Glenn Gibbons: Strachan a sufferer of post-match tension

Published on Monday 9 March 2009 22:40

GORDON Strachan's impulsive reach for the telling retort springs from a nature to which stoicism is an alien concept. In such personalities, the risk of causing offence and spawning controversy is an everyday hazard.

As evidenced in Paisley last Saturday, however, the Celtic manager's impetuosity tends to be most readily and most publicly provoked on those occasions when he is confronted by a battery of media representatives in the immediate aftermath of a football match.

In this respect, he has no claim on originality. Among the myriad managers whose post-game altercations with the press are strewn through the history of the game, Jim McLean at Dundee United would be among the most consistently hostile. McLean, though, was also the one who most forcefully stated the case for the defence.

"I've said it for years and I won't stop saying it," he would often remark, "that immediately after a game is no time to be talking to a manager. Whether you've won, lost or drawn the game doesn't matter. Managers in that time just after the final whistle have scrambled brains, they're high on adrenaline, their emotions are running wild. You can't expect them suddenly to be rational and talking sense".

McLean's discourse, naturally, could not be applied to every member of the managerial fraternity, but the tone and the basic principle have always seemed sound enough to warrant categorising as a generalisation and to induce in this observer at least a certain sympathy.

As in McLean's era, Strachan is not alone in his occasional lapses into infelicity. Craig Levein at Dundee United and Mark McGhee at Motherwell, for example, are not renowned for reticence, while a glance at the crime sheet of the Scottish FA's general purposes committee will reveal a lengthy list of offenders penalised for verbal indiscretions.

Given the range of managerial rashness, it seems pointless to argue that those inclined to outbursts should follow the example of their less heated, seemingly more controlled colleagues. There are differences of character involved that make such comparisons simplistic to the point of irrelevance.

Walter Smith, for instance, has a justified reputation for composure in post-match conferences, but his often evasive answers are frequently accompanied by a stop-the-clocks glare that leaves his interrogator in no doubt of his intolerance of the banal or asinine question. In this respect, he has much in common with his Celtic counterpart.

Strachan's latest instinctive response to a reporter's query was perceived in some quarters as sexist because he told his female inquisitor that she would have as much difficulty in understanding how he felt about losing the Scottish Cup quarter-final to St Mirren as he would in appreciating the experience of childbirth.

This is a reply that is clearly open to interpretation. Knowing Strachan's sometimes irresistible urge to highlight what he considers to be the crassness of a particular question, it is not difficult to imagine his mental computer search for an appropriate analogy. The one he came up with was obviously imperfect, because it did allow different interpretations. It is, however, unlikely to have been prompted by sexism.

The question directed at Strachan, in fact, did not pertain specifically to the St Mirren defeat, but to the end of Celtic's prospects of winning the domestic treble and how disappointed that made him feel.

There is currently a school of thought which claims that Strachan was especially sensitive to that topic because the current season will be his last at Parkhead and he had set his heart on leaving the club in possession of the SPL championship, the Co-operative Insurance Cup and the Scottish Cup, a pinnacle he has not reached in his three previous years.

This may be true – there is no way of reading the manager's mind – but history and reliable testimony suggest that it is a rather weak proposition. Even Old Firm managers, as a rule, do not think in terms of multiple honours, but primarily of the championship, with anything else a welcome bonus.

During Rangers' virtually unchallenged superiority through the nine seasons between 1988-89 and '96-'97, Smith frequently commented on supporters' expectation of their sweeping to triumph in every competition. "People have no idea how hard it is to win a treble," he said. "They don't even know how difficult it is to win a league title.

"To maintain the level of application and concentration required throughout the season, even in matches you're expected to win comfortably, takes an awful lot out of players. There may be only two genuine contenders for the championship, but anybody who has done it knows how hard it is. Nobody sets out thinking of a treble, because it is much harder than anyone who hasn't tried it can possibly know".

Smith's observation is supported by the statistic which show that, while winning nine successive championships under Graeme Souness and himself, Rangers captured the treble only once, in the '92-'93 season. When Celtic under Jock Stein dominated for a similar period, and included consistent distinction in Europe in their achievements, the domestic three-timer was managed only twice, and they were when they were at their most formidable, in '67 and '69.

Whatever motivated Strachan's response in Paisley, it is a safe bet that the SFA will not be charging him with sexism.