Today The Herald contains an interview with Alan Stubbs, where Scott Allan appears to have been the topic of conversation. Apparently he was denied his dream move to Ibrox, by a Hibs board which was being nasty and a Celtic board which decided to torment the player with an exit from Easter Road as long as it was to the Hoops reserve team.
That’s the underlying tone of it anyway. It omits several key facts.
The first one is obvious; had Sevco done its business in the correct fashion – professionally, respectfully, and responsibly – there would have been no question of Hibs standing in the player’s way. It didn’t matter that the two clubs were destined to be title rivals; that had absolutely nothing to do with it at all. Hibs would have dealt with the transfer offer like any other. The problem is that Sevco behaved appallingly, and with the utmost disdain for the Easter Road club.
I remember being amazed at how they went about trying to secure that deal. They conducted their business through the media, trying to force both club and player to play ball. They dropped acidic remarks into every press conference where the subject came up. So much for “we don’t talk about players at other clubs.” That was all they did do. The media itself was outrageous, openly pushing for the move and ratcheting up the pressure.
Stubbs himself commented on that at the time, calling out the “ambassadors” for the Ibrox club who had been in the papers day on day on day trying to force Hibs to accept the deal. For a while it looked as if the unrelenting nature of the media campaign might succeed, but Hibs were not for moving. They held firm, and finally told everyone the player wouldn’t be going to Ibrox no matter what anyone had to say about it.
There was one other aspect to this, of course, and it was the derisory nature of Sevco’s offer. Indeed, if they had been capable of making a realistic transfer bid there might never have been a story here. But Skintco couldn’t muster the kind of cash required.
Their offers were scandalous, grossly under the value Hibs put on the young man. Sevco hoped that such lousy bids would be more acceptable once their shock and awe media campaign was ramped up, but there had been other clubs in the running. Hibs were always going to get a good deal.
And then along came Celtic. We will speculate for years over whether or not the move was an expensive piece of mischief making or not. We can go round and round on the matter until our heads explode. The fact is, he was signed and then promptly dumped in the reserves. It was a strange series of events, a deal that made no sense at all on paper and never really panned out into anything. I said today that Ryan Christie will return to Celtic and be a star; I have no confidence at all that Scott Allan ever will. I thought, then and now, that although a decent enough footballer he was far below the standard we required at Parkhead.
But the deal is fascinating nonetheless, and when you consider The Herald’s article today something becomes pretty clear. Scott Allan is a dyed in the wool Ibrox boy; that was the story at the time and there’s little doubt that it’s true. Celtic fans never gave a damn about that, any more than we’ve ever cared whether Scott Brown was. Some of our greatest players have crossed that divide; it’s the last thing we’re even remotely bothered by.
It was the media who assumed that it would make some huge difference to his decision, that the lure of Ibrox would be too great to resist. They were counting on it, in fact. They thought he would go to the Hibs board and demand the move, and transfer fee be damned. That’s what the whole media strategy was, from the off.
And he never did it. He acted like a pro.
For all that, he could have said he was going to stay and run down his contract. Sevco would have waited. Probably. But he didn’t do that either.
Instead, when Celtic came along he jumped at the chance to sign for us. He paraded on the pitch in our colours. He can’t have not realised what a slap in the face it would be to them and his fellow Sevco fans … but he did it anyway. You can call that the act of a mercenary – their fans certainly did – as you like, but I prefer to look at it as the actions of a realist. A kid who weighed up the options and knew what the best one was.
Because he knew too that it would be a struggle to get into our team. He knew he might be taking a career risk and a half – as it’s turned out, he would have been right. But he preferred that, hands down, to pressing for the move to the club he allegedly loves.
I wrote yesterday how Scott Brown was the first proof we had, as fans, that the financial balance of power had tilted in Celtic’s favour when he signed for us over interest from Ibrox. That was about pure financial muscle.
This was an affair of the heart and the head and in spite of Allan’s clear sentimental longing for Sevco when it came to the crunch he knew we were the bigger, the better, club. And so he signed for us. This is about a different kind of power.
We are attractive in ways they are not. Even the players who’ve grown up dreaming of pulling on their jersey and kissing the badge would prefer a move to Celtic over them. That’s the real measure of how far apart the two clubs are, and it is a dark portent for their future. Scott Allan is the proof of their shrinking viability.
His signing for Celtic presages bad times ahead.
It was the first glimpse of the planet killing asteroid in their telescopes.
It was the herald of an extinction level crisis they are still in denial about today.
I understand why the papers want to paint it as something else.