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"Unbelievably, next Saturday the Scottish Premier League season actually begins. What a farce."None of the teams in Scotland is ready for the forthcoming campaign especially as most English teams are unable to say at this moment which young players can be loaned out for the year. Summer? What ever happened to it?"
So wrote Terry Butcher, the former England captain, in his Sunday Mirror column ahead of his Inverness Caledonian Thistle side's opening game at his former club Motherwell, who are now managed by his ex-Rangers team-mate Stuart McCall.
Butcher has been in Scotland long enough therefore to be allowed an opinion but his comments do seem bizarre. Does the SPL really rely upon English loanees? And even if so shouldn't Butcher be scouring the Highlands for local talent rather than borrowing from south of the border anyway?
And as for the early start, he will also know just how cold a Scottish winter can be. So much so that they used to have a winter break there, until it was scrapped because some of the smaller clubs simply couldn't survive without regular fixtures. Or claimed they couldn't. The more games in good weather the better is surely the supporters' view.
Indeed, Caley would have been more prepared for the new season had the short-fused Butcher not lost his rag with former Arsenal defender Kerrea Gilbert, who opted to play as a trialist for MK Dons instead of waiting for a contract from Inverness to arrive as promised.
"Kerrea needed two or three weeks' rehab. He was devastated when we told him because he wanted a contract straight away," Butcher explained. "I said, 'look, you've been waiting a year so a month should be nothing to you now. After that, there'll be a contract for you'.
"But then he goes and plays for MK Dons in a trial match. It was even on their website. So I spoke to his agent and told him he wouldn't be getting a contract here. I just binned it. He has let us down badly."
Unsurprisingly therefore given his volatile nature, Butcher is one of the front runners in the bookmaker William Hill's assessment of the SPL manager most likely to depart first in the 2011-12 season.
His odds of 9/2 are longer than only three other managers, St Johnstone's Derek McInnes, Jim Jefferies of Hearts and the new man at the Kilmarnock helm, Kenny Shiels. McInnes saw his Saints side go an age without scoring a goal last term but is more likely to be tempted away by an offer from an English club, Jefferies has Vladimir Romanov as his employer so cannot even contemplate putting the words 'job' and 'security' together and Shiels is a rookie at this level, with only a so-so spell as caretaker last season on his CV.
Of coursem the pressure will be well and truly on former Scotland manager Craig Brown to turn around Aberdeen's ailing fortunes but, as always, much of the focus will inevitably be on the two Old Firm managers, with Ally McCoist having taken over from Walter Smith at Rangers and Neil Lennon having overcome a turbulent first campaign at the Celtic helm.
Intriguingly, William Hill place both in the 16-1 category to be leaving their posts first this season. It would take a catastrophic start by Rangers for McCoist to be jettisoned so soon and Celtic although stuck by their man over the summer it would be not a huge surprise if Lennon suddenly decided he fancied a less complicated life outside Glasgow and took up another job offer should one arise.
And then there is the football too. Starting at 12.30pm at Ibrox when Hearts are the visitors. Or, if you are Terry Butcher, whenever the English loanees can get there.
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Source: http://www.fanhouse.co.uk/2011/07/18/terry-butcher-in-quickly-with-first-farce-claim-of-the-new-sco/
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