Trivial pursuits
Okay, so here’s a fun teaser you can try out around the table after your Christmas dinner. What do the following far-flung countries have in common: Canada, Togo, Uzbekistan, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Gabon, Panama, Zambia, Haiti, Libya and the Cape Verde Islands? Give up? Here’s a clue:
Yep – all of them, and 60 other nations too, are now officially better at football than Scotland. Entirely coincidentally, in the same week this dismaying fact was revealed, it was confirmed that former national coach Craig Levein was to sue the SFA for only offering to pay him £35,000 a month for the next year-and-a-half to sit around and scratch his arse in front of the Jeremy Kyle Show.
It takes a special sort of person to be so arrogant they’re prepared to engage lawyers over such a stratospheric level of reward for utter, abject failure. Levein took charge of Scotland three years (almost to the day) ago. In August of that year we were ranked 24th in the world, meaning that our current position is a mind-boggling drop of 48 places. He presided over by far the worst record of any Scotland manager in history, recording competitive wins against only Liechtenstein and Lithuania in his three years in charge, during which time he was paid somewhere in the region of £2 million.
In the middle of an economic catastrophe, £35K a month isn’t a bad pay packet. Hell, it’s such a vast sum it’d even pay for half-a-dozen Scottish Labour MPs, including expenses. For doing absolutely nothing, it’s even more generous. For Craig Levein to suck even more precious money out of Scottish football when its skint, by having the astonishing temerity to whine about it as if he’s being hard done by, leaves us lost for words that wouldn’t get us arrested.
Have a truly rotten Christmas, Craig, you loathsome, useless piece of shit.
Jings Wings, dinnae pull your punches now 🙂
35k a month to sit on your backside and a cool 2mil not to reach novelty island. Yet there are those who are talking about setting up food banks in Scotland.
Ah yes. Those two precious victories. It makes the rest of this tenure positively worth while.
Festive greetings to all. Bliadhna Mhath Ùr
@Aplinal
“Those two precious victories” Give the man his due, it’s three. Two hard-fought narrow victories over the mighty Lichtenstein!
he never got they wages at cowdenbeath
‘Tis only a game played by overpaid, tattooed bawheids.
Aye Dave.
Twenty-two grossly overpaid cheats kicking a bag of air round some grass!
He probably should have been sacked after that ‘no striker’ game against the Czech Rep in 2010. Great plan until the rotters scored against us.
BBC interviewer was funny…”Will you be sticking with the 4-6-0 against Spain at Hampden next week Craig ? ”
link to news.bbc.co.uk
We’re lucky it wasn’t a BBC contract!
Levein was always over rated and appointed by men who have no idea of how to run jack. I am a season ticket holder at Dens and this will probably be my last season of that , the 12 12 proposal, the SFA, Reagan, Doncaster are all a bunch of w******. They are killing football with the help of idot chairmen, boards and greedy clubs.
O/T: Check out the statement by Alec Neil on the Waiting List Audit. Funny debate with Jackie Baillie getting torn apart by the SNP and the Tories. I bet she felt the ground fall out from under her when Jackson Carlaw stood up and accepted the report instead of attacking it like she did. Never explicitly calling someone a liar, which is against the rules, she and Richard Simpson were essentially called liars by everyone not in the Labour party.
“O/T: Check out the statement by Alec Neil on the Waiting List Audit.”
I know what all of those words mean individually, but together they make no sense at all. Any clues?
If you look on Democracy Live. Alex Neil was delivering a Ministerial Statement on the results of the audit into NHS boards following NHS Lothian’s waiting time scandal’.
Jackie Bailie’s response in the chamber was to essentially rant and rave. Jackson Carlaw accepted the report. The rest is as I summarised.
Typical jambo, always after money that they don’t deserve 🙂
To be honest, while Levein didn’t work out at Scotland, I think he’s well within his rights to try and claim the value of his contract and I would back any other worker or employee doing the same, I think the contract is there for a reason.
I wouldn’t mind £35k a month but if I was entitled to the value or partial value of my contract I’d probably want it up front as well.
On the other hand, Mowbray tried the same with Celtic, and when he eventually took the Boro job Celtic were saved money from not having shelled out massive amounts of compensation and paying him monthly instead (and as a Celtic fan I wasn’t exactly devastated that the club had saved money by taking this approach).
Basically I think my only real issue is with the actual amounts involved in football in general, and not the right of Levein to receive what he’s entitled to.
“I think he’s well within his rights to try and claim the value of his contract”
He’s getting it. The SFA are prepared to pay every penny, just not in one lump advance sum. And why should they? It’ll cost them more money that way, and they don’t owe the useless tossbag any favours. The greedy fucker just wants to pocket it all AND get paid for doing another job as well (if anyone’s thick enough to give him one), which he wouldn’t have been able to do if he was still Scotland manager.
‘you loathsome, useless piece of shit.’ you missed out ‘cockwomble’, he’s the third after raygun and donkeycaster..But sadly the SFL and SPL and SFA are full of them. Administrators and board members need sorting out as well. Spineless, greedy fucks. I’m switching my sporting interest to the noble art of assault and battery with a stick- Shinty
O/T, but just hearing about the latest for other jobseekers.
Enter all your details on a government website, or lose any bru money.
Scary stuff!
Nasty character all round. Remember him punching Gordon Durie in the stomach (fellow Fifer,but playing for Hibs at the time)then he punched one of his own teammates (Hogg?) at training, then there was the Tynecastle employee—better stop in case he sues me.
But the 4-6-0 was the final straw except that the SFA bottled it.
Levein is just the apex of a whole rotten pyramid. You have to wonder how bad the contract negotiating skills of the SFA are that the worst coach in history can still be owed money for two years after he has been sacked.
I don’t think I could possibly agree MORE with that last sentence.
And doesn’t the fact that we were 24th in the world when he took over tell you something about his decision to play it “safe” (almost funny, that) against the Czechs? What an absolute cock. As someone else said, they should have sacked him on the spot when he announced that 4-6-0 formation.
£35k per month???
How is this even possible? Oh well. Oh NOES! He will soon be poor enough to sign on at the Jobcentre for £71 per week. Oh, my heart bleeds.
But not for him.
Here’s a few one-liners to help the discussion along:
What coaching skill, if any, is taught at the Largs centre? or is it just an attendance certificate that’s handed out?
Why is the Kilmarnock manager being pursued by officialdom? certainly not for Clugging anyone on the park. For being impolite from the touchline?
I asked a coupie of weeks ago when would one of Rangers’ skillful young wingers be clugged. Playing against Stirling Albion 4 Albion players, yes 4, were yellow carded for tackles on one individual Rangers winger. The Stirling Albion manager commented that one tackle was a beaut, the Rangers player being upended well up in the air. In rugby the referee would have stopped the game after the second tackle and warned the Albion captain “next tackle like that and its off the park with the offender”.
Celtic’s manager, Lennon now seems well content with refereeing, and his share of penalty decisions. Funny that eh? Used to be he was always complaining. Have refereeing rules changed?
If you want a brawling roughhouse fine since that’s what you’ve got. If you want skillful football and be able to compete at international level it truly is time to change.
The Scottish game has its arse hinging oot its troosers and it consigns Rangers with a 50,000 support to the 3rd division. That is not smart business practice, that’s stupid.
“The Scottish game has its arse hinging oot its troosers and it consigns Rangers with a 50,000 support to the 3rd division. That is not smart business practice, that’s stupid.”
That rather depends if you consider “the Scottish game” to be just the SPL, or all four divisions. Sending The Rangers International FC through the divisions will be probably the greatest ever redistribution of wealth in the history of the sport. If that means money going into the pockets of Elgin and Peterhead instead of expensive foreign imports who take it with them when they leave for greener pastures, that can only be a wonderful thing.
(And in any event, the SPL doesn’t seem to be losing catastrophic sums in the absence of Rangers. The TV deal is only slightly smaller, and many clubs are enjoying significant increases in attendances. Last week STV reported Aberdeen’s crowds up 18% compared to last season.)
Aha Rev Stu: Some time back i proposed, on another blog, that the earnings of clubs should be equally redistributed at the season’s end since each club equally contributes to the sport. A move that might break the dominance of the Old Firm. Sank faster than a lead balloon that idea.
Note that of the sixteen clubs continuing in the Champions League there are but two from England for all the money and bullshit publicity heaped on English football. And great credit to Celtic that they are in there and playing a style well above clugging their opponents.But then the downside.As you say, Celtic’s expensive imports will take their earnings home with them
“As you say, Celtic’s expensive imports will take their earnings home with them”
Well, in fairness that’s not money going out of the Scottish game in quite the same way, because it’s extra money that wasn’t in the Scottish game to start with. But it’s certainly going to disfigure the SPL even more. Even though this is still the most competitive season in years, you can see Celtic’s money starting to show – the others just don’t have the strength in depth. Aberdeen have been missing half-a-dozen first-teamers for a month, and their form has tanked as a result because there isn’t the squad to replace them. Celtic coming back from Turin with millions more, while it’s good for the coefficient, will only make that situation worse.
A Jambo holding his head while someone in green and white looks on…
link to youtube.com
Apologies for not knocking Cellick while I’m here 😉
Cheers
Charlie