No one likes to hear painful home truths. And certainly not the flat-earthers who would rather stick their fingers in their ears than acknowledge the obvious imperfections of Scottish football.
Derek Adams learned that the hard way. As manager of Ross County last December he was criticized for claiming the standard of the SPFL was ‘shocking’.
“I left a team in League Two (Morecambe) that is many times better than this team,” he said of his own side.
Taking a courage pill was never his best move. Criticism of the Scottish game descends like a bucket of chills at the best of times; especially when it comes from a manager who loved Morecambe so much he moved straight back after two wins in 12.
Every time Brian from Bristol – or Derek from Dingwall – starts moaning about his grandmother’s ability to score goals in Scotland, people get testy and tribal.
And yet here we are, at the end of a week in which Celtic and Rangers were torn apart in Europe, contemplating the possibility that Derek Adams was right.
Rodgers has a poor away record in the Champions League, where Celtic’s mistakes are punished.
Rodgers will receive the Manager of the Month award for his team’s domestic displays in September.
Vaclav Cerny missed an open goal in the early stages of Rangers’ 4-1 defeat to Lyon at Ibrox.
UEFA competitions don’t tell lies. A welcome Hearts win against Belarusian champions Dinamo Minsk was one of only five wins in 18 games for Scottish teams in the Champions, Europa and Conference Leagues this season.
And while there is still time and games to improve on the 28 percent win rate, the direction of the journey should be clear even to the keyboard warriors desperate to lay the blame squarely on their biggest rivals.
While Scottish football retains a quirky, raw authenticity, that has not translated into a record of solid performance in Europe.
Celtic could easily combine it at home against Slovan Bratislava. Book them on a plane to Spain, Germany or Italy in the Champions League and shipping six or seven goals becomes a damaging habit.
It’s hard to find fault with those calling on Brendan Rodgers to take a more pragmatic approach to these games. However, during his first spell in charge, the Parkhead boss switched to a back five against a PSG forward line of Neymar, Mbappe and Cavani. They also lost seven that night.
Borussia Dortmund’s attack was no match for the most expensive striker of all time, nor for that matter the Barcelona trio of Messi, Suarez and Neymar who put them to the sword in 2016. Tuesday actually marked the first time the Bundesliga side scored seven goals in one match since beating Nuremberg in September 2018.
In Scotland, Rodgers’ team are rarely punished for their mistakes. Against the fast, powerful trio of Karim Adeyemi, Serhou Guirassy and Julian Brandt, every misplaced pass was ruthlessly exploited.
Rodgers is hardly the first Celtic manager to suffer from serious travel sickness in the Champions League.
Martin O’Neill played nine away games, losing eight and drawing one. Gordon Strachan played eleven, lost eleven. Neil Lennon played six, lost five and won one. Rodgers himself has overseen ten, lost eight, won one and drawn one.
The problem is losing four of them by six goals or more.
Atalanta are next and the Northern Irishman has a duty to stop the blood flow. Playing the same way against the Europa League holders in Italy would be asking for trouble.
Rangers fans are a tribal game and have taken great satisfaction from Celtic’s ineptitude in Germany. Two years after they won in Dortmund on their way to a European final in Seville, however, the laughter disappeared when their own team conceded four – and seven – to Lyon at Ibrox.
Before the match, Philippe Clement appeared to prepare fans for the worst when he warned that the Ligue 1 side occupied a different world financially. Of course, Dortmund did just that when Rangers thumped them in their own backyard.
Without structure, style or content, the Belgian will never bridge the gap. Meanwhile, the suggestion that the result was harsh on his team was an insult to the evidence gathered with the naked eye.
Yet those who want to place the blame for Scotland’s falling coefficient squarely on Rodgers, Clement or both are fooling themselves.
While clubs like Larne and Shamrock Rovers made their way into the group stages of UEFA competitions, Kilmarnock and St Mirren followed the lead of Motherwell, Dundee United and so many others by failing to reach the qualifiers. There’s no shame in losing to teams with much better budgets.
The inability to close the gap by developing a serious strategy for youth development, recruitment and a sustainable player trading model is entirely their fault. By securing a data connection with Tony Bloom’s Jamestown Analytics, Hearts is at least taking a step in the right direction.
Lyon paid £17 million for the outstanding Malick Fofana last January. The young Belgian, only 19, forced Clement to drop his captain James Tavernier after an hour. The damage had been done by then and if Celtic want to perfect their player trading model and win games in Europe, the £11 million they spend on Arne Engels must be the starting point and not the ceiling. If they have any sense, they will start by finding a mobile, physical number 6 who would like to make a step up to the big five leagues.
The clubs that don’t have a hundred million pounds in their bank account can always fend for themselves. The outstanding Rayan Cherki, a product of Lyon’s youth academy, made 120 appearances for the first team at the age of 21.
In Scotland he would be sheltered and protected, while his path to the first team would be blocked by big, physical signings from England’s lower leagues and cheap journeymen overseas.
Asked to develop his game against the part-timers of the Lowland League, he would hand it over to an EPL reserve team as soon as his agent could drive him. In 2010, former First Minister Henry McLeish produced a report aimed at tackling the decline of Scottish football. And two years after Rangers graced a European final, the game feels like it’s back in an old movie.
SFA chief football officer Andy Gould recently oversaw a report exposing the shocking lack of first-team opportunities for young players in the SPFL Premiership.
If that hasn’t managed to silence those who think a 16-team league and more TV money is the answer to every problem, then a Scotland recall for 41-year-old Craig Gordon and a first cap highly recommended for 28-year-old Preston defender Liam Lindsay. should. Take away the low-hanging fruit such as David Watson, Lennon Miller and Lyall Cameron, and the list of bright young talents brightening up the Scottish league is alarmingly short.
SPFL’s PR agency has picked a dreadful day to announce record turnover of £44.3 million in the past twelve months. At a time when domestic football is raking in more revenue than before, an aggregate 11-2 thrashing of the two biggest clubs leaves it feeling more worn and bereft than ever.