DANNY STEWART
Now is not the time to allow your head to be turned
Not getting your own way can be a frustrating business.
Just ask Andre Villas-Boas. The Marseille boss offered to quit last week after waking up to discover he had signed Olivier Ntcham on loan from Celtic.
The club subsequently suspended him, pending an internal investigation.
The issue for AVB was that not only had he not been involved in the transfer but had, in fact, already rejected the idea of signing Ntcham.
The player had been caught up in a transfer-window tug of war with a difference, one in which two bosses were doing their best to get their hands off the rope.
“Management didn’t give me the final say on things. I don’t want money, I just want to go,” huffed Villas-Boas.
That left startled media to reflect on the fact a loan signing was more of an issue for him than the attempt by Marseille Ultras to burn down the club’s training ground three days earlier.
Back in Scotland, meanwhile, Kevin Nisbet was likewise an unhappy man as the result of a deal that did not go through.
Birmingham City wanted him, the player wanted to join them, and Hibs were prepared to let him go – provided they got the £3.5 million fee they wanted.
For someone who has had to work his way up, that is life-changing money
The Blues, well aware the Edinburgh club had bought him for less than a 10th of that amount from Dunfermline last summer, put in a couple of bids with add-ons that got near £3m.
But that was not enough to seal the deal, leaving Nisbet, who had slapped in a late transfer request in the hope of forcing Hibs to let him go, high and dry.
Those close to the affair report the failure left him disappointed on two fronts.
The first is financial, and it starkly highlights the difference between life in football’s different tiers.
By switching from the Scottish Premiership to the English Championship, Nisbet stood to increase his wages by 10 times what’s he’s earning at Easter Road.
Villas-Boas may say money is not important. But for a 23-year-old Scot, who has had to work his way up through the grades, that is life-changing.
Nisbet’s second issue is more contentious.
Using Lyndon Dykes as an example, his argument to the Easter Road board was that he needed to get to England to be in with a decent chance of representing Scotland at the Euros this summer.
Dykes, born on Australia’s Gold Coast but raised by Scottish parents, made his breakthrough with the national team after a switch to QPR. Moving south, Nisbet reckoned, would put him in Steve Clarke’s thoughts.
Nothing is ever certain in football, but some propositions hold more water than others do.
Clarke does not care on which side of the border his players ply their trade.
He cares only that they are fit and in form.
Stephen O’Donnell told us as much, when signing for Motherwell ahead of rival English options at the end of the last window.
Clarke, his former manager at Kilmarnock, don’t forget, has stressed likewise.
Even if he hadn’t, the selections of O’Donnell, Andrew Considine from Aberdeen and Dundee United’s Lawrence Shankland are all the proof any player should need.
So as the first-choice striker for Hibs, Nisbet is already in the perfect place to get himself to the Euros.
With the transfer window now closed, he has a clear path towards getting a run of games – and goals – in one of the Premiership’s most attack-minded outfits.
Not in the future when he has settled into a new footballing environment. But right now, in the weeks when Clarke is assessing is in form and who is not, ahead of the World Cup qualifiers in March.
He will use those qualifiers as the basis for deciding who makes the all-important squad for the Euros.
Of course, it is true that coronavirus concerns may yet rob the country of the delicious prospect of Scotland’s ties being playing at Hampden – against the Czech Republic and Croatia – and Wembley against the Auld Enemy. Or, indeed, at all. However, while the prospect exists, while there is still the chance at all of taking part in the first major Finals in 23 years, anyone with even an outside chance owes it to themselves to do everything in their power to be there.
Things might not go exactly to plan – again, just look at Villas-Boas – but now is not the time to allow your head to be turned.
Now is the time for tunnel vision.