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Sevco-Centric Alex McLeish Has Already Started Down The Long Road That Leads To His Sacking.

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Image for Sevco-Centric Alex McLeish Has Already Started Down The Long Road That Leads To His Sacking.

Tonight Scotland kicks off the “Alex McLeish era”. Again.

Last time he was national coach he left the job to go to Birmingham. Why do I suspect the next destination will be a little closer to home? The game this evening is a friendly, against an opponent I could possibly care less about but not much less. The whole thing now leaves me cold.

I will not be watching the match. I won’t watch another Scotland game whilst this farce is in play, the McLeish farce.

I said in an earlier article that I thought it was important that Celtic players continue to turn out for their country, all the better that the people who appointed this guy would have no recourse to blame us for his failure. The first signs are already there.

Let’s take his squad selection for one. In his quest to seem as if he’s giving every club a try he’s selected players from Aberdeen and Hibs and the media is applauding this as if it were some awesome breakthrough. In fact, the players he’s picked would have been entitled to feel pretty pissed off had they not been chosen.

No, the trouble isn’t with his selection of players from those clubs. It’s that at least one recent call-up hails from a bigger club and he doesn’t deserve to be selected at all.

I am talking about our own Jack Hendry here, and this, along with the inexplicable decision to select Jason Cummings and assorted Sevco dreck should worry everyone who follows the national team. McLeish is in the door five minutes and has already reverted to type.

Hendry has played a handful of games for Celtic already. He played more for Dundee, but nobody really believes he would have been selected for Scotland from there. There is no justification whatsoever for calling up Jason Cummings … but as both play in Glasgow that’s reason enough. It makes the decision to select the boys from Aberdeen, Hibs and elsewhere look like exactly what it is; tokenism. A gesture, quickly to be forgotten.

When Dorrans and Jack are fit they will be in every one of this guy’s squads. As long as he’s at Ibrox Russell Martin will be as well. Sevco players have already displaced Celtic’s young guns in the youth squads, much to the disbelief of neutral observers. At every opportunity, any Sevco player who plays more than two good games in a row will be called up … and most will withdraw from the squad, just as it ever was. And the bulk of what’s left of the squad will be from Parkhead.

Anyone who expected otherwise was a mug. The one thing about Strachan was that he did not have a Glasgow-centric focus. He only reluctantly came to select so many players from our club, when the momentum became unstoppable. But he never believed that the Scottish international team was best served focussing on one or two clubs only.

McLeish did exactly the same last time he was Scotland boss, and nothing has changed in his mind-set. A player at Ibrox is a better player than someone elsewhere, and if he can’t get one of those it’ll be a Celtic player he replaces him with.

Only when he has no other choice will he bother to look further afield and the ridiculous thing is that he’ll have the media’s full support.

Only a handful of the hacks have bothered to ask why Hendry is in the team and none so far have asked what in the Hell Cummings has done to justify his inclusion.

This is how it is from now on. The appointment itself was joke which no-one with a straight face could argue for a second was made based on merit. Should we be surprised that the squad selections won’t be? Of course not.

McLeish has full ownership of this already.

Full ownership of the coming failure.

He’s started down the long road to his sacking … provided he doesn’t quit to move to Ibrox first.

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