John Lambie passed away, and I am sure I can speak for us all when I say that his family are in all of our thoughts.
Recently, on Clyde, they had a telephone conversation with Chick Charnley, who spoke very highly of John Lambie and said he considered him a friend and not just an ex manager.
Now while this is admirable it does highlight something; our game is changing.
You can’r have these type of managers anymore, Stein, McLean, Ferguson, Smith, successful Scottish managers, but would not last in today’s game.
Ferguson got out when he did because players wont accept that shit anymore
Now the game of football is constantly evolving, rule changes about allowing flow of play etc.
But I refer specifically to Scottish football.
John Lambie was part of an old school that was about bullying and intimidation within the dressing room, physicality first and ability a long second. The “hit him hard in the first 5 seconds” view of the game.
Kicking people up in the air is how to intimidate them.
That’s why when you see guys like Neil Warnock being linked with Sevco you see just how far in the past they are ensconced.
That’s not the way the game is anymore.
You can’t drop a medicine ball on a player’s head as a joke.
You can’t verbally abuse people in a dressing room.
You hear stories about Smith at Ibrox, and how he used to have people up against the dressing room wall; why did player ever put up with that? Would a Scott Brown have tolerated it? Not for one second. Not at all.
Yet we have a huge section of Scottish football who actively promote these attitudes.
Now you may ask why this would be.
Well it’s because any changes are a danger to the status quo in all parts of our game.
When the first change is accepted the move forward to the next quickens.
And that, eventually, leads to there being no establishment team and everyone treated the same.
And that. some cannot have.
The failure of the authorities to deal with these fixtures for fear of a title game at Celtic Park shows that we are being forcibly kept from moving forward.
This game would be promoted by any other football nation, I am with others and agree that if this was the other way about, Sevco game against us at their ground then we wouldn’t have the same issues. Even the safety argument which is being spouted by media lackeys and idiots like Laurie on Clyde don’t stand up to real scrutiny; if current legislation, which is in place for public safety, was used by the police correctly it is manageable.
But these authorities are part of the group that are forcing us to stay in the past.
They want to do and say certain things and don’t want to punish their brethren for doing that so it’s not used and as such they keep us in the past.
You can see this in the criticism we get for our style of football; look at how Brendan Rodgers has tried to get us to play from that back, we get slaughtered for it and we have the best defence in the country. All players make individual errors (Boyata more than most) but that is about the team and players developing. But when we get “defenders should defend first” from guys like Gordon Dalzell and Derek Johnstone who haven’t kicked a ball in more than 30 years it shows, again, how the past dictates our game at every point here.
I was thinking about this while watching Man City v Liverpool – Pep Guardiola had put one of the most offensive lineups ever out for the match; even the defenders were forward thinking, passing, moving etc, but to get to this level you need to change and lose certain other aspects of the game.
But losing that first one leads to the others, and too many want us to stay where we are.
Too much of our game here is rooted in the past.
And that’s exactly how some folk like it.
David Campbell wants Scottish football to move forward instead of letting old ideas – and fears – hold it back.
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