Gordon Strachan Is Dead Wrong. Tavernier Wouldn’t Get Near This Celtic Team.

Gordon Strachan has a good claim to being one of the best Celtic bosses of the modern era. He won three titles in a row, which is more than Martin O’Neill did. And whilst he didn’t get us to a European final, he did get us out of two Champions League Groups into the knockout stages. Which is a momentous achievement, one no-one has managed since.

Yet for all that, I’ve always wondered at some of what comes out of his mouth and that’s especially true with the headline story which is doing the rounds today which is about how James Tavernier would probably get into a Celtic-Ibrox XI.

To be frank, he’s talking through the hole in his bum.

There are circumstances in which Tavernier might be able to “have an impact” in this Celtic squad, but they only apply in the case that football adopted some of the rules from its distant relative in the US. Since we don’t have the ability to bring designated free kick takers and penalty “experts” on and off the pitch at will it seems like a stupid argument to be having.

Tavernier is good at dead balls. Nobody disputes that. They get enough of them in games, especially from the penalty spot. Other than that, sorry, but not even close. He would not get near this Celtic team ahead of either Ralston or Johnston, both excellent defenders which would be the foremost consideration. He is and has always been abysmal at that.

I really don’t care who it is making this nonsensical point. The Record seems to believe that because it’s Strachan that it carries some weight but it really doesn’t. The idea, on top of that, that John Lundstram would get into the team – which Strachan also reckons – is even more bizarre and I’m pretty glad that the guy we have in the dugout now has better judgement than that on what makes a good footballer. Even Ibrox fans are sick of Lundstram.

Honestly, these sorts of debates are pretty ridiculous even at the best of times. But we have a 13-point lead over this lot and anyone who watched them at the weekend would have seen Tavernier at his finest, making mistakes, stray passes and being caught out of position. And he looked like a football master of the universe next to Lundstram.

The one thing I’ll say is that he never did actually get asked to name a so called Glasgow XI because it would have been very interesting indeed to see who he picked for it and how he justified those choices. Cause he also thinks Tillman might have got in it … I’d love to know which of Jota, Abada or Maeda he was dropping for him.

In the end, this stuff is subjective and not always objective. He thinks that if Tavernier didn’t play for the Ibrox club we would acknowledge he was a good player. On the contrary, if he was anywhere but Ibrox we wouldn’t even know who he was … and that tells you what kind of player he is right away and where he fits in the pantheon of talents.

Strachan has been out of the game at the sharp end a long time. But although I acknowledge his success at Parkhead there was something distinctly “old school” about him even then and that’s why most people breathed a big sigh of relief when he left … we might have breathed a little less easily had we known what direction we’d go in, but that’s for another day.

He’s a dinosaur, and we all know that.

A throwback to football’s bygone era, and it was nice whilst it lasted.

I expect this kind of daftness from him from time to time … but in the idea that Tavernier has something to offer us when we don’t play American football and need a guy whose job it is simply to kick a static ball he appears to have become Ted Lasso without the charm. That never was his strong suit though.