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Fullname: Kenneth Miller
aka: Kenny Miller
Born: 23 December 1979
Birthplace: Edinburgh
Signed: 1 July 2006
Left: 31 August 2007
Position: Striker, Centre-forward
Debut: […]
Internationals: Scotland
International Caps: 59
International Goals: 16
Trivia
- An ex-Rangers player bought by WGS to bolster our attack! His first goal was ironically against Rangers…..
- After one year, Kenny Miller left to sign for Derby for £3m. [BBC]
- Rejoined Rangers in 2008. so from Rangers to Celtic to Rangers (all with teams in between each), scored ironically two goals in his return game against Celtic.
Biog
Since Gordon Strachan took over at Celtic he hadn’t half surprised the fans with some of his signings, but few if any had been half as surprising as Kenny Miller. For a start Kenny was an ex-Rangers player who was regarded as a failure there, and who then left for England. Not exactly setting the heather on fire in the English Championship either, WGS bought him on the back of his performances for Scotland (which were for him relatively good).
Whatever he came on a free, and the truth is that many didn’t want (inc admittedly myself). Couldn’t see the value in the guy. Nevertheless, as the Celts all sang for Alfie Conn “He used to be a Huns but he’s alright now!”. His record though was poor and he took him a number of goals to get his first, but when he did it was classic as ironically it was against Rangers in a League game helping us to win.
The highlight of his Celtic career (if not ever) was likely his goals in the Champions League where somehow he did score 3 goals, with a brace against Benfica at home in a wonderful 3-0 victory and Kenny can take plaudits. After this point we all expected his confidence to rise and his scoring to flow. It didn’t.
His scoring rate was piss poor, and the truth is that the Celtic management and support backed him more than we ever should. Why? It was because there was a belief in the public/press that as an ex-Rangers player that we were turning against him, but that was nonsense from his experience, and he was actually given too much of a chance. WGS favoured him too much though against Riordan who with fewer opportunities scored more in the league. There’s no denying Miller’s work rate, which was phenomenally good, but effort is not enough in football and the end-product from the man was generally poor. The support ended up frustrated and no surprise we were all hoping to see him move on, which can be best illustrated in a game at the end of the season when the support booed the management for taking off Riordan to put Miller on.
The next season started surprisingly for all, with Kenny starting in the first team, but to be fair he started well and got 3 goals in the league. Was he now the man we all wanted? I was never convinced, but the support seemed split over this! Regardless, when the stories came in that clubs were willing to pay £2-3m for him, we all laughed, and laughed even more when he was actually sold for the maximum there of £3m!!!! No disrespect but he wasn’t good enough for that amount, and shows how much silly money is flowing in England.
At the end of the day, as much as you can admire his work effort and heart, he simply wasn’t good enough. In truth, some were sorry to see him go in one sense as we liked him as a person as he controlled himself well on the pitch which is likely why WGS favoured him so much (too much), however for £3m for the guy it was a no-brainer. The manager even upto a day or two before had said that he wanted Kenny to stay, but who knows.
Post-Celtic
Bit of revenge on his part. Bizarrely he moved from Rangers to Celtic and then back to Rangers, where he had a fairly successful career. Scored twice on his first game v Celtic, and scored 5 goals in total v Celtic. Helped them to league titles as well. Ah well! Still wasn’t a great striker and the poor quality of the Celtic defences allowed him scope to score more than he should have.
A successful striker in Scottish leagues, very poor outwith but he did the job for Rangers and Celtic got hit as a result (albeit Rangers’ titles were tainted due to the tax scandal and should be regarded as void).
Not too popular with the Celtic support but not near the low levels of say Maurice Johnstone. He went on to play for the zombie entity too, Sevco/TheRangers, and his skin tone seemed to turn a stronger turn of orange (literally as in the colour). Too much time on the dodgy sun-beds.
In 2018 he was unceremoniously punted from TheRangers after squabbles with the management, and was reported to be leaving to move to Aberdeen. He was actually marked out as a possible TheRangers manager (interim at least during their nightmare 2017-18 season). He opted to move to Livingston as their player-manager. Never give up on your dreams. He didn’t last long and moved onto Dundee as a player, and then onto Partick Thistle.
He has therefore played for four different senior Glasgow sides: Rangers, Celtic, TheRangers (Sevco) and Partick Thistle.
He made himself a laughing stock in May 2024 when he opined during match commentary in the key Celtic v Sevco final league match which Celtic won 2-1 to effectively seal the league title. Sevco’s John Lundstrum was correctly sent off (straight red card) after a VAR review for a studs high tackle above the ankle on Alistair Johnstone which could have been a leg breaker. Kenny Miller (on co-commentary duty) tried to argue that if there wasn’t any VAR in use – if the officials didn’t have the facility to look again and scrutinise to see the whole picture – then the officials wouldn’t all know how bad John Lundstram’s tackle was, so therefore it was all the fault of VAR. He then even tried to blame Alistair Johnstone for the foul claiming: “Alistair Johnston plants his foot in front of John Lundstrum”. Even all the other Sevco apologists in media agreed it was a red card, yet Kenny Miller doubled down all week that he was right! Pathetic & laughable, but the serious point was that he was condoing a very serious dangerous foul on a player which could have destroyed his career. It was disturbing how far the shill coverage by some ex-Sevco media men would go to in order to play to the gallery.
In July 2024, he moved to Abu Dhabit to be the assistant manager to ex-Celtic manager Ronny Deila now in charge of Al Wahda! The key benefit was that he was going to be off Scottish media circuit now, which was a relief to all.
[…]
Playing Career
| Club |
From |
To |
Fee |
League |
FA Cup |
League cup |
Other |
|||||||||||||||
| Derby |
31-08-2007 |
£ 3,000,000 |
No appearance data available |
|||||||||||||||||||
| Celtic |
01-07-2006 |
31-08-2007 |
Free |
21 (12) |
7 |
2 (2) |
1 |
0 (1) |
0 | 5 (3) |
3 |
|||||||||||
| Wolves |
13-12-2001 |
01-07-2006 |
£ 3,000,000 |
128 (34) |
50 |
10 (2) |
5 |
6 (1) |
5 | 3 (2) | 1 | |||||||||||
| Wolves |
06-09-2001 |
08-12-2001 |
Loan |
3 (2) |
2 |
0 (0) |
0 |
0 (0) |
0 | 0 (0) | 0 | |||||||||||
| Rangers |
27-06-2000 |
13-12-2001 |
£ 2,000,000 |
12 (18) |
8 |
2 (1) |
1 |
1 (0) |
1 | 3 (1) | 1 | |||||||||||
| Stenh’semuir |
27-11-1998 |
12-03-1999 |
Loan |
11 (0) |
8 |
2 (0) |
2 |
0 (0) |
0 | 0 (0) | 0 | |||||||||||
| Hibernian |
22-05-1996 |
27-06-2000 |
Signed |
29 (16) |
12 |
5 (0) |
1 |
1 (2) |
1 | 0 (0) | 0 | |||||||||||
| Hutchison Vale BC |
01-08-1995 |
22-05-1996 |
Youth |
No appearance data available |
||||||||||||||||||
| Totals |
£ 8,000,000 |
204 (82) |
87 |
21 (5) |
10 |
8 (4) |
7 | 11 (6) | 5 | |||||||||||||
| goals / game |
0.30 |
0.38 |
0.58 |
0.29 | ||||||||||||||||||
| xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
xxxxxxx |
xxxxxxxxxxxxx |
xxxxxxxxxxx |
Apps |
Goals |
Apps |
Goals |
Apps |
Goals | Apps | Goals | |||||||||||
Honours with Celtic
Scottish League
- 2006-07
Scottish Cup
- 2006-07
Pictures
| KDS Honours |
||
| MOTM Winners 2006-07 | ||
| 29-Jul-06 |
Celtic 4 v 1 Killie | SPL |
| 17-Oct-06 |
Celtic 3 v 0 Benfica | Champions League |
| MOTM Winners 2007-08 | ||
| 11-Aug-07 |
Falkirk 1 v 4 Celtic | SPL |