Broony talking his way to 10-in-a-row
Everything Broonie does is about 10... you can see it in him and hear it on the pitch. He’s driving everyone else on. He’s making sure they have the same fear he has of not getting 10. This is the thing they will all be remembered for SAYS GORDON STRACHAN
THEY go back a long way. It’s more than 13 years ago, after all, that Gordon Strachan first brought Scott Brown to Parkhead.
But never has he heard Celtic’s skipper talk his own team-mates through a game the way he did during Sunday’s win over Hibs in that huge green echo chamber in Glasgow’s east end.
And the experience has left the 63-year-old more convinced than ever that Brown is now living and breathing with just one single objective in mind.
“When you are at the game with no crowd and you’re close up to it, you can hear what’s going on on the pitch. I spent my entire managerial career never hearing that stuff because it was always bedlam around me,” Strachan said, after covering Neil Lennon’s latest win for the club’s virtual season ticket production.
“That’s why, when I was asked to name my man of the match I said it was either Jeremie Frimpong or Scott Brown.
“Everybody round about me said, ‘Wait a minute – it has to be Frimpong’.
“But I said, ‘Are you not watching what Brown’s doing? Are you not listening to him out there? Don’t you realise everything he does is about winning 10 in a row?’. “You can see it in him and you can hear it on the pitch. It’s all about 10 in a row. “There were times in the first half when you thought, ‘ Wait a minute, Hibs are causing a problem here’. But then your man Brown would respond and take control. “That’s why I picked him as my man of the match. He was driving everyone else on, reminding them of their jobs and pointing out what might happen if they did lose a goal and it got to 2-1. “There was an urgency about everything he did. But it also seems like a fear of not getting 10 in a row. The people who understand Celtic should all have that fear. “If you’ve not got it then switch on right away, now, and make sure you have the same fear of missing out. Wherever you are going to go in the world after this, wherever football takes you, you’ll never have another moment like this. Never. “I don’t care who you are or where you’re going, whether it be Christie, McGregor, Edouard or Ajer – wherever you go this is never going to happen to you again. This is the thing you’ll be remembered for all of your life.” A couple of earlyseason wobbles have led to calls for Brown to be removed from Celtic’s starting 11 and i n more
extreme cases, even for Lennon to be elbowed away from the dugout.
Now this is the kind of stuff Strachan has heard a thousand times before. But as his old club prepare for Thursday’s Europa League play-off in Sarajevo, he believes Lennon’s team is gradually taking shape.
He said: “You’re always going to get questioned when you’re at a high profile club. That’s expected.
“But what I would expect from players and coaches alike is just concentrate on what they’re doing and not get involved in all the fantasy football that goes along with it.
“Maybe they are a victim of their own success because of the way they played when they returned from the winter break last season when everything really clicked into place. But that only happens now and again. I don’t care what team you are talking about, you don’t play like that all the time,
“People look back in history and they get tinted glasses. It’s like thinking the summer was always sunny when you were a kid. It wasn’t. It was pouring of rain 70 per cent of the time!
“People talk about Aberdeen being this all conquering side that played lovely football back in the 1980s. But we used to grind out results all the time. I remember going to Motherwell, scoring after seven seconds and then getting battered for the next 99 minutes. We ended up winning a cup out of that at the end of the year!
“So people are looking at Celtic right now and thinking everything has to be perfect. It’s not perfect. Even at moments on Sunday you’re thinking, ‘Oh, Hibs are doing well here’. As a supporter you get worried. It’s quite natural.
“Look, are the top players firing on all cylinders? Maybe not.
“But what happens at that point you get guys like Frimpong standing up and doing some magnificent things to win games for you. That’s where they are at.”
And Strachanachan suspects both Lennonon and Old Firm rival Stevenn Gerrard will be countingng down the hours untilil the transfer window closesloses to allow them to getet on about the business off battling for this season’sson’s historic title.le.
He said:id: “Every manager in Britain justst wants thiss transfer window to be over. But we’re operating in strange times. “Normally, the manager gets to the end of August and goes, ‘Right, you’re all still here so on we go. We can get on with it now!’. “But here we are heading into October and it’s still not settled. These players are only human – it does bring uncertainty. “When Mark McGhee and myself were leaving Aberdeen I remember speaking to him at 2pm to ask how he was getting on. “He told me he had a move to Hamburg lined up and asked what I was doing. I said, ‘I’ve signed three contracts but I still haven’t made up my mind where I’m going!’ “But no matter what was happening we could still perform on the pitch. “So, Celtic do hhave some issues there but itit’s not like they’re the only oneones. Rangers have had the same with Ryan Kent, Borna BaBarisic and Alfredo Morelos. The two clubs have still managedmana to pick up an awawful lot of points points. But if you asked aske Steven aandn Ne i l they’d the both say, sa ‘Please stop sto it now!’.”