Gordon Strachan has been dragged into the George Peat inspired controversy aimed at fuelling the delusions of the Ibrox conspiracy nutters.
The former SFA president was drafted in by the BBC on Monday night for some thoughts on events at Hampden. During the interview the state broadcaster asked for his biggest regret and claimed that a ‘prominent club chairman’ phoned to ask him not to help Rangers (IL) in the closing stages of the 2007/08 season.
Due to a fear of Gretna and inadaquate drainage at Ibrox Walter Smith’s side had created a fixture backlog while reaching the UEFA Cup Final against Zenit St Petersburg.
The SFA and SPL were under pressure to assist the efforts from Ibrox with some suggestions that clubs would have to wait a fortnight to play their final fixture.
Celtic issued a statement warning against this development but that was ignored as the SPL extended their season by four days to create a Thursday night fixture with Rangers (IL) playing St Mirren in their second last match despite the Paisley side finishing in the bottom six and celebrating avoiding relegation.
After speaking to the BBC Peat was interviewed by the Daily Record for Wednesday’s newspaper as the spotlight turned on Celtic as the club asking the SFA President to apply the rules.
Today the Daily Record turned to Strachan to keep the story pointing towards Celtic.
“I have never given it a thought and I’m still not going to give it a thought now,” the former Celtic boss said. “This is 10 years ago. Where have you been George?
“To tell you the truth, I didn’t even know there was a debate about it at the time.
“I was totally focused on what we had to do. I seriously couldn’t tell you a thing about it.
“We had bigger issues on our plate at the time, like dealing with Tommy’s situation.
“I can honestly say I never gave Rangers’ fixtures a thought.
“It was never put to me and I never discussed it with Peter Lawwell or anyone else for ?that matter.
“Wasn’t that the season when Rangers had two games against us and they just needed to draw one of them to wrap up the title?
“We had to play them twice in the space of a couple of weeks at home knowing they only needed to take a point away from our place but we managed to beat them twice.
“They had the opportunity to put it to bed with a draw but we won the two games, with big Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink scoring a last minute winner in one of them.”
Despite having ten days to wait before playing their final match Celtic clinched the title with a 1-0 win at Dundee United thanks to a goal from Vennegoor of Hesselink.
