TARTAN SURGE
By Nkem Ifejika

Last week, following Chris Hutchings' departure, Bradford City's new manager Jim Jefferies became the sixth of a kind. He became the Premiership's sixth Scottish manager, like Alex Ferguson and George Burley before him.

A highly impressive 30% of top-flight English clubs have Scottish managers. However, to deem this the emergence of Scottish football would be shortsighted. After all, what use is a captain without a crew to steer? 30% of Premiership players aren't Scottish. Maybe mutation has occurred off the pitch to compensate for the deficiencies on it. Aside from the currant surge of managers, visionaries are being made in the air-conditioned boardrooms. Rangers and Celtic want to break away from the Scottish Premier League, for want of adequate competition.

The proposed Atlantic League would see them up against the second tier of Europe's elite, traditionally strong clubs in weak leagues. They're tired of winning their respective leagues repeatedly and now seek more worthwhile challenges. The Old Firm regularly claim that if they were in the English Premiership, they would consistently finish in the top six. And probably so. Their chairmen have been ambitious and looked the way of top foreign managers. Dutchmen Wim Jansen, Dick Advocaat and Guus Hiddink (here today, gone tomorrow), and Martin O'Neil. The Scottish Premier League now attracts Dutch internationals and Cannigia's club could receive a visit from El Diego.

Given Scotland's present position, partaking in a Great Britain football team would be naïve and ignorant. After all, it is England who are in dire straits right now. The transformation will be complete when mutation occurs on the pitch. If three top-eight Scotsmen manage English and foreign players, it's plausible that their presence is due to a search for better players to achieve higher honours.

Every once in a while, a Barry Ferguson comes along, but ten other Barrys are needed for a Craig Brown to be successful. Long gone are the days of Messrs. Dalglish and Hansen hoisting European trophies, while sporting red shorts and red socks with seemingly slack elastic bands. The formula for today is to see Messrs. Ferguson and Graham hoisting trophies, but clad in suits fit for the catwalks of Milan and Paris. This isn't exactly a bad thing, but the Tartan army would perhaps rather see these trophies by their countrymen head to their shores and sit on their mantelpieces.

A good manager can only take his team so far, and the rest is up to his merry band of foot soldiers to execute the tasks wanted. In Scotland such soldiers are lacking. However, all is not lost and the apparent surge could be enforced and completed. Maybe not now, but certainly in the not too distant future. As with all battle scarred Generals, their use is best served in advisory roles for future armies. As with explorers returning home, their knowledge of other people encountered on their treks could be shared with the unversed. Football is a philosophy not a classroom subject.

There's hope yet for Scottish football, but we await an uprising. The generals are plenty, but the soldiers are few.