This piece about Gordon Strachan was written after a (typically) slow start to Saints' campaign in the '02-'03 season. Saints have just drawn 1-1 away to Bolton. Brett Ormerod scored a hattrick against Tranmere in the second round of the FA Cup and a brace against Man City soon after.
2 October 2002
This is my contribution to the great Strachan debate (Should he stay? Should he go? Should he play Brett Ormerod from the off?). I am a staunch supporter of WGS, I believed in him the day he was appointed and I believe in him now.
Was Strachan right not to have played Ormerod from the start at the Reebok? Many people are saying WGS was wrong to leave Brett out of the starting lineup. But here they are making a tremendous assumption i.e. that Brett is a classy Premiership-level striker (unproven), not just a classy Div 2 striker (proven). If Brett had started against Bolton AND duplicated his form in that reserve match where he scored a hattrick, we could have been up by 2 or 3 against Bolton and then their last minute goal would have counted for nought. But that is a big 'if'. The hattrick for the reserves might have been a flash-in-the-pan and he could have gone through the entire Bolton game without scoring. So was WGS right or wrong? In a sense we'll never know as Brett didn't start.
But the fact remains that whether WGS did the right thing or not with respect to Brett Ormerod, he almost certainly made the right decision with respect to our approach to the Bolton game. As someone has said, Bolton isn't a pub team. Of all the teams in the Premiership, only Bolton have played Arsenal, Liverpool and Man U at least once already, taking 3 points out of 3 games with a goal difference of just -1. If that were offered to us Saints, would we not grab it with both hands? This is rampant Arsenal, in-form Liverpool and still dangerous Man U we're talking about. I know I would. Fact: we held Bolton to a draw on THEIR turf for 80 minutes. Fact: we scored from open play and held the lead until almost the end of the game. Fact: we nearly won but for a defensive error that even the fiercest critic can hardly blame on WGS.
What if Uriah Rennie had blown the whistle a little earlier? Or our defence hadn't blown it? Would WGS be hailed as a tactical genius? Some would say so, a few would grudgingly say he got his tactics right this time and some others I am sure would still find something to moan about such as, "If we persist on this 'no recognised striker' route, we'll be doomed by ............ (December, January, February - choose the month to fill in the blank)."
Whether WGS was right or not with respect to Brettie, one thing is certain: WGS didn't do the obvious i.e. play Brettie after his hattrick, which would have been all too easy to do. No, WGS came to a 'brave' managerial decision and did what at first sight seemed a very odd thing. Did Bolton not know Brett scored a hattrick for the reserves? Of course. Did Bolton not know WGS always plays 4-4-2? Yes. Did Bolton plan on WGS NOT playing Brettie or Pahars from the start and a 4-5-1 formation? NO!!! WGS's brave lineup shocked every Saints fan and confounded Bolton to the extent they couldn't score for almost the entire game. And there we were, smashing and almost grabbing.
Then again what would you have expected of Gordon? To play to the gallery and field Brettie so that in case he didn't score, WGS could defend himself by saying I fielded a player who just scored a hattrick for the reserves so what did I do wrong? Or to do what he felt needed to be done to 'get a result' (1 or 3 points) whether or not that decision would be popular or even understood by the fans?
Brave, brave Gordon. But then that's the Scottish way. For a sporting analogy, see how Sam Torrance led the Europeans to the Ryder Cup this year. The wily Scot did the reverse of what everyone expected by playing his strongest golfers first and so snatched victory against the odds. U.S. Captain Curtis Strange admitted, "I was snookered."
Passionate, defiant, battling. That is the way of the men-in-kilts. With WGS, we can expect passion (lots of yelling), defiance (he snatched Uriah Rennie's stopwatch after the match ended only for Rennie to snatch it right back), fight, honesty and... well, shocking decisions bordering on either genius or insanity.
Cody Wong
