TEMPTING OFFER
game. When I am the international manager I can only ask [for more],” he added. “If you are paying people at your club a lot of money you can make demands. You can demand that they train harder, and they do this and that, you can demand whatever you want.
“It’s nice that managers put demands on players. Sir Alex [Ferguson] demanded all the time. If a manager doesn’t make demands the players start coming off it and it’s very hard to get it back.
“But being a footballer now is different to when I started in this game on £15 a week [at Dundee] or whatever it was. We were all on the same wage. We could mess about. We could play golf in the afternoon. You can’t do that now.”
Strachan’s early wage packets are dwarfed by the sum being offered to Gordon to return to England.
While failing to see a downside had the goalkeeper joined Chelsea, the Scotland manager seems satisfied knowing that Gordon will be playing regularly prior to the vital World Cup qualifier
GORDON STRACHAN against Slovenia in March. “Who’s to say that he wouldn’t have gone there and [Thibaut] Courtois would get injured and Craig would then be playing in the best league in the world?” he asked.
“I can understand why his head might have been turned – or anybody’s head – at 34. It’s like the China thing. You are talking to somebody who went to Leeds because they gave him the most money. That’s what I did.”
Ron Atkinson, then manager at Sheffield Wednesday, tried to buy Strachan for a second time, having brought him down from Aberdeen to Manchester United. “Are you coming wee man,” he asked Strachan. “Gaffer I’ve been offered this sum at Leeds,” replied the midfielder.
When Strachan informed what he was being offered, Atkinson replied: “Do they want a manager as well?!”
So Strachan understands Gordon’s dilemma, if that is what it was. “I don’t know what financial position Craig is in but it can turn your head,” he said. “In saying that, it’s not turned his head. He’s just got on with things and not done the, ‘I’m not playing for you again thing’. He just gets on with it. He got left out of the Celtic team earlier in the season and dealt with it magnificently.”
“I can understand why Craig’s head might have been turned – or anybody’s head – at 34. It’s like the China thing. You are talking to somebody who went to Leeds because they gave him the most money. That’s what I did”