Strachan, Gordon – Resignation & Departure (articles)

Gordon Strachan resigned as Celtic manager yesterday after missing out on a fourth successive Scottish title.

The 52-year-old former Coventry City and Southampton manager took over from Martin O’Neill in 2005 and won six trophies in four years — three league titles, one Scottish Cup and two League Cups — and took the club to the last 16 of the Champions League in 2007 and 2008, although he never enjoyed a warm relationship with the majority of Celtic supporters.

“Celtic is a special club, with special supporters,” Strachan said. “There is no club like it and it has been an absolute honour and privilege to be the club’s manager for the past four years.”

Peter Lawwell, the Celtic chief exec-utivesaid: “We have got people in mind as a replacement, but nothing is in place at the moment.”

Owen Coyle, the Burnley manager, is an early front-runner. Mark McGhee, of Motherwell, and Craig Levein, the Dundee United manager, are also contenders. Tony Mowbray, the West Bromwich Albion manager and a former Celtic player, could also come into consideration.

(c) 2009 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved

The Times

Success turned stale for Strachan

Provided by: The Times

Gordon Strachan’s departure from Celtic should take no one by surprise. Glasgow has been a hot-house of rumour for two weeks about his imminent going, and last Thursday Strachan himself even fuelled that speculation by specifically intimating to the assembled media at Celtic that he would take no questions about his future at the club, but only about what, in fact, transpired to be his final match in charge, against Heart of Midlothian at Celtic Park on Sunday.

At a routine pre-match press conference, if that request didn’t make some of us there suspicious, then what would? Strachan has also chosen the right time to get out of Celtic. After three excellent seasons at the club, during which he delivered three successive titles, a Scottish Cup and a League Cup, as well as making significant progress in Europe, something stale has invaded his team this season. For sure, Strachan came lose to making that four titles in a row, and Celtic had already claimed the Co-operative Insurance Cup by beating Rangers in March, but his team’s deathly performance against Hearts on Sunday was not just season-ending fatigue. Strachan and his players had long since begun to lose their collective imagination.

Strachan can leave Celtic a relatively proud man — not something that can always be said of outgoing Old Firm managers. Funnily enough, Celtic have now had two such departures in a row, following Martin O’Neill’s leaving in 2005 with a similar sense of accomplishment. The key difference between the two is that the fans adored O’Neill, whereas many of them have been cool towards Strachan and some openly disdainful.

The reasons for the latter cynicism are complicated, and too often reduced to glib soundbites. For sure, O’Neill met all the credentials of the cultural inheritance of Celtic, being Irish and Catholic, and Strachan did not, being a nippy Presbyterian from Edinburgh. But this aspect is often wildly overstated in the media. Only a small section of fans have had the temerity to object to Strachan on grounds of his background.

Much more germane to those who have disdained him has been Strachan’s style of play — ponderous and laboured this season — and his signings, in particular players such as Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink and Georgios Samaras. Even then, however, the debate is highly subjective. Vennegoor of Hesselink, in fact, has averaged almost a goal every two games in his SPL league career with Celtic, and almost single-handedly rescued their dramatic title challenge in the near-miraculous closing weeks of the 2007-08 season.

One other, perhaps more significant aspect about Strachan which perturbed quite a few Celtic fans was his recurring facetiousness or sarcasm on the public airwaves, which made more than a few supporters cringe. When this point was put to Strachan he would defend himself stoutly, but the truth is, he probably didn’t always strike the right balance between wit and outright aggression. On more than one occasion a sports journalist would be belittled, and, while quite a few of us got on very well with him, you couldn’t turn a blind eye to his sometimes unkind conduct towards others.

Of course, it is a two-way street. Strachan, with some justification, complained that the newspapers’ coverage is too often characterised by exaggeration, hysteria or downright fiction. “Why should I have to deal with all that stuff — it is plainly wrong,” he told me when I interviewd him back in 2007. I must admit, I was at a loss to put up a defence. The difference is that Martin O’Neill had a withering but often silent contempt for all this. Strachan, on the other hand, expressed his disapproval by open insult.

After four intense years at Celtic, he can take a break in the knowledge that his stock is high in England. He will, surely, have little bother picking up a decent job if he is prepared to wait long enough. It may even come sooner rather than later, if Sunderland or Newcastle United or any other such slumbering giant chooses to take him on.

Strachan has also shown that, when in charm mode, he can be multi-talented. He was an intriguing and thought-provoking sidekick to Adrian Chiles in the early days of Match of the Day 2 on BBC Two, picking games apart with shrewd analysis and easing himself comfortably into pre-recorded audio packages. With a settled family life built around a seemingly impregnable marriage, there is quite a bit about Strachan’s life which is rewarding.

Football, however, will lure him back, sooner rather than later. He has left Celtic of his own accord, which is another minor blessing in a hiring-and-firing business. Strachan is by no means done with the game yet.

(c) 2009 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved

The Times

Strachan’s real crime – not being Martin O’Neill

Provided by: The Scotsman

But manager’s record stands up well to his predecessors, and with reduced resources

IT WOULD be tempting to suppose that what hurt Gordon Strachan most on Sunday was the absence of applause after four years of success. But then this was nothing new. He had become used to operating without fanfare at Parkhead ever since being unveiled, and was perhaps simply grateful that those fans who drifted disconsolately away from Parkhead after the goal-less draw with Hearts had chosen not to turn on him.

That reaction, of course, would have been unjustified, but then it is possible to say Strachan has not been treated fairly from the word go. His greatest perceived crime, among many, was to not be Martin O’Neill. He might now reflect that indeed he wasn’t – his record over four seasons was just as good, if not comparatively better, than O’Neill’s. He could also contend that not only did he match O’Neill, his celebrated predecessor, but he did so with reduced resources.

This isn’t an opinion that will find favour in east end of Glasgow bars, where the issue of who might replace Strachan is already being debated with a relish which suggests few are pausing to toast the former manager.

The reaction of many Celtic fans is that this departure comes four years too late. He should, they argue, have stepped down after the calamity of the 5-0 reversal against Artmedia Bratislava, a result which some had hoped, even then, would do for Strachan what the 3-1 home defeat to Inverness Caledonian Thistle did for John Barnes.

Yet this was Strachan’s first match in charge of a team still a long way from being his own. The manager recovered to lead Celtic to the championship that season, and then did so again in two subsequent campaigns. He also got it right in the Champions League, twice reaching the last 16. In any assessment of his time at Parkhead, victories over AC Milan and Manchester United must be granted greater prominence than a defeat in his opening match, one that was so nearly over-turned at home.

But the recollection of these passionate, sometimes wild, nights at Parkhead has not encouraged fans to treat him with half the reverence reserved for Jock Stein, or even O’Neill. That he does not measure up to the former is no slight on Strachan, since no-one in the club’s history does. But it is reasonable to state that he was a more than adequate replacement for O’Neill, whose reputation survived a surrender of the championship right at the end of his last league match against Motherwell.

The Celtic job is hard enough, but it is doubly difficult when asked to succeed a lauded figure. O’Neill himself waltzed into Parkhead while safe in the knowledge that he could do no worse than Barnes, who had left four months earlier. The trick, when agreeing to manage the Old Firm, is do so at a time of crisis. Just ask Walter Smith.

Fans refused to warm to someone whose back pages displayed not only no association with the club, but worse, included episodes interpreted as being anti-Celtic. His time as a player with Aberdeen saw him regularly fall out with those in hooped shirts, while one fan’s attempt to shake him by the throat after one tangle too many cast him out as a player they loved to hate.

But one thing they could not deny is that he was always a winner, although his departure, just 24 hours after the disappointment of losing the league title, also marks him out as something of a pragmatist. How can he hope to navigate perilous qualification rounds of the Champions League, never mind the group stage itself, with a team that is the product of lowered boardroom ambition at Parkhead?

Six domestic trophies from 12 is an acceptable return, but it is Europe which should frame his tenure, although even this can fall one of two ways. His supporters will point to Celtic’s progress to the last 16 of the Champions League in successive seasons, where they fell to eventual winners AC Milan only after extra-time on the first occasion, and then a rampant Barcelona 12 months later. But failure to arrest an appalling run of form in away group matches gives what his enemies regard as sound reason to condemn him.

Whether Strachan would have stayed even had he won a fourth title is a moot point. Strachan comes across as the kind of person who is not content to rest on his laurels. He left Southampton on a high, and as a player liked to taste new experiences, incurring Alex Ferguson’s displeasure when engineering a move from Aberdeen to Manchester United. He later moved to Leeds and Coventry.

His relationship with certain players at Celtic had begun to fracture, with Aiden McGeady unlikely to mourn the manager’s departure. He is joined by former AC Milan midfielder Massimo Donati, cast by Strachan into a wilderness. This is one area of his management where it is easy to find fault. Although relentlessly supportive of his players in public, his banishment of certain individuals bordered on being vindictive. Bobo Balde’s crime was to have accepted a generous new contract from Celtic, while Derek Riordan, despite his challenging behaviour, could still have expected more support.

The flip side to this are those who must count themselves in the pro-Strachan camp. Artur Boruc could not have complained had he found himself on the sidelines after a series of errors on the pitch and scrapes off it. Gary Caldwell has seen his career blossom at Celtic to the extent where he has been named player of the year by football writers as well as fellow players.

But how Strachan is remembered will remain in the charge of the supporters, where the harsh judgment of the majority is guaranteed to overwhelm the more dispassionate verdict. This less popular assessment deserves a hearing. Not as good as Stein, granted, but the equal – at the least – of O’Neill.

(c) 2009

The Scotsman

Strachan quits Celtic

Provided by: The Irish Examiner

Celtic manager Gordon Strachan has quit following their failure to clinch a fourth successive title.

The club announced on their website that Strachan – who won three titles and three domestic cups in his four years in charge – had decided to step down.

Strachan said: “I have enjoyed my time immensely at Celtic and clearly I will be sad to leave this great club.”

Strachan refused to discuss his future immediately after their final Clydesdale Bank Premier League game of the season, a 0-0 draw with Hearts.

But his departure is no surprise after he failed to gain total support from a number of Celtic fans despite his success at home and in Europe, where he twice led Celtic into the last 16 of the Champions League.

Strachan added on celticfc.net: “As I have said before, Celtic is a special club, with special supporters.

“There is no club like it and it has been an absolute honour and privilege to be the club’s manager for the past four years.

“We have done all we can to bring success to the club and we were delighted to deliver three SPL titles, other domestic silverware, as well as making some great progress in Europe.

“It is just disappointing that we did not manage the fourth championship.

“However, the players can hold their heads high in terms of what they have done for the club in recent years.

“I would like to thank the Celtic board for all the support they have given me during the past four years, in particular Dermot Desmond, John Reid, Peter Lawwell and former chairman Brian Quinn – I could not have asked for any more support.

“I thank all the players I have worked with at the club and, of course, my backroom team for the backing and assistance which they have given me.

“I thank the fans too for the tremendous support which they have given both myself and the players. I wish Celtic and our supporters nothing but success for the future.”

Strachan’s success came despite having a much smaller transfer budget and wage bill than was afforded to predecessor Martin O’Neill.

Parkhead chief executive Peter Lawwell paid tribute to the former Southampton and Coventry boss, who has been linked with the vacant Sunderland post.

Lawwell said: “Gordon has given everything to the club and worked tirelessly to bring success to Celtic.

“He has achieved so much at both domestic and European levels.

“It has been a pleasure to work closely with Gordon and he leaves the club with all our best wishes.

“We thank Gordon for his commitment and achievements at the club and we also thank our fans for backing us all the way this season.

“Our fans know how to support their club and we will be doing all we can to once again bring back the title to Celtic Park, something which our support deserves.”

© Irish Examiner, 2009. Thomas Crosbie Media, TCH

The Irish Examiner

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