Jackson onKenny Miller leakrow
THAT’S the thing about football. When it’s good it’s very, very good but when it’s bad it’s awful.
And what the Scottish game has done to a number of its most high-profile individuals over the last week or so has been so toe-curlingly unjust that it has been bordering on the downright wicked.
When Gordon Strachan named a 26-strong Scotland squad one week ago today for the final push towards the promised land of the World Cup play-offs, the manager spoke in gushing terms about the contribution made along the way by Celtic skipper Scott Brown and his team-mate Stuart Armstrong.
He stopped short of putting this Group F revival down in its entirety to Brown’s decision to come out of international retirement but only because, had he done so, he would have been disrespectful to every other player in his group.
To illustrate the point, Strachan went out of his way to name a number of other key contributory factors including the impact Armstrong has made since being shoe-horned into the Scotland starting XI for the first time in a 1-0 win over Slovenia in March.
Armstrong, in fact, has become the most rare of specimens. A Scotland international who has never tasted defeat whilst wearing a dark blue shirt. So when both he and Brown limped onto Celtic’s charter flight back from Brussels on Wednesday night it was football’s way of reminding us all just what a malevolent b ***** d it can be.
Brown has given his lot to help Strachan out of the hole in which he found himself after a horrible start to the campaign. His energy, drive and purpose has re-invigorated this group of players who had taken four points from the first 12 available in the section but who have amassed 10 from 12 in the second half of the group, coinciding with Brown’s return to the ranks.
Now he has to sit it out for the final double-header against Slovakia and Slovenia which will determine if he’ll ever play in a World Cup Finals or not.
Should it go wrong over the next 180 minutes Brown may find himself contemplating international retirement all over again without kicking another ball for his country and Strachan too may suddenly come to the end of his Scotland career.
Armstrong’s international career on the other hand will have much more heartache ahead but he should take this as an early warning of all the cruelties still to come.
And talking of cruelties, he need only look across the Clyde to see how the game has chosen to turn on a player who, throughout a long, illustrious career, has been nothing if not one of its most model professionals.
Kenny Miller spent yesterday afternoon playing in a bounce game for kids at Brentford. At the age of 37.
While Strachan was naming that Scotland squad at lunchtime on Monday, Miller was walking into a crisis meeting at Murray Park which would turn his world on its head. He must have suspected something bad was brewing from the moment Pedro Caixinha told him to stay at home with his feet up on the night Rangers were playing for a place in the League Cup semi-final at Firhill.
On these pages last Monday this column suggested the relationship between the club’s talisman and its manager was in danger of breaking down in a throwback to the stand-off between Paul Le Guen and Barry Ferguson which preceded the Frenchman’s demise.
By Thursday Miller had been banished to the youth department. By Friday night TV pundits were tossing around words like “rat” live on BT Sport while discussing his predicament, language which is completely unfounded. To make matters even more sinister, Miller was also accused of leaking information directly to this newspaper on a website which has very obvious and well-established links with the malfunctioning Rangers PR machine.
The same website for that matter which leaked news of Caixinha’s Murray Park meltdown in the first place – while presenting it as a stroke of managerial genius in a painfully transparent, Pravda-esque attempt at controlling the narrative.
The entire episode is an absolute mess and shamefully it’s Miller who has been made to pay the ultimate price for this rank amateurism. Years and years of dedication to his sport in the name of squeezing every last ounce of ability out of his body now tarnished by a manager who is out of his depth in charge of Rangers and a whispering campaign which has been maliciously designed to maximise reputational damage.
You can almost hear them saying: “The Record would say that, wouldn’t they? He’s their leak after all!”
So let’s get this absolutely and categorically clear for all of those Rangers observers out there. Miller was not the source of the information around which we wrote the story of Caixinha declaring war on his own players. Nor, for that matter, was it Miller who told us of Caixinha’s subsequent decision to drop him from the squad which travelled to Hamilton on Friday night.
To suggest otherwise is not only a wilful fabrication but also potentially libelous should Miller’s lawyers decide to act. But for this to be published on a website which sits so snugly under the wing of the club’s outsourced PR department?
That’s a scandalous state of affairs and one which points to some very serious issues behind the scenes of this never-ending Ibrox soap opera.
Miller is neither a rat nor a snitch. He is a victim of an inexperienced, egotistical manager struggling to command the respect of his dressing room and who thinks, by taking out the talisman, he will bring the rest of them into line. And of a Machiavellian attempt at character assassination.
He’ll have to ride this one out now because Caixinha doesn’t appear to be a man of compromise. There’s unlikely to be sufficient space inside the same dressing room for both men from
The entire episode is a mess and Miller has been made to pay the ultimate price
here on in so it looks likely that one of them will soon have to make way.
Over three separate terms at Rangers, Miller has spent seven years, played 226 times and scored 113 goals. He has won three top-flight titles, one in the Championship, and lifted the Scottish and League Cups.
If he is forced out before time is called on Caixinha he’ll leave behind the sort of legacy about which the manager can only dream. In the brutal world of football, one man’s adversity is another man’s opportunity.
Accordingly Caixinha must now grasp this chance to save himself from the chop. Likewise, Carlos Pena must step into Miller’s shoes and prove he’s not just another one of the manager’s mistakes.
As far as Scotland is concerned, John McGinn and Callum McGregor will hope to come of age in the absence of Brown and Armstrong.
Fingers crossed, some good might still come from all this awful badness.