Search: ' George Burley'

Despite recent problems at both Rangers and Celtic, Glasgow's dominance of Scottish football is unlikely to change soon. Neil White explains

The new Scottish Premier League season marks a depressing anniversary for that competition – it is now 25 years since a team other than the Old Firm won the championship. Since Alex Ferguson led Aberdeen to their third title in six years, in his penultimate season as their manager in 1985, an entire generation of supporters and players have known nothing other than the dominance of Celtic and Rangers.

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Damian Hall takes a look at the decline of former England goalkeeper Richard Wright

Ten years ago he was playing for England, but at just 32 Richard Wright is without a club. Arsène Wenger may act like he’s lost his credit card nowadays but back in the summer of 2001 he was swiping it about like a madman. Arsenal purchased Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Francis Jeffers, Richard Wright and Junichi Inamoto for around £26 million. Fast forward nine years and most of those players’ careers have taken fairly predictable paths, especially the injury-prone Jeffers. But not Richard Wright’s.

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Scott Anthony looks back on Blackburn Rovers' Premier League triumph

The long-term significance
Kenny Dalglish’s Blackburn Rovers remain the only club outside the current Big Four to win the English title since the 1992 breakaway of the old First Division. Arsenal and Chelsea not only finished below Tottenham, Newcastle and Nottingham Forest, but also QPR, Southampton and Wimbledon.

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Following the departure of George Burley, the Scottish FA appointed Craig Levein as the latest in a long line of Scotland managers, just as Neil Forsyth predicted

Not that they really need one, but Scotland have got a new manager. Eight months from a competitive fixture the SFA acted with surprising swiftness in nicking Craig Levein away from Dundee Utd and appointing him as George Burley’s successor. In WSC 273 I said that the SFA would still be reluctant on a foreign manager after the horror of the Bertie Vogts experiment and that Levein was the standout Scottish candidate. That shows no prescience on my part, rather a depressing lack of qualified candidates who would actually want the job. David Moyes has a more attractive role at Everton, Gordon Strachan had just committed to Middlesbrough, Graeme Souness ruled himself out and Walter Smith made the worthy point that he’d walked out on Scotland for a Rangers return and it would be somewhat cheeky to go back.

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Scotland's 2010 World Cup qualifying campaign was a painful experience both on and off the pitch. But Neil Forsyth refuses to be downhearted

Onwards Scotland march. Another major tournament without involvement, despite being in arguably the easiest qualifying group, with senior players picking up a sine die ban for an all-night bender, a manager still trying to convince the public of his suitability and an SFA leadership who increasingly resemble the committee of a provincial bowling club.

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