked on the pitch at Celtic Park by a home supporter. There is no enduring hostility, but these fans do not have the instant affinity with him that they felt for O’Neill.
Even if they have a proper regard for his efforts at Southampton, he will have to communicate with them and so secure the goodwill he needs. Strachan, though, is quick to become irritated by the media that convey and interpret his words. He can be thin-skinned and, during his days as a Scotland midfielder, once told me in apparent seriousness that newspapers should not mention it if a player had a bad game. I remember thinking how worthless film reviews would be if that truckling attitude ever caught on.
Strachan, however, is a clever man who knows he will have to adjust to the Glasgow hothouse. He must change himself a little if Celtic are to be transformed. — Â