Paul McGowan has revealed how he believes Gordon Strachan gave him a Champions League debut to help him through a tough time in his life.
The forward had enjoyed a season out on loan at Morton helping them to win promotion to The Championship in 2007 but wasn’t making much headway towards the Celtic first team.
Scott McDonald, Jan Venegoor of Hesselink, Geogrios Samaras and Cillian Sheridan were in front of Goswer in the queue for a place with Ben Hutchinson given a run out against Manchester United in a previous group match.
McGowan’s then partner had given birth two months early to their first child when the Champions League dead-rubber came along with Celtic detached in fourth place after losing to Alborg.
Strachan had been keeping upto date with the situation with McGowan’s hospitalised son when he handed the kid from Airdrie a place on the bench for the visit of Villarreal.
38 minutes in
To hear this story he’d deny it ‘Nah I just put you in’. My wee boy Leo was premature, two months premature. I was round about the (first team) squad at the time, never close to playing or anything but just round about the squad and they were still in the Champions League.
The bonuses there were a joke, even just getting a draw, getting in the squad, sitting in the stand you were getting X amount of money for sitting in the stand if they got a win.
And then, obviously it came out that I had a baby in hospital and we had a game against Villarreal and I was in the squad.
He put me on the bench and I’m like ‘C’mon’ we were already out at the time and 2-0 up at half time. Me and wee Caddy (Paul Caddis) are warming up at half-time and wee Cadds is like ‘I think we’ll get on Gowser’ and I’m like ‘Nah,’ I’m not even caring, as long as we win the game then after 75 minutes it’s ‘Gowser, get stripped, you’re on.’
He put me on, after I said it to my mum and dad ‘I think he just put me on just to put some money behind me blah blah. If you said that to him he’d be like ‘Nut’.
After that he’d phone me, ask who was up at the hospital with me, my ex at the time. He’d say that him and his wife would come up and see us, our mums and dads were in at the time. I was a young boy at the time, he didn’t need to do that.
A month after that match McGowan went on loan to Hamilton Accies. These days he is playing for Dundee where Strachan is the Director of Football.
