Agent's role under scrutiny as the SPL transfer windae opens

Newspapers have always speculated about possible player moves... it helps shifts copies, and arguably meets the needs of fans, who all enjoy a bit of idle gossip and speculation from time to time about who might be turning up at which club. Such stories are often based on little in the way of hard facts, using "sources close to the club" and "insiders" to flesh things out... but in this context, it's usually a bit of harmless fun.

What has been happening in Scotland over the past couple of months has, however, arguably crossed the line into manipulation of the market. Willie McKay, an agent with an already dubious reputation amongst fans, and one of the few agents who refused to comply with the recent investigation into corruption in the English Premiership, began representing Kevin Thomson and Scott Brown of Hibernian earlier in 2006, and almost immediately began pushing for moves for them both. When his initial efforts were rebuffed by the club, he has waged an increasingly bitter campaign against Hibs, using a complicit Daily Record newspaper as his main weapon. Most recently, it ran a story with extensive "quotes" from Scott Brown, claiming that the fee Hibs are seeking for him is too high.

Now, the Daily Record, you can imagine, is quite happy with the arrangement. They get the inside information on a story involving two of the most highly-rated players in Scotland, and as long as the story runs, they can generate more and more copy. As the Hibs board have a long-standing policy of "not commenting on speculation", the paper has only one source for these stories, yet that has not dulled their enthusiasm. It is time to ask, however, if this blatant disregard of all the basic tenets of responsible journalism is acceptable.

For one thing, no one who knows Scott Brown personally believes for a moment that the quotes attributed to him actually came from his own mouth. That is not to say he didn't agree to them appearing alongside his name... almost certainly he did. But if even supposed direct remarks from an individual can now be ghost-written, it makes the reader question if anything in the paper can be taken at face value. Secondly, although Hibs are not speaking to the paper, surely they have a duty to investigate the situation anyhow, rather than just print one side of the story? Their most recent effort was to print a claim from Willie McKay that both players had "been more than threatened" by the Hibs manager, and told they would be dropped from the team - claims that were palpably untrue.

All of this has rather overshadowed the forthcoming month of wheeler-dealering, but here's brief summary of what might happen over the next 31 days:

Celtic: Started the ball rolling by signing Steven Pressley on an 18 month contract on Friday, unlikely to do a huge amount of business beyond this. They need a long-term replacement for Neil Lennon, but Strachan has stated a preference for waiting until the summer.

Aberdeen: There's been speculation over Russell Anderson, their inspirational captain and centre-back, who surely should have had more Scotland caps by now. Rangers dearly need him, but Anderson has said warm words about staying at Pittodrie. Jamie Smith may go in January if still refusing to sign a new contract. Have already brought in Craig Brewster as cover upfront.

Rangers: Their defence, in particular, is an absolute mess, and with Lee Martin and Phil Bardsley going back to Man Utd after their loan deals, they need reinforcements. Whether there is any money to bring in the kind of quality they need, though, is debatable. Scott Brown looks to be beyond their budget; Paul Hartley maybe isn't.

Hearts: There are anything up to 30 Lithuanians training in Edinburgh right now, so expect plenty new faces from Romanov's footballing empire to turn up at Tynecastle. Pressley's already gone, and there will be few surprises if Hartley and Craig Gordon get sold.

Hibs: need a new keeper, need a new keeper, need a new keeper. John Collins threw Scott Brown's transfer request in the bin, but if he and/or Kevin Thomson are sold, expect replacements. Collins will want to stamp his own mark on the squad he's inherited, but may wait until the summer.

Kilmarnock: Ongoing rumblings about their winger Steven Naismith, and Killie are after another striker, but money is, as always, tight down in Ayrshire.

Falkirk: Having just scored a hat-trick at Inverness, Anthony Stokes is attracting more and more attention by the day. Falkirk are desperate to extend the Arsenal player's loan until the end of the year, but may be outbid by another club down south. Alan Gow has interested Hibs, but they will probably only move for him if Scott Brown leaves.

Dundee Utd: Lee Wilkie has gone out on loan to Ross County (given he only signed a pay-as-you-play deal with Utd in October, who knows if he has any future under Craig Levein). The Arabs are absolutely flying under their new boss, but the chairman will probably want to wait before spending some more money, given the amount of cash that's been wasted on under-performing squads over the past few years.

Motherwell: Plenty speculation around striker Scott MacDonald, but happily Stephen Craigan has signed a new deal.

ICT: Charlie Christie will have been relieved when Craig Brewster got sacked at Utd, because it would stop him trying to sign all his players in the transfer window. They are a tidy outfit, though, and a number could still be coveted elsewhere. Here's some pure speculation - Hibs will make an offer for keeper Mark Brown.

St Mirren: deserved point against Rangers to sign off 2006, but St Mirren's recent results have been poor. Gus McPherson wants a few more players, and luckily he's familiar with the lower divisions, because that's where his budget will send him.

Dunfermline: Put simply, they need to sign the Messiah, because little short of a miracle is going to pull them out of this one.

Celtic on course for the title, but Rangers still lacking direction

As 2006 comes to a close, Celtic can reflect on an exciting and successful year. While the team have been playing pants for weeks now, their current lack of form is a temporary blip, hugely outweighed by the positives. For their Glasgow rivals, however, the exact opposite is true - for Rangers, 2006 has been a low, low year, interspersed with the occasional high point.

17 points clear at the top of the SPL, Celtic know that the championship is as good as theirs, and it's very difficult to argue with back-to-back titles as convincing evidence for a team's dominance. They are still in the Champions League too, of course, and that is equally important, not least for the additional income it brings to the club.

What is really impressive is that all this has been done while the team has been rebuilt from end to end. A comparison between a typical team sheet from 3 years ago and one from this season illustrates the point. A long-term replacement for Neil Lennon is needed to anchor the midfield, but all else is much changed, with the average age (and average salary) of the squad considerably younger than it was. As has been pointed out here before, Strachan has enjoyed his fair slice of luck along the way, but he deserves credit for a good job so far. Today's signing of Steven Pressley on an 18-month contract will shore up the defence, too, which has conspicuously poor in recent weeks.

Paul Le Guen, on the other hand, still has much to prove, and there is a growing feeling that he's already blown it, just 6 months into the job. Many Rangers fans, and sections of the media, seem to have made their mind up already, and once that happens there is no way back. Take, as an example, the reported spat between Le Guen and his captain, Barry Ferguson, earlier in December. The story was an innocuos one - Le Guen believed the role of captain was considered less important in France than in Scotland - but it was spun as a major "row" between the pair, with the tabloid staples of "bust-ups" and "show-down talks" getting a tired airing.

Rangers have achieved some impressive results recently - wins over Hibs and Aberdeen, for example - but have capitulated far too often elsewhere. It suggests that Le Guen is having trouble motivating his team, and if that's the case he really is in trouble. Their backline remains a shambles, and the recent draw against Celtic was really anything to write home about. All in all, it's not been a happy conclusion to the year. Further progress in the UEFA Cup might buy some time for Le Guen, but he does look precarious. Chairman David Murray won't sack him yet, but if things get worse Le Guen could be jettisoned at the end of the season to deflect the wrath of the fans.

If any manager deserves to give himself a pat on the back, however, it is Jimmy Calderwood. Aberdeen have been solidly top 6 for the past couple of seasons, without really setting the heather on fire. This term, though, it seems to have clicked into place, and they are in 2nd on the table on merit.

There's a certain irony that this upturn in results has coincided with some serious belt-tightening, as the club has committed to finally get to grips with its debt. For much of the 90s, Aberdeen were spending beyond their means, and flirting with relegation. Now, taking the lead from others such as Hibernian in matching outgoings to income, they seem to have a new purpose about them. Long may it last, for Scottish football gained hugely from Alex Ferguson's belligerent Aberdeen of the 1980s, and needs some of that competitive spirit from the North East back again. There are, though, a couple of flies in the ointment. One is that Aberdeen have decided to move house to help clear those debts, selling Pittodrie for development. This is perhaps a problem for another day, as it's not scheduled to happen until 2008, but it's an interesting question as to what the capacity of the new stadium will be. The game against Rangers was a 22,000 sell-out, but they often struggle to get half that number through the gates. And that is a real problem, as Calderwood has admitted - without more ticket income, he's gonna struggle to hold his squad together.

The Entertainers from Edinburgh continued to live up to their reputation with another engrossing derby on Boxing Day, which Hearts eventually won 3-2 after Hibs had fought back from 2-0 down. These 2 clubs have lit up the SPL in 2006, Hearts grabbing headlines with their regular crises off the field as well as their football. Who knows if 2007 will bring stability to Tynecastle, or yet more trauma?

Hibs, meanwhile, have been scintillating at times this season, humiliating some of the SPL lower order, but they remain soft-centred and liable to concede cheap goals. They have also had to endure ongoing transfer speculation surrounding Kevin Thomson and Scott Brown, who may or may not be away in January. Their future, though, looks stable - debt is down, they are about to start building work at their new training ground, and John Collins has made an impressive start as manager.

Jim Jefferies has been at Kilmarnock a while now, but he continues to over-achieve with the resources at his disposal. Killie's great strength is that they always seem to compete, and - unlike Rangers, for example - don't switch off against the "smaller teams". This is the way to pick up points regularly, of course, but Killie's main hope of success this season is probably the League Cup.

Down in the bottom six, four teams have all arrived on 24 points. Falkirk and ICT can be reasonably satisfied with their seasons so far, while Motherwell and Dundee Utd have both recovered impressively from scary starts. Neither look in any danger from relegation this season, which wasn't the case a few months ago. Just two points adrift of this pack are St Mirren, who have gone in the opposite direction to the Well and the Arabs, fading after a strong start. But they'll probably be ok, too, because right at the bottom - and 8 points adrift - are poor old Dunfermline. They are going to need results to go their way quickly if they are going to avoid the drop.

So, there you go - half way through the season, we can pretty sure who's going to win the SPL and who is going down. But everything else is up to play for.

Elvis has left - will the building survive?

There were plenty of goals in the SPL last weekend, with Hearts back to winning ways after a run of 10 league matches without a win, but it’s the latest own goal they scored off the park that dominated the headlines. Valdas Ivanauskas, back as coach and apparently refreshed after his month-long sick leave, had hinted at a possible resolution between the club and their suspended captain, Stephen Pressley, but it turned out that it was only the terms of his departure that were being discussed. Having agreed to the termination of his contract – and signed a confidentiality agreement – Pressley’s 8-year relationship with Hearts is over.

You hope, for his sake, that in return for keeping his gob shut, he has asked for any money owed to him to be paid upfront, in cash, as Hearts’ record of paying their bills is not great. Just ask George Burley, Jim Duffy, Phil Anderton or Racing Genk, who are all still waiting to be paid money owed to them by HOMFC. Yet Pressley won’t be short of job offers if he needs help paying off his Christmas spending. Celtic, Rangers and Dundee Utd have all been linked to him, while George Burley has expressed an interest in bringing him to Southampton. At 33, his playing career looks far from over.

The real question is not why Pressley has left Hearts – it is clear by now that Vladimir Romanov does not tolerate dissent of any kind – but why it is that the Hearts fans are still keeping faith in their eccentric owner, despite the latest victim of his ruthlessness being their talismanic and popular captain. Oh sure, there are some unhappy voices, but the majority view is expressed by Shaun Lawson, whose latest article urges his fellow Jambos to continue to back the regime at Tynecastle.

But, in these fractious times for the club, backing one party means siding against the other, and that means supporters turning their back on Pressley. One accusation levelled at him by these supporters is that he’s too old and too slow, and no longer good enough to justify his place in the team – an opinion that doesn’t seem to be shared by those clubs now competing for his signature. The other is that, by hijacking the press conference in October to voice his concerns about the management of the club, Pressley betrayed his employers, and deserves his punishment.

This is a gross distortion of the situation. In an era when players are widely seen as spoilt, egotistical idiots, Stephen Pressley is not your average footballer. He doesn’t even look like your average footballer. He doesn’t wear bling or big-label hoodies, but instead has adopted the idiosyncratic, scruffy style of the mid-90s Glasgow indie scene. He would look more at home on a stage in a dingy venue, rather than a football pitch. He is also an intelligent, thoughtful man, who has used his understanding of the game to overcome his limited natural ability. He lives quietly and out of the limelight off the park – on it, he’s a natural organiser and leader, and the sort of committed player fans rightly love. As the old clich矇 goes, he would run through a brick wall for the team.

Speaking out about his concerns with the running of the club public was surely not self-interest, or an attempt to engineer himself a move away from the club, as some have ludicrously suggested. It was, instead, a genuine attempt to improve the situation at an organisation he cared about. As he said himself, he had been expressing those concerns for sometime internally, but Romanov clearly wasn’t listening.

And was this really a sackable offence? In many ways, what Pressley did was unprecedented, but only in the sense that he put himself in front of the cameras. Players blab about issues that their club would rather remain private all the time – it’s just that usually they do it through their agent or trusted journalist. Using the press to try and encourage a bid for your services from a rival club is surely much more disloyal, but it happens all the time and players don’t get sacked for it.

Yet Hearts supporters put themselves through these convoluted thought processes because the alternative is terrifying. Hearts, as a club, is technically close to bankruptcy. Its debts at least match its assets, and already exceed them. Unlike Abramovich, who bought Chelsea for cash and cleared the debt at a stroke, Vladimir Romanov has just transferred the debt to his own bank. If Romanov was to walk away, and his bank called in that debt, the club will be in real peril. So the fans will try all they can to keep their sugar daddy happy, hoping he will stay long enough to redevelop the ground and help Hearts earn the money they need to pay off the debts.

At the moment, though, the opposite is happening, and so far Romanov’s ownership has seen a large increase in the club’s debts, not a reduction. Those same fans who are still championing the chairman believe he has a coherent plan to turn things around – but on the crucial stadium redevelopment there is still no progress. Meanwhile, the club captain - who proved his commitment to the cause time and time again - is now yesterday's man.

Surely, any properly thought out plan for the club would have found a role for Stephen Pressley, who has been such a linchpin for the past 8 years. Ivanauskas described him as the “cement” holding the club together just a couple of weeks ago, which now looks less like an attempt to heal the divisions, and more a way of patronising him into accepting his pay-off.

Now the cement has gone, it’s time to see if the bricks start falling down.

Back to square one

Over the past couple of weeks, the clubs at Ibrox and Tynecastle have been making postive noises about turning their miserable seasons around. Rangers have turned a corner! Hearts are sorting out their differences!

Aye, right.

Rangers' latest defeat, against Falkirk, is all the more demoralising because it ended a mini-revival in the club's fortunes (3 wins in a row) that suggested Paul Le Guen was getting the hang of this tricky thing called Scottish football. But his team still has problems all over the park: their defence is shaky, their midfield is often out-classed, and things are going from bad to worse up front. Kris Boyd picked up an injury at the weekend and is apparently out until the New Year, Filip Sebo (Le Guen's biggest signing to date) has done little to suggest he has what it takes, and no one expects Dado Prso to recover the agility he had a couple of years ago.

Well played Falkirk, though, with another inspirational performance from Russell Latapy. Used to play for Rangers, you know.

Last week, Vladimir Romanov had supposedly made peace with the Hearts supporters, after praising Steven Pressley. Now, the captain has seemingly been suspended from the club. They managed a 2-2 draw with St Mirren but that was just a brief interlude as the club resumed trying to tear itself apart. There are still appeasers in the ranks of Hearts fans, though, determined not to upset their volatile chairman at any cost. It could cost them dearly.

Celtic can probably be classed as Champions-Elect now. They are not playing as well as they were in September, but they are still picking up points and that means the title is all but theirs. A draw would have been a fair result against Aberdeen, but they won and are now 16 points clear.

Hibs didn't play as well as they can on Saturday either, but ground out a win against Craig Levein's resurgent, combative Dundee Utd. But the result was overshadowed by Scott Brown's transfer request. John Collins was emphatic in his response - "I read it, ripped it up and threw it in the bin" - but it will take all the rookie manager's nous not to let this row destabilise their recent good form.

Dunfermline's new manager, Stephen Kenny, returned to Northern Ireland to lead his old club Derry to victory in the FAI Cup. Let's hope it helped him forget about the 5-1 mauling from Kilmarnock, eh?

And ICT lost 1-0 to Motherwell at home. ICT have forgotten how to score goals and are drifting down the league. Dunfermline remain 5 points adrift at the bottom, but there are a number of clubs who could get sucked into trouble down there.

Think you're attractive? Depends how rich you are.

Celtic's chief executive, Peter Lawwell, was at the Soccerex conference in Dubai last week. Socccerex dubs itself as “the only global convention dedicated to the professional b2b football environment”. In layman’s terms, “how to make money out of the world’s favourite sport”.

Peter Lawwell gave a speech in which he characterised Celtic as one of only 5 or 6 clubs with global appeal, hampered by a domestic league that is “fairly unattractive”. Lawwell has finally accepted that the chances of Celtic joining the English Premiership are non-existent, although expect to hear a lot of bleating from Glasgow if Cardiff ever make it to the promised land. Instead, he is agitating for a yet further expanded elite European competition, a long stated dream of that unlikeable group G14. The aim, of course, is to make more money.

But one wonders if he had the chance to watch last weekend’s Hibs v Celtic match last Sunday before he flew out, because here was football that certainly was attractive for all the right reasons – fast, technical, and exciting. It was a football match that kept the crowd on the edge of the seats for the full 90 minutes, as Celtic fought back from 2-0 down and Hibs held on, before conjuring a chance that would have won them all 3 points right at the death. For all that Scottish football is dismissed as agricultural, just look at the squad of the runaway leaders. Players like Shaun Maloney (last season’s player of the year, by the way), Aiden McGeady and Kenny Miller are quick, skilful and like the ball played to feet, not hoofed at them from 40 yards.

Yes, there were full-blooded tackles, and confrontations between players, that would probably not be allowed anywhere else, but these are part of the character of Scottish football, part of its unique identity, and to be treasured all the more as football increasingly becomes a contact-free sport elsewhere. Not better, not worse – just different.

Compelling spectacle though it was, this match is nowhere near as valuable as a commodity as even the most mundane fixture in the English Premiership. Scottish football is a poor relation compared to its obscenely wealthy neighbour. Easter Road has a capacity of around 17,000, which is an obvious limit on the number of tickets that can be sold for the game. The domestic TV market in Scotland, with a population of only 5 million, is also limited, so the obvious route to growth is through “overseas” sales. In the poly-channel digital TV market, live sports events are increasingly unique, as viewers cannot skip through the ad breaks. This makes them attractive to advertisers and broadcasters alike – just today, BT announced a deal with Setanta to sell Premiership and SPL matches to their broadband customers.

It is not entirely fanciful to suggest that the SPL could grab an increased share of the “overseas” market for televised football. After all, leagues fall in and out of fashion: a decade ago, Serie A was much admired and watched across Europe, before viewers started turning away after too many boring games, and there are signs that the all-conquering Premiership is losing some of its excitement. To do so, however, depends on making the league competitive on a consistent basis. Unfortunately, Hibernian’s own experience of the past week show just how hard that is.

Scott Brown had a great game against Celtic. A tenacious and dynamic midfielder, he is a genuine flair player and has a very promising career in front of him. Everyone – including Hibs – accept that his future probably lies at a bigger club. Unfortunately, that is not enough for the Old Firm. Along with Kevin Thomson, the Hibs captain, Brown changed agents in the summer, and has been promised immediate riches by Willie McKay. Despite only signing an extension to his contract in the summer, McKay has now declared the terms of this contract unacceptable, and has been agitating to renegotiate terms, aided by the Daily Record, who have printed a succession of leaks from the agent while Hibs remain silent. When this failed, the player handed in transfer request after Saturday’s game against Dundee Utd. The clear aim is to force Hibs to sell in January, probably to Rangers, and hopefully for a knockdown fee.

None of this is healthy for the Scottish game. Either Scott Brown stays, and helps Hibs to compete against the Old Firm. Or he leaves, to the highest bidder, earning Hibernian the money to try and replace him and strengthen their squad. Having one of their key players deliberately destabilised is not in Hibs interest, obviously, but here’s the interesting thing – long term, it’s not in the Old Firm’s interests either.

It might be unrealistic to expect Lawwell and his fellow delegates (Willie McKay was at Soccerex too) to put short-term, narrow self-interest aside for a while, and think of the bigger picture. Dubai, after all, is the prime exponent of such thinking - a desert state that found billions of dollars worth of oil under the ground, and had an unprecedented opportunity to create a sustainable legacy for generations to come. Instead, they are splurging the lot on 7 star hotels, environmentally ruinous golf courses and holiday apartments on artificial palm-shaped islands, all built through exploiting cheap migrant labour from the sub-continent.

Celtic – and Rangers – need a healthy SPL. It’s about time they recognised this fact, and did something constructive, rather than endlessly moaning about it.