Gordon Strachan refused to explain the thinking behind his decision to drop the on-form Aiden McGeady to the bench at Ibrox today. The Republic of Ireland winger was benched in favour of Shaun Maloney, who was making his first SPL start this year, but we'll never know why the manager preferred to start with a player who was clearly not match fit, in the most important game of the season, because he point blank refused to answer the perfectly reasonable question. "If I explained that," he said. "I would have to explain why I left Jan Vennegoor of Hesseslink out of the League Cup final, why I left out Nakamura against Hearts or Scott McDonald at the beginning of the season and I'm not here to explain every decision I make."
"What you see in the references I'm giving you," he continued. "Is that it has been done before with every player. Lee Naylor was left out today and Darren O'Dea played. It is calculated risk leaving them all out, that's what you do as a football manager and no matter who I played, we did enough to win the game of football."
Strachan insisted that he was proud of his players even though they've now been leapfrogged in the SPL table by this modest Hun team. At one point in the second half of the game the statistics showed that the champions had over 70% possession and yet they were toothless in spite of that overwhelming ownership of the ball. In fact the best chance of the second spell probably fell to Kris Boyd when the portly striker was one-on-one with Artur Boruc but the Holy Goalie produced the save of the match to keep him out.
"It's always disappointing when you don't win a game but I'm proud of them," said Strachan. "To come and play as they did here, was excellent. When Rangers scored, I thought we were well in control of the game and then the rest of the game I thought, 'This is good, you are not panicking, you are passing it well and getting to the right areas'. But we just couldn't finish Rangers off."
"I was also pleased by the way we started." he continued. "In free play, we did very well and you are not going to get a lot of chances when you go away from home against a good, physical Rangers side with good height. You have to think your way through when you are playing against that sort of bulk."
Now that the Huns are at the top of the table Celtic find themselves in a similar position to that which they found themselves in last year. They need to win their remaining three games but now need either Hibs, Aberdeen or Dundee United to take something from the huns. "It's a challenge now," said Strachan. "That's what you get. We had it last year and we have it again. I'm sure the guys would like to be a few points clear but we have to accept where we are and get on with it. They relished the challenge of coming here and playing and they played well.
"Small things can make a difference." he added. "For the goal, we didn't win the header, people were out of position and because of that we were a bit disjointed when the ball came across so that's the big disappointment. But after watching the players today, I have every faith in them."