With the next Scotland squad about to be named, there’s a lot of talk, as usual, about whether or not Lee Wallace should be in the team.
The notion is laughable, and it’s especially ridiculous when one considers that the alternative to him is Kieran Tierney.
To me, there’s simply no comparison; Tierney is the best left back in Scotland, developing at a rapid rate into a really top class footballer.
He has become a stick-on for the SPL Young Player of the Year award and the fact he’s keeping an established international out of our side most weeks should tell you everything you need to know about him.
Lee Wallace has been playing lower tier football for four years.
Even if he were the player the Scottish media would have once had you believe, Lionel Messi would have deteriorated playing against part timers for that long, and I never believed the hype about him in the first place. He is a decent footballer, at the Scottish level. That’s about it.
There was no queue of clubs forming outside Ibrox for his signature when the club was told to start life in the fourth tier, and at no point during the laughably titled “journey” was there a solid offer for him made.
How do we know that?
We know it because Skintco would have bitten the hands off anyone who made one.
Young Kiernan has already been watched by some of the clubs in England, ever ready to make a move in case he doesn’t seem to want to stay at Celtic Park, but this is a forlorn hope because he appears settled and happy and is going nowhere at all.
Wallace’s case is a big cause celebre in the Scottish media, who like to talk up the importance of any player in the Sevco side, as they used to enjoy promoting the cause of anyone who played for Rangers, yet the stats on this guy make interesting reading.
Before Rangers were liquidated, Wallace had made exactly six appearances in a Scotland shirt.
His two since he became a Sevco player are, unarguably, more than he ever deserved and were nothing more than Gordon pandering a wee bit to the media.
Wallace has never been regarded as a Scotland regular, not even when he was a Premier League player.
Where is the argument in favour of his adding to the cap count now?
Lee Wallace is a player whose career is on the downslope, and that’s been evident for years.
He’s not even the player he used to be, which as I’ve said already isn’t saying much anyway.
Tierney is a far better footballer already and is young enough that you just know he’s going to get better.
He also has the maturity that has eluded Wallace thus far. This isn’t a kid constantly banging on the door of the national coach asking when he’s getting selected. In an interview last month he said he was perfectly content to wait for his chance.
That it has arrived sooner than he thought is a testament to how well he has played recently, and the way he continues to grow even in a Celtic side not playing at its peak.
This is one of those media inspired debates which, actually, boils down to no debate at all. Those who’ve watched both players know which of the two is the superior footballer, and we all know which is playing at the highest level and who isn’t.
As a postscript it should be noted too that Wallace would probably have won more caps for Scotland than he has, but for that Rangers and Sevco tendency to pull players out of the national team. It’s just another thing that makes me wonder why Gordon Strachan should even bother thinking about him, let alone actually selecting him.
Not so with Celtic.
We have more respect for this country than that.