Stuart Bathgate: Costly legacy of misplaced reliance on SPL imports

COMING after almost a year of underachievement, Gordon Strachan's departure from Middlesbrough last week was not a shock. What was surprising, though, was his belief that a job lot of players from the SPL would help him revive the club's fortunes.

Over the past three decades, English football has seen several instances of Scottish managers heading south and looking to a bunch of tried-and-trusted on-field lieutenants to help them succeed. With only partial exceptions, those managers have failed to make an impact.

Before Strachan, the most recent example was provided by Craig Levein when he moved from Hearts to Leicester City in late 2004. Having earned his burgeoning reputation as a coach by getting players of moderate ability to excel themselves in Edinburgh, Levein hoped to do the same in the East Midlands, and took Mark de Vries, Alan Maybury, Patrick Kisnorbo and Joe Hamill with him from Tynecastle.

There were several factors behind Levein's lack of success at Leicester, and not every player he recruited was a failure - Kisnorbo, for example, being well regarded by many fans. But on the whole, the introduction of SPL journeymen did not achieve the desired effect. The most fruitful of Levein's signings was in fact one Matty Fryatt, whom he signed from Walsall 16 days before he was sacked, and who went on to score 33 goals in a season.

A decade earlier, Jimmy Nicholl tried something similar at Millwall and, like Levein, found that the wholesale introduction of several new organs into a host body invariably leads to rejection. Jim Jefferies set up a smaller Caledonian colony at Bradford City at the turn of the century, with like results, although in his case it should be noted that the club was deep in relegation trouble when he took over.

Even Alex Ferguson in his early days at Manchester United flirted with the tendency to transport a shedload of Scots down south. Finding Strachan already ensconced at Old Trafford, Ferguson would add Brian McClair, Jim Leighton and Ralph Milne. McClair was a success, Leighton proved unreliable, and Milne, for all his innate talent, went on to be derided as one of the worst players to have worn the United shirt in living memory.

It should be added, of course, that the root of the problem here is not nationality. De Vries is Dutch, Maybury Irish; and Juanjo, one of Jefferies' signings for Bradford, is from Spain. So you do not have to be Scottish to fail in the English Premiership.

Nor does the experience of playing in the SPL in itself somehow inhibit your ability to thrive in the English game.The southwards flow of players may have slowed to a trickle in recent seasons, but again, there is no shortage of Scots who have shown they can hold their own at that more exalted level of competition.

And let's throw in a third instance of what is not the problem: importing a sizeable number of Scots. The example of Cardiff City, albeit in the Championship, shows that mass recruitment of Scottish players is not doomed to failure. David Marshall, Kevin McNaughton, Gavin Rae, Steven Thompson and Chris Burke all helped Cardiff to the Championship play-offs last season. It remains to be seen how those players fare if their club wins promotion this time around, but so far the signs are good. That suggests that if you choose the right players, and integrate them in the right manner, with regard to the strengths and weaknesses of your existing squad, all can be well. Strachan, by contrast, just presumed his imports would be up to the task. Having coped with the Old Firm game, they would, he thought, manage easily in Middlesbrough.

"Anywhere else is probably like being on holiday," he said of his signings from Rangers and Celtic. He's the one on vacation now.