Alan Pattullo: Heavy traffic on trialists’ trail up to Murray Park

Pawel Brozek has opted to join Celtic ahead of Rangers. Picture: Getty

Published on Monday 30 January 2012 01:32

NO wonder Sir David Murray’s visit to Murray Park caused such a stooshie last week. Finally, a face someone recognised had swept in through the gates of the Rangers training centre.

It’s been a long, hard transfer window for Ally McCoist. And it’s been a bewildering one for the person on sentry duty at Murray Park. Already this year he’s been asked to wave through a number of unfamiliar gentlemen clutching boot bags under their arms. This group has included hopefuls hailing from Honduras to Nigeria, from Estonia to Bosnia.

Some among this selection of trialists have proved decent enough. Rangers, however, have refused to be held to ransom by players clearly scenting a bit of panic at a club with an urgent need to strengthen. This is one of the many issues associated with venturing out into the transfer market at this time.

Zlatan Muslimovic, a striker from Bosnia, barely had time to write his name in the visitors’ book before he had taken off again for Sunderland, in what was a clear example of why it is undesirable to have to go shopping for footballers at this time of year. Few of these players will be bothered about scruples. Players, even more so than normal, are out for themselves having been driven to despair by what has often been an unhappy situation at the club from which they are looking to escape. Those who are not even affiliated to a club bring their own problems – such as why are they not affiliated to a club?

Sir Alex Ferguson has made the point that January is no time to be making signings in the hope that it might ignite a club’s season. Players of real quality are simply not available – and why should they be? Few clubs want to be rid of players they feel can make a difference in the final months of a campaign unless forced to due to financial expediency, as in the case with Rangers and Nikica Jelavic. Instead, those required by circumstances to investigate the slim choice on offer have to pick out the best of a bad bunch from a carousel of often damaged goods.

Rangers have proved that themselves in the past. At the start of 2003, Alex McLeish signed Emerson in the hope he might fill the void left by Barry Ferguson. Egil Ostenstad was picked up in the same month. Even last January they caused eyebrows to be raised with the hour-of-the-wolf capture of El Hadji Diouf. Supporters of the player argue that he helped Rangers clinch a title, although the Senegalese forward was far from Inverness at the defining moment of the season – Celtic’s defeat at the Caledonian stadium.

McCoist plainly has no choice but to run his finger down the list of currently available players. He is desperate, hence the creation of a new path – the Trialists’ trail – on the outskirts of Milngavie. With Jelavic now looking set to move to Everton, the need for a replacement is obvious. Indeed, Rangers’ season could well ride on it. But such panicked circumstances do not tend to lend themselves to shrewd choices.

Rangers are casting a line around Europe and as so often happens, it has become entangled with Celtic’s. It seems extraordinary that with the entire globe and hundreds of thousands of footballers to choose from, the gaze of both Old Firm clubs has again managed to fall on the same prey. It’s not as if Pawel Brozek would have been easy to find, either. He has been playing only rarely in the north Turkish Black sea resort of Trabzon, where scouts from both Rangers and Celtic have again bumped into each other with a weary sigh, and greeting of: ‘Not you again’.

Brozek has plumped for Celtic. He perhaps recognises that the club’s moves in the transfer market during this often perilous month for acquiring new players have been made from a position of strength. Such are Celtic’s resources, Neil Lennon didn’t need to sign anyone. He has done so in case injury or suspension befalls one of his principal strikers already at the club. Brozek is, in short, a luxury addition, and that realisation won’t make McCoist feel any less scunnered.

McCoist did his best to sound unconcerned by this development after his side’s impressive 4-0 win over Hibs on Saturday. But it’s a blow not just to his hopes of signing a replacement for Jelavic, but also to the club’s sense of prestige at a time when their image is taking a fearful pounding. He can, though, comfort himself with one thought. The last time Rangers came to head-with-Celtic over a transfer target they lost out in the chase again. Yet Kris Commons has since been reduced to the status of cameo player at Celtic. And his arrival, at this stage last season, did not prove to be the championship-sealing one intended.

TO those of a certain age, Kenny Dalglish can do little wrong. Perhaps the Scot believes that he can trade on this indulgence for evermore.

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