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Dear Scottland 2012-05-17 20:06
The Rogues Who Ruined Rangers
Imagine you are the financial controller of a multi-million pound corporation. You discover that your new boss might have forged tax invoices for payments that were never made. What do you do? I’d like to think I’d call the cops. But if you’re Ken Olverman, the man in charge of counting the diminished pile of [...]
Dear Scottland 2012-05-10 16:30
Dilemma of the Damned
In 1996, Madeline Albright, then Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, was asked if she thought the death of half a million Iraqi children due to United Nation sanctions was a price worth paying in the cold war against Saddam Hussein. Her answer, amid much humming and ha’ing, was basically: “Yes”. Albright later castigated herself for [...]
Dear Scottland 2012-04-26 00:06
Bigots With Wings
“The butterfly effect” is a classic illustration of chaos theory: an insect flapping its wings in Macau can, weeks later, cause a hurricane in Miami. The point is that in a complex system, a seemingly insignificant act can cause a major change at a faraway time and place. I think the butterfly effect helps explain [...]
Dear Scottland 2012-04-19 16:00
From The Desk of Peter Lawwell
Dear Neil, We usually do your report card at the end of the season, but after last Sunday’s game, well, that’s our season over, isn’t it? So let’s do this now. Usual format: I’ll tell you three things I think you’re doing well, and three you need to improve on. First off, I have to [...]
Dear Scottland 2012-03-29 15:03
Spare the Rod, Spoil the Sport
“Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell.” – Proverbs In my first year of secondary school, gym classes were given over to Highland dancing lessons in the weeks prior to the Xmas party. As physical education in my school was divided by gender, this meant that twice a week [...]
Dear Scottland 2012-03-22 20:51
No Time For Horseplay
Never an organisation known for original thinking, the SFA has recently managed to both shut the barn door after the horse has bolted and then flog a dead horse. However they don’t know who opened the barn door, nor who killed the colt. They need to take a lesson from the Japanese. Have I put [...]
Dear Scottland 2012-03-08 17:48
Whither Rangers?
There’s only one story in Scottish football at the moment, and it isn’t the aftermath of the Slovenia v Scotland friendly last week (decent performance, nothing to write home about). So I make no apologies for writing about Rangers again. The club has been in administration for almost a month now, and still speculation outweighs [...]
Dear Scottland 2012-02-23 17:18
Dear Craig
“I will admit there have been times when I have wished that I had never entertained the idea of taking over Rangers,” you said in a public statement on Wednesday. There are times when I wish the same: from the time I wake up until the time I go to sleep. A few weeks ago [...]
Dear Scottland 2012-02-16 17:36
One Team In Glasgow
“I’m all out of love, what am I without you?” – Air Supply Hong Kong can’t live without Air Supply. Aging Aussie soft rock crooners Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock retain astonishing popularity in the city. Their most famous dirge frequently pollutes the public airwaves, and decades after their 1980’s heyday they regularly sell out [...]
Dear Scottland 2012-02-02 16:39
Who’s Running Rangers?
You need a degree in accountancy to be a Rangers fan these days. On Tuesday, the Daily Record broke the story that Rangers’ owner Craig Whyte sold four years’ worth of Rangers season ticket sales to fund his takeover of the Govan club. Later that same day, Whyte released a statement admitting the deal happened [...]
Dear Scottland 2012-01-19 21:18
Sopranos Football Association
Across the world, there are people who specialise in getting what they want by any means necessary. In Japan, they have the Yakuza; in Hong Kong, the Triads; in Italy (and Little Italy), the Mafia. Maybe we should add the Scottish Football Association to that list. Those criminal groups can, and do, use violence, but [...]
Dear Scottland 2012-01-12 16:15
Marriage of Inconvenience
This week, while the First Minister set a start date for Scotland’s divorce from England - 2014, if Alba says aye - the Chief Operating Officer of Rangers has proposed a new marriage between the Auld Enemies: a merger of the Scottish and English League Cup tournaments into a British League Cup. Ali Russell suggests that the [...]
Dear Scottland 2012-01-06 19:51
Postcard From The Future
No-one predicted 2012 would be the best year for Scottish football in decades, and looking back, it’s still hard to believe what just happened. Motherwell’s amazing form from mid-January to May pushed the Old Firm until the last day of the season; three teams are in Europe past Xmas; and the national team sit clear [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-12-29 15:33
The SPL and SFL Are Dead; Long Live the SPFL!
Millions of kids all over the world opened their Santa stockings on Sunday morning to find football gifts of joy: Leo Messi’s garish yellow boots, FIFA ’12 for the X-Box, a new Dundee top. Me, my Xmas football gift came a few days early this year, and the Santa wasn’t a fat man with a [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-12-22 15:51
Back To The Future
The Scottish Premier League’s rule change to allow the re-introduction of terracing at football grounds is just the first in a series of announcements to be made under a “Back to the Eighties” initiative to reinvigorate, revitalise, and revivify top-tier Scottish club football. Over the next 18 months, soccer casuals, football specials, and genuine competition [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-12-09 01:42
All I Want For Xmas Is… A Gift for a Scottish Football Fan
Having read that the new Scotland kit was launched with “augmented reality,” I was hopeful that we’d be augmenting the new kit’s reality with a better football team. Alas, we’re stuck with Gary Caldwell for the time being – the reality augmentation for this kit’s launch was a clever video installation in Glasgow’s Buchanan Galleries [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-12-01 20:36
Pie in the Sky
Last week, Sky and ESPN extended their current deal for TV coverage of Scottish Premier League matches for the next five-and-a-half seasons, and at a higher price: £16m per season, 25% above the current rate. The Scottish Premier League’s chief executive, Neil Doncaster, hailed the package as “excellent news” for Scottish football clubs. I disagree. [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-12-01 19:18
On The Offense
Living in China, I’m used to reading stories of police wading into crowds to pull down banners deemed offensive to the authorities, and dragging away the ‘troublemakers’ who unfurl these slogans. Still, the most recent article I read about this was surprising. It was the Scotsman’s report on the Rangers-Kilmarnock game on Tuesday night. During [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-12-01 19:18
Down The Toilet
The inspection shelf is a German invention, though I first encountered one in Prague. The shelf extends above the waterline in a toilet, holding the fecal matter for a quick review before it’s flushed. Changes in the shape, consistency, or colour of bowel movements often indicate disease, so spot-checking the stool is a healthy Teutonic [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-12-01 19:18
The Scottish Disease
I don’t care for rugby, but I visited an egg-chasing friend at the weekend so was obliged to accompany him to his local boozer on Saturday to watch fifteen genetic freaks lumber around under the dreich Auckland skies playing against the Scottish team. After a stout performance where the underdog Scots won an early lead [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-12-01 19:18
The Mucking of Craigie’s Byre
Rangers owner Craig Whyte banned the BBC from Ibrox because he said a documentary they produced was “muckracking”. He should have banned them because it was just a pile of s**t. “Rangers: The Inside Story” was sensationalist and shoddy, a tangled mess of half facts and guilt-by-association. And it didn’t answer the most important question: [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-12-01 19:18
Acid Trip
After the Liechtenstein-Scotland game last Saturday, two Scottish players were taken into a small room inside the Rheinpark Stadion to produce urine samples for a drug test. UEFA didn’t think the Scottish performance was so good it must have been drug-fuelled; it’s just standard procedure after every international game to test two players from each [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-12-01 19:18
Actions and Consequences
In the days after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s vile regime, I was genuinely revolted by a gruesome picture published by the BBC, a so-called ‘respectable’ news organisation. That photo of Gareth Bale modelling a “Team GB London 2012” football shirt made me sick to my stomach. Any Welsh, Northern Irish, or Scottish footballer who [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-11-24 22:27
Beckham To Move In At Pittodrie
David Beckham is in line for a shock move to Scottish football. The 36-year-old LA Galaxy star has been coy about his next step now his five-year stint in America’s Major League Soccer has ended with victory in the 2011 MLS Cup, but I can exclusively reveal he is negotiating with Stewart Milne, Aberdeen FC’s [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-11-17 18:15
Green Envy
Last Saturday morning I woke up and immediately checked the sports section of the online paper. I knew the Euro 2012 qualifiers had been played overnight (Hong Kong time), so I made a beeline for those results. I saw Ireland had pumped Estonia 4-0 away from home in the first leg of their playoff, and [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-09-22 20:33
Methil, No More
Scotland, bloody Scotland. Less than three decades ago, home to a great footballing side, one feared, or at least admired, throughout Europe and beyond, for punching well beyond its weight. Now it has fallen on hard times: mediocrity has replaced magic. It’s a shift that didn’t happen overnight. But day by day, week by week, [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-09-15 19:33
For The Good Of The Game
The future of Scottish football sits on Celtic’s shoulders. Following a catastrophic set of qualifying results which saw all four Scottish entrants dismissed from continental competition, Celtic were handed a reprieve when UEFA (rightfully, in my opinion) expelled FC Sion from the Europa League tournament. The Parkhead side replaced the team that knocked them out [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-04-29 02:42
From the “Remember When We Used To Qualify?” Archives: Euro ’92
Two adult Scotsmen from Renfrew, on a pristine lawn, in the sunshine. One on his hands and knees being dry-humped, doggy-style, by the other. Behind them, valiantly ignoring this advert for the perils of alcohol, a choir of virginal schoolchildren. In a bar up the road, an empty litre-and-a-half bottle of Imperial vodka. ### Gothenburg, [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-04-14 17:42
Scottish Football Association Ltd vs Paul McBride QC
I’m not a lawyer, but in the last few months I’ve learned a few things about defamation.  Paul McBride IS a lawyer, and a good one at that, but he should ask for a copy of my lecture notes before he opens his mouth again and further libels the SFA. “Dysfunctional”, “dishonest”, and “biased” were [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-03-10 16:42
El Radge Hadji and El Rey Pele
I’ve watched Rangers games in many strange places.  I listened to the 1994 New Year’s Old Firm in a flat in Dakar on a short wave radio; I watched Paul Le Guen’s first game in 2006 in a hotel in Bombay; and in January this year I sat in a ski lodge in Japan while [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-02-25 04:57
All Rangers Fans Are Filthy Scum Who Disgrace The Perfect Name Of Scottish Football
Billy is on his travels this week but if I were Rangers fan I’d be speechless after their performance on Sunday too. Anyway, in recognition of their ongoing UEFA cup run, here is a classic article Billy wrote last year about the day he went to Manchester. My iPhone screensaver is a beautiful blue Manchester [...]
Dear Scottland 2011-01-13 16:54
Bullets, Bevvy, and Blades
“Bullet packages sent to Celtic boss,” reported the Sporting Life over the weekend.  Last week a package addressed to Neil Lennon and Celtic player Niall McGinn was intercepted in Northern Ireland and turned over to the police, who are now investigating. On Saturday, congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in Tucson, Arizona by an apparently deranged [...]
Dear Scottland 2010-12-09 10:27
Winter Snows, Red Glows, and McGhee Goes: This Week in the SPL
Red Sky at Night, Shepherd’s Delight The only response I have to Aberdeen sacking Mark McGhee: what took you so long?  His jacket has been on the proverbial ‘shoogly peg’ for most of 2010, and giving him a vote of confidence after the Inverness Caley defeat after the 9-0 game was just another in a long [...]
Dear Scottland 2010-10-07 10:39
What We Miss: Memories from Euro 92
Two adult Scotsmen from Renfrew, on a pristine lawn, in the sunshine. One on his hands and knees being dry-humped, doggy-style, by the other. Behind them, valiantly ignoring this advert for the perils of alcohol, a choir of virginal schoolchildren. In a bar up the road, an empty litre-and-a-half bottle of Imperial vodka. ### Gothenburg, [...]
Dear Scottland 2010-09-03 23:03
Lithuania v Scotland Live
With no official way to watch today’s game we will try and bring you live video from Lithuania here: Teams: LITHUANIA v SCOTLAND: Lithuania: Karcemarskas, Stankevicius, Skerla, Radavicius, Kijanskas, Semberas, Panka, Edgaras Cesnauskis, Mikoliunas, Danilevicius, Sernas. Subs: Arlauskis, Poskus, Pilibaitis, Luksa, Ivaskevicius, Beniusis, Dedura. Scotland: McGregor, Hutton, Weir, McManus, Whittaker, Darren Fletcher, McCulloch, Brown, Robson, Miller, Naismith. Subs: Marshall, Berra, Boyd, [...]
Dear Scottland 2010-08-12 09:30
The Glorious Twelve
Today is the Glorious Twelfth -- the beginning of the shooting season for red grouse.  There’s no equivalent name for the start of the Scottish football calendar -- Sensational Saturday? -- but this weekend sees the twelve powers of the Scottish Premier League re-align for another smashing season of soccer.  Read on for a dozen [...]
Dear Scottland 2010-06-10 16:36
Moonbeams and Broken Dreams
“At Least Barnes Could Rap” said the banner in the Rangers end at Ibrox after Tony Mowbray’s last Old Firm game.  I’m not sure I agree with that. John Barnes didn’t seem much of a rapper. Herbert Chapman gave us the WM formation, Helenio Herrera invented cataneccio, the Dutch gave us total football.  None of these [...]
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