Scott Brown is an all-time great Celtic captain – his Scotland retirement is good news

It may be a very long time before we have such a top-class player commit ten years to us again

There is one great advantage to being a blogger.

When you are right, you can quote yourself, with links and unbearable smugness, confident that most readers are too disinterested in your output to find all the times you've been wrong.

On Scott Brown, just about all of my comments have been in the former category and I'm a happy chappie today because I get to remind you of that again.

But, more importantly, I'm hugely relieved that Scott has chosen to retire from international football. (Ironically, shortly before Scott previously announced his international retirement, I had suggested the same thing.)

Scott clearly has a passion for the Scotland team that not all Celtic fans share, so I'm sure this is a day of mixed emotions.

But it is right for the player and that's a huge boost for the team.

You only have to look at Celtic without Scott, as in the insipid 0-0 draw with St Johnstone, to see how vital he is to everything Celtic do.

The intensity that Brendan Rodgers calls for comes from him, he takes the ball under pressure when his teammates are in trouble and turns defence into attack.

With the players under Brendan understanding where they should be on the pitch , Scott's pass completion rates have matched the finest players in Europe.

He can win the ball and seems to fear nothing but he has always had sharp attacking instincts. He has an enviable array of passes and can play-one-touch football at pace.

And he is also the only true leader we have on the pitch (with Kieran Tierney being the next best in that department).

And if that's all fawning praise, I don't mind that. More than ten years after signing for Celtic, Scott has taken his place amongst the all-time great Celtic captains alongside the likes of Billy McNeill, Danny McGrain, Roy Aitken and Tommy Burns while, as a footballer, he is the best central midfielder we have had since Paul McStay.

He has had his detractors in the past but they are mostly silent now. Few fans, let alone bloggers, wish to remind you that they once wanted him sold or considered an expensive player from Hibs not to fit with the plan.

But he has stayed, proven his quality and it may be a very long time before we have such a top-class player commit ten years to us again.

The announcement is good news for Celtic as we need Scott more than ever.

Now all we need is for Brendan Rodgers to learn his name properly. It's not Brownie, it's Broonie!

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Gordon Smith: It’s just because he played for Rangers

Gordon Smith, Chief Executive of the Scottish Football Association, has come in for a considerable degree of criticism since he was appointed to the post.

There was his decision to blame Catholic schools for Scotland’s religious bigotry; his inaction on religious bigotry and racism in Scottish football grounds, most notably Ibrox; the lengthy process of appointing a successor to the national team coach, Alex McLeish; the way he informed – or didn’t inform – unsuccessful candidates such as Tommy Burns and Mark McGhee; his crass interruptions, picking a fight with the media during George Burley’s inaugural press conference; his false claims to have received complaints from every club about referees; equally false claims to having been misquoted while making these claims; his failure to secure a sponsor for the Scottish Cup; his apparent collusion with David Murray and the Daily Record to try to give Rangers an advantage in the SPL- trying to arrange a second extension without consulting any other clubs, ….

That’s enough to be going on with.

Amid all of these issues, Smith has insisted that criticisms of him stem only from jealousy of his “confidence” and resentment against his having played for Rangers, thereby absolving himself of any blame or, it seems, responsibility to sharpen up his act.

Yet, having kept his head down for the past few months (one of the few Scottish football figures to have kept a low profile after the death of Tommy Burns, a former SFA employee), Smith has finally decided to address the media and Scottish football fans with another brilliant idea.

That is the suggestion that Scotland fans should be prepared to pay upwards of £40 to see a friendly against Argentina on a Wednesday night in November. For this, Smith assures us, Argentina would be contracted to play its strongest team.

It would seem that Smith’s “confidence” has been replaced with delusions. If he somehow believes that this “consultation” will allow him to abdicate responsibility for ripping off those fans who attend Scotland matches, he is wrong. Likewise, he is fooling himself if he believes that outsiders cannot see through this stunt.

He doesn’t need a consultation – some common sense would have done – to tell him that he will attract more resentment than paying punters by this absurd plan.

And his promise of a “full-strength” Argentina in this friendly sounds unconvincing. As, George Burley’s first two internationals proved to be rest days for Rangers players, Smith would have more credibility if he was able to guarantee a full-strength Scotland.

Smith, remember Farry; Reid, remember McCann

Today the integrity of Scottish football’s governing body, the SFA, is in tatters.

Just days after Rangers withdrew four players from George Burley’s first Scotland squad it emerges that Barry Robson not only reported for duty, he insisted that he was fit and desperate to play.

Despite this, he was overruled by former Rangers club doctor, Stuart Hillis, citing a knee injury that Robson’s own club manager didn’t know about and the player himself was convinced did not affect his fitness to play.

The result was media coverage lumping Robson together with four Rangers players – all of whom were declared fit for club duty on the evening of the match.

Predictably, SFA Chief Executive Gordon Smith has had nothing to say. Rarely found wanting a crass or inflammatory comment, Smith’s credibility has been in shreds almost since he was given the job.

• He implied that cheating was part of the culture of Lithuania and Slovenia

• Was found to have contributed to a book citing Catholic education as a factor in football bigotry

• Falsely claimed that every football club had complained to him about cheating

• When challenged, falsely claimed that he had been misquoted by journalists, an allegation he was forced to retract

• Has made the deluded claim that all criticism of him can be attributed solely to his association with Rangers and stated that he can disregard comment on his actions from football fans based on the assumption that he is being personally targeted as a “confident” former Rangers player

However, when it has been suggested that the SFA have colluded with Rangers to rest their players and at the same time undermined Barry Robson’s international career to manage the negative publicity that the moves would attract, Smith remains silent.

Let’s be clear: if Gordon Smith can question the integrity of two UEFA football associations, it is quite proper to question the integrity of the body that he is currently so badly mismanaging.

Smith cannot dismiss legitimate questions based on nothing other than his paranoid insistence that his status as a former Rangers player and his confident nature attract malicious comment.

Celtic have consistently found that integrity and commitment to Scotland leaves the club at a disadvantage faced with an association that discards all standards of fair play at the behest of its favourite club.

Recent manifestations of this have been absurd anomalies in disciplinary sanctions being taken against players and officials at Celtic and Rangers.

The last time that a Scottish official’s action blatantly favoured Rangers over Celtic – when Jim Farry deliberately withheld Jorge Cadete’s registration making him ineligible to play against Rangers – Fergus McCann let it be known that the Scottish League itself would find itself in court if it did not take appropriate action. Farry was sacked.

It cannot be that the current incumbents at Celtic Park, one of whom led the country into war and one of whom has been credited with being a vital contributor to a national economic revival, along with shareholders who operate at the highest level of international commerce can sit idly by while the interests of Celtic are being undermined.

John Reid, Dermot Desmond and Peter Lawwell must challenge the SFA directly: either produce a legitimate justification for its recent actions or find itself answering before UEFA.

In particular, some key questions should be addressed:

• Why has the SFA declined to enforce the rule allowing it to bar players from playing for their clubs when they have withdrawn from their international squad in midweek?
  

• If the Rangers injuries were legitimate, why were no other Rangers players called in as replacements, Cardiff City’s Gavin Rae, for example, being preferred to Kevin Thomson?

• If Barry Robson was so badly injured that he was unable to even remain with the Scotland squad despite his protests, why was the usual process of consultation with the player’s club disregarded? Evidently, communication between the Scotland team and Rangers management and medical staff had taken place.

Such responsibility cannot be left to Gordon Strachan, who has already been targeted by the SFA, most notably by the referee at Ibrox tomorrow, and who has faced the indignity of having a national bookmaker run a special bet on the possibility of his being sacked by Sunday night.

To fail to address this is to let down Strachan, whose career prospects are affected, as well as Barry Robson, whose opportunities have come late in his career only to find himself the victim of the most absurd brand of politics.

It is also obvious that holding high office at Celtic is not just an honour – it comes with responsibility to innumerable supporters the world over.

• One other thing – we criticise reporters when they unfairly attack our club but it only right to mention that Keith Jackson is the only Scottish journalist who has so far highlighted the issues in this case. Praise where it’s due and all that!

Ibrox loyal? Not to Scotland

It is ironic that our opponents so often criticise Celtic supporters for their lack of loyalty to Scotland. Granted, we know that this is nothing more than a manifestation of bigotry, finding any excuse to attack people who celebrate Irish heritage.

However, it is clear that the Scottish media will never make such claims against Rangers despite all evidence showing that Scotland’s interests have never been high on the Ibrox agenda.

The last Walter Smith era was notable for the number of “injuries” suffered by Rangers players prior to Scotland matches, most of which seemed to clear up in time for the players to perform in domestic or European club duty.

Today, miraculous misfortunes have befallen Barry Ferguson, Lee McCulloch, Christian Dailly and Allan McGregor, forcing them to withdraw from the Scotland squad to play Croatia. Only Kris Boyd remains, suggesting that either he is not valued at Ibrox or that a strain or virus is imminent.

Of course, the loyalty of Walter Smith and Ally McCoist was never questioned when they abandoned their national team at a crucial stage of a European Championship qualifying campaign so we can expect the latest withdrawals to pass without comment.

In fairness, this is a game played by many clubs at some stage, though rarely with such brazenness as shown by Rangers. However, there is an intrinsic dishonesty in the manner of these withdrawals and a hypocrisy in the press treatment of the issue, (which effectively wrecks George Burley’s first match).

We are well used to certain Rangers fans asking: “Where in Ireland is Glasgow?” It now seems that Ibrox isn’t even part of Scotland.