Stuart Bathgate: Poor Deeks has had a lot (of rice) on his plate

Anyone who has felt a bit lost in a foreign country could relate to the plight of the former Hibernian and Celtic striker, and it cannot have been good for such a slightly built character to lose a stone in weight.

But there were other aspects of the Scot’s experiences during his four months as a Shaanxi Chan-Ba player that made you think a modicum of research might have been in order before he embarked on his Oriental voyage of discovery. By research I don’t mean the kind of exhaustive study that would get you a fair way down the road to earning a PhD. Reading a Chinese takeaway menu would have sufficed.

For if he had done that, Riordan would probably not have been so shocked and stunned to learn what Chan-Ba gave their players as a pre-match meal. “A lot of things just weren’t right,” he was quoted as saying in Saturday’s papers. “We would have chicken fried rice for our pre-match meal.”

What’s not right about chicken fried rice? It’s a really good balance of carbohydrates and protein, ideal before exercise. Unless, of course, Deeks just meant that it was a bit much getting it before every match.

He would be right in that case, and maybe should have asked the club chef to rustle up some Singapore noodles from time to time instead. Or beef ho fun. Or noodles and bean sprouts with mixed vegetables and cashew nuts. But no. “Just buying the right food was really hard,” he said. So it wasn’t just the chicken fried rice that was a problem.

Then there was the language. Guess what? “Nobody spoke English.”

So the problem about China was they spoke Chinese and ate Chinese food? You can see why some of Riordan’s advisers were perplexed when he turned down that offer from Houston Dynamo in favour of a move out East.