Mowbray's Woes - Le Guen Revisited?

It would appear that a section of the Celtic support have already got the knives out for Tony Mowbray. Ten points behind Rangers simply isn’t good enough. Mowbray’s talk of a three-year project to build a new Celtic team cuts no ice. If it all sounds a little familiar, just turn the clock back a few years and cross the city to Paul Le Guen’s Rangers ‘project’.

Rangers supporters were jubilant when Le Guen was appointed to the Ibrox post. He was man with European pedigree. His reputation for developing young players was second to none. He ran marathons across the Sahara Desert. This was a 21st Century Jock Wallace. What the fans didn’t realise or chose not to notice was that Le Guen was operating with a much tighter budget than his predecessors. His signings came from the ‘bargain basement’ section of the transfer market.

Le Guen also had to deal with some heavily entrenched attitudes in the Rangers dressing room. The ‘Monster Munch’ brigade, led by captain Barry Ferguson, did not take kindly to Le Guen’s training regime, ideas about diet and health, and above all his resistance to the ‘booze culture’ which permeated the dressing room.

The relationship between manager and key players broke down, results declined, and by December the banners that had acclaimed ‘PLG’ were out again, but this time saying ‘Please Leave Govan’.

Le Guen discovered that breaking the mentality of Scottish football is nigh on impossible. There’s no other country where finishing second is totally unacceptable. Rangers, and Celtic, must win every game. They must win everything. If they don’t it is a crisis, and if they do it is just what is expected.

Tony Mowbray faces many of the same problems as Le Guen did. He’s operating on a reduced budget. To bring in new players he has had to move on some of the more experienced and higher paid members of the squad. He is also up against a fan-base who will not accept second place. They must finish ahead of Rangers. They may sign about ‘Playing Football the Celtic Way’ but they do not mean it. Winning is all that really counts.

Mowbray does not seem to have as serious a dressing room problem that Le Guen faced. There’s been no rumours of the sort of incidents that punctuated Gordon Strachan’s reign at Parkhead when boxing gloves might have been appropriate training gear. But he does have a number of big ego players to deal with who don’t always play as well as they might think.

Last week Mowbray made reference to ‘dark forces at work’ trying to unsettle things at Parkhead. He didn’t elaborate. Failing to do so leaves his meaning open to conjecture. Does he mean the press, printing half-baked rumours as fact? Does he mean that some players have been trying to undermine his authority?

Whatever, it remains to be seen how much time Mowbray will be given. Attendances at Parkhead have dropped sharply this season. Many season ticket holders simply don’t attend games. If they fail to renew their season tickets then business pressures may dictate that a change is needed. And watching Mowbray’s body language, it is easy to get the impression that he wouldn’t mind having the weight of Celtic and their expectations taken off his shoulders.