STRACHAN IS TOLD TO KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT

Stenhousemuir chief angered by claim many smaller clubs would be no great loss to game

GORDON Strachan’s forthright views on football are not to everyone’s taste. His reign as Scotland manager ended in a row over genetics. Conflating the abuse of convicted sex offender Adam Johnson with racist chants posed an issue for Sky Sports. And now come Scotland’s lower-league clubs, indignant and angry over a suggestion from Dundee’s technical director that many of the nation’s 42 senior teams are a poor excuse for professionalism and would be no great loss to the SPFL.

‘Gordon Strachan should stay as far away from a microphone as he possibly can,’ responded Stenhousemuir chairman Iain McMenemy. ‘He is out of touch with the game and says ridiculous things that come back and end up biting him on the backside.

‘I listened to his interview and he was conflating two issues.

‘On one hand, he was saying that if you are marketing the game then how is a League Two game attractive?

‘Well, no one is suggesting for one minute that anybody in the lower leagues markets the national game. If you want to market the game abroad you focus on your top flight and make that the best you can.

‘I don’t see how Stenhousemuir playing Albion Rovers on a Saturday afternoon has any impact on that whatsoever.’

At play here is an unspoken fear amongst lower-league clubs fighting for their very survival. Coronavirus poses huge questions over when the game can restart.

The SFA and SPFL will meet health and sports minister Joe FitzPatrick and National Clinical Director Jason Leitch on Friday to discuss a timetable for Scottish football’s return. And, with a £125million Sky Sports broadcasting deal starting on August 1, the plan is to resume the Premiership behind closed doors in September.

The lower leagues are less clear-cut. In a best-case scenario, the Championship would start behind closed doors in October with a view to getting fans back through the turnstiles in January.

In a worst-case scenario, they would mothball the league entirely until 2021 then play a shortened season and for Hearts — relegated to the second tier with a squad of well-paid players — that represents a threat to their survival.

The board of the SPFL meet this morning and by then it’s hoped that a proposal from Tynecastle owner Ann Budge to move to three leagues of 14 for at least two years will be ready to go before the clubs.

With testing protocols for games behind closed doors costing clubs around £4,000 a week, however, it’s far from clear that clubs currently in Leagues One and Two will be able to start next season at all.

For some it makes more sense to shut down their football operations and hibernate until the fans can come back.

Yet McMenemy is blunt on the dangers of that plan. With a population of 50 million, England gets by with 92 senior clubs. With a population of ten per cent of that number, Scotland operates 42 clubs and many already think that’s too much.

If people see that two leagues of 14 full-time clubs works fine, they might want to cut the lower-league clubs adrift on a permanent basis. The Stenhousemuirs of this world might be deemed expendable.

‘I have no doubt whatsoever that there are some clubs that would like to see just one or two leagues in Scottish football centred around the Premiership or Championship,’ said McMenemy. ‘There is no doubt about that.

‘That has been a thinly veiled threat hanging over us in the past. There are some who would absolutely take this crisis as an opportunity to try and do that.

‘That’s why lower-league clubs continually need to find our voice and stand up and make sure we are included in everything that takes place. Because we do play a part.

‘At Stenhousemuir in recent seasons, Andrew Dallas came and got his first exposure to first-team football with us and is now down in English football with Cambridge. Harry Paton has just been re-signed up at Ross County. Paul McMullan is a regular starter and key player at Dundee United.

‘They have come through at Stenhousemuir in the last few seasons.

‘Besides which, I would like to see how the full-time teams could thrive with an extra £50k each. It would be £50k into Celtic and £50k into Rangers.

‘They will spend more than that replacing two or three lightbulbs in their floodlights.’

There isn’t much razzmatazz around Ochilview or Cliftonhill. The crowds are low and the matchday experience gritty and unromantic. It’s as far away from the sterile football tourism of the English Premier League as it’s possible to imagine. And the crowds reflect that.

Yet, when the SPL and Scottish Football League merged in 2013, the 42 member clubs became equal shareholders. And McMenemy believes clubs in Leagues One and Two now have to mind their step to avoid being trampled underfoot by those who compare lowerleague clubs to parasites draining the cash and spectacle from the national game.

‘It’s a sad indictment of Scottish football that we are looking at things financially, which is the right thing to do,’ he said. ‘We are looking at things structurally, which is again the right thing to do. And then looking at it politically, which is completely the wrong thing to do.

‘That’s how you have to look at things in the lower leagues of Scottish football.

‘We don’t really have a fair say. We don’t have a democratic process.

‘That’s why we have to be very wary of putting ourselves into any position where clubs at the top of the tree can try to get rid of us at any point.

‘My concern is that if we go into hibernation for any elongated period of time then some would see that as a test case to see how they get on without us.

‘And it would be very difficult for us to be able to come back from that in the future.’

Irked by Strachan’s suggestion that the lower leagues have produced next to no world-class players in the past 14 years, McMenemy points to Andrew Robertson and argues that League Two has already produced one more world-class player than anyone in the Scottish Premiership.

‘How many players has the Premiership produced?’ he asked. ‘How many players has Rangers produced? Celtic have produced a couple who have come through but how many have the other clubs produced? They’re not producing anyone.

‘It’s unfair to pick on League One and League Two for failing to produce players. It’s not as if they’re building anything better anywhere else.’