Leave Celtic and you will soon realise what you’ve left behind
Captain Brown claims Forster and Hooper would be crazy to England is for some people and not for others. I don’t know why I would ever choose to leave here sacrif ice Champions League football
SCOTT BROWN has warned team-mates wavering over their Celtic futures they won’t experience the unique thrills of Champions League football halfway down the English top flight. Stars of Neil Lennon’s titlewinning side, including Fraser Forster and Gary Hooper, are wanted men down south.
Forster is available for £2million from Newcastle following two stellar loan seasons at Celtic, while Southampton lead the chase for Hooper — the SPL’s top goalscorer and subject of Parkhead pay talks over a new deal.
Brown signed a new contract in January and rounded off the season by lifting the league trophy as Celtic captain. His focus is solely on staying at Parkhead to skipper the club into their big summer dates with European destiny.
The midfielder is determined to help Lennon’s team into the Champions League group phase for the first time since 2008/09 and believes the current squad can make that breakthrough.
Brown, speaking at Scotland’s Orlando training camp, said: ‘I think if you’re in a good team and you’re playing well, then that’s what happens — there is always going to be interest in your better players in the squad.
‘Fraser has a year left at Newcastle and I’d love to see him back with us, but I don’t know what’s going to happen with him.
‘Gary Hooper is still signed to the club and we hope he stays. He’s one of those strikers you love to play with. He can come and play to feet, he goes over the top and can score 30 goals a season.
‘I know there’s the lure of the Premier League but, if we get through, we’ve got the lure of the Champions League. That’s the tournament you want to be in.
‘It’s going to be hard to go down to England and experience that because you’ve got the big four or five teams fighting it out for those positions.
‘England is for some people and not for others. I enjoy my time at Celtic and I don’t know why I would choose to leave.’
Among his European highlights, Brown played in the last-16 exit to Barcelona in March 2008 and the group-stage victory over Milan at Celtic Park.
Scottish clubs have since found UEFA’s new route to qualification tougher to negotiate. Lennon’s first campaign in charge saw Celtic lose in the Champions League to Braga, then suffer elimination from the Europa League against Utrecht.
Last season, Celtic sneaked in thanks to Sion’s disqualification but Brown is confident the subsequent outings against Atletico Madrid, Udinese and Rennes have toughened a young team up for the demands of the European scene for this season.
Brown said: ‘It feels like a long time since we’ve been in the group stage. We want to get back into it.
‘If you look what Braga did that year, it’s not really a disappointment. We brought a lot of players in the manager’s first year, we still had to gel and that was hard.
‘There won’t be that many changes now. I think the gaffer might bring in one or two experienced pros this summer.
‘But, if he doesn’t, I think we’re young enough, fit enough and mature enough to deal with it. We will be more settled as we have the core of the side there and the experience of playing six games in a hard Europa League group last year.
‘I think the aim has to be to get into the group stage and try to get back to the last 16 of the Champions League, and to try to get as far as possible.
‘It’s great to play in those games. The atmosphere is great at Celtic Park on European nights, it’s something different when Manchester United and Barcelona come to us and we’ve shown we can give them a game.
‘The only team we really found it
hard against was Arsenal, when they came and battered us in probably the toughest game I’ve ever played.
‘In the rest of them, we’ve given as good as we’ve got and every Celtic player should want to experience those nights.’
Brown missed almost three months of the campaign with an ankle injury before returning to drive Celtic through the unbeaten streak that saw them leapfrog Rangers and run away with the championship.
Having heard plenty criticism of his suitability to captain the team since Tony Mowbray handed him the armband in February 2010, Brown admits it meant a great deal to lead the side over the finishing line last month.
‘To be a Celtic title-winning captain is what dreams are made of,’ he said. ‘Paul McStay, Paul Lambert and the manager himself have lifted the league championship trophy with teams that went down in history. Now we’ve won a title after a 26-game unbeaten run.
‘When I got the captaincy, it was a bit of a shock, if I’m perfectly honest. I was only 24 years old. I’ve enjoyed every single moment of it, though. I was a young lad and an mmature lad. I think everyone grows up, you can’t be Peter Pan.
‘I think Glenn Loovens was a big help to me. He was an experienced pro who I looked up to. He was a good leader who was good to talk to and told me how to deal with certain things.
‘We organised the fines system, sorted team days out, things in the dressing room. He helped a lot and I’d be sad to see him go.’