miller leaves a nasty taste

I don't know if many other NTV readers would agree but the last 18 months have been the strangest times there can have been to be a Celtic fan - at least for many years.

I know we're often accused of being paranoid but ever since our depressing failure against FC Basel in August 2002 schizophrenia would seem a more suitable mental illness for us; except schizophrenia isn't meant to be as much fun.

The ups and downs of our team have been well documented but if you want examples of how odd it has all been then just think back to our game against Boavista in Oporto last April and then the game against Dundee at Celtic Park three weeks later. In the former Celtic played arguably their worst match under Martin O'Neill. It was desperate stuff. In the latter Celtic were brilliant, playing exquisite football of a type rarely seen since the early 1970s. At the end of the Boavista game we were probably happier with the team than we had been for 33 years: walking down Janefield Street after the Dundee match you could just about have heard a pin drop, even though Celtic had won 6-2.

It has been crazy stuff but I'd guess that most fans who weren't around to savour the heady days of the late 60s would reckon it was just about the best time they'd ever known as Celtic fans. However galling the loss of the SPL and the defeats against Porto and Lyon were, they were more often than not counterbalanced by the kind of days and nights at the football you only heard about from older relations.

Then came the first full week of 2004 and the return of reality. The week started all right. Whatever the ramifications of Rangers' decline, I have to admit that I still enjoy watching Celtic outclass them. I like coming into work on the Monday morning and hearing the neutrals saying that the Celtic goalie could have played in his good shoes. The defeat at Lyon (and for me living in Edinburgh the loss to Hibs as well) had been balanced out. The fun was continuing.

And then it was announced that Liam Miller would be leaving at the end of the season to join Manchester United.

None of the reverses of the last 18 months has depressed me like that piece of news. Welcome though his arrival was, the signing of Stephen Pearson did not blot out the Miller news in the way that, for example, the epic victory at Anfield eclipsed defeat by Rangers in the League Cup final. When I think of it logically it is absurd that Miller's upping of sticks should have hit me - and many others it seems - so hard. He has only started 16 matches for Celtic in six years. He is injury prone. Since the game against Anderlecht in November he hasn't played particularly well. This is a guy of whom George of the Jungle, quite correctly, said in the Christmas NTV, '(He) is promising but still a long way from being the finished article.'

Miller's impending departure did produce a string of predictable articles in the press criticising the Celtic board. I don't read the Record these days but I wouldn't be surprised to hear that they brought back the old broken Celtic crest.

If Miller turns out to be a big success with Manchester United then the writers might just turn out to have been correct but probably for all the wrong reasons. I am not a fan of the current board but in this instance I think they were in a no-win situation.

The gist of the newspaper articles I did read suggested that Celtic should have tied Miller up to a new deal after he scored against Arsenal in a pre-season friendly. Why? Five years ago Mark Burchill was awarded a greatly increased wage to stay with Celtic after scoring a few goals in real competitive matches. He doesn't play for anybody now.

Over the last 15 years Gerry Creaney, Simon Donnelly, Steven Crainey and, to a lesser extent, Brian McLaughlin and John Kennedy looked brilliant in their first few matches. As recently as last May many of us thought Shaun Maloney might be worth risking against Porto in place of an out of touch Chris Sutton. He might come back, but on recent evidence Maloney looks to be yet another youngster who has looked like the real deal only for his career to fizzle out.

I would agree with those who would argue that none of the aforementioned did anything in Europe the way Liam Miller has done. At the same time I would remind them of a player called Tony Shepherd. Celtic played Dynamo Kiev in the 1986 European Cup competition and at that time Kiev were a great team - better than any we've played since Martin O'Neill came to Celtic Park (with the possible exception of Juventus). Nonetheless, Celtic lost only narrowly to them over the two legs and our best player in both was Tony Shepherd. He seemed unflappable, he had a nice feint that took him inside defenders and he passed the ball very well. By 1989 he could have walked into Bairds bar at 2 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon and hardly anybody would have recognised him.

Miller might indeed be that rare thing - a player reared by Celtic who goes on to great things (Shay Given is the only one since Paul McStay) but any massive hike in wages or extension of contract would have been absurd purely on the evidence of the match against Arsenal. Even after his brilliant display against Anderlecht I would have had misgivings about saying he should be put on a level of salary commensurate with that paid to the likes of Sutton, Thompson, Lambert and Hartson - players who really have achieved things with, and for, Celtic.

But after that Anderlecht game what Celtic wanted in terms of Miller became an irrelevance. What Manchester United wanted became important. And that is a reality check for us.

Back in the days before Martin O'Neill Celtic fans used to talk of the club as being big, with massive potential. A Chief Executive of the club - admittedly not a very good Chief Executive - once spoke of Celtic having the potential to be 'bigger than Manchester United'. It was easy for us to talk like that in those days because, in truth, we were hardly on the same scale as United. But under Martin O'Neill Celtic have made huge strides and when close to 100,000 people made their way to Seville it was easy to believe that we were as big a club as any.

But the reality is something different. We have to readjust to it. We have to accept that we are nowhere near as big a club as United, nor the major Spanish and Italian clubs. If a really good young player emerges at Celtic and one of those really big clubs comes along then there is nothing e can do to persuade him to stay, even if we pay him more than Henrik Larsson.

In the real modern world big clubs play in big leagues every week. Not that we are a small club. But we play in a crap league, which means that we can never become as big a club as Manchester United. We play in front of huge crowds and a very large proportion of those who proclaim allegiance to Celtic are devoted to the club in a way that multitudes of those who claim some sort of support for Juventus or Real Madrid or Liverpool probably aren't. But if we really were a big club - a club with obvious potential - then billionaires would be trying to buy our club and not one that hasn't won its domestic championship since 1955.

Modern day big clubs are like Steven Spielberg productions while Celtic, by comparison, are like a great cult film such as The Third Man. I'd watch the old Carol Reed film in preference to anything by Speilberg but my favourite old movie didn't win many Oscars or take that much at the box office.

After that lapse into Pseuds Corner let's get back to reality again, and the reality is that neither Miller nor Larsson will be playing for Celtic next season. Even with a manager as shrewd as Martin O'Neill it will be difficult for the club to stay at the level we have reached in the last two and a bit years in European competition without them (God help us if MON decides to leave as well). Given the state of Scottish football - almost every club is bust or close to it - it will become difficult for Celtic to attract decent players from outside this country to come and play at Celtic Park. Even after we reached the UEFA Cup final last season and notwithstanding some fine displays in this season's Champions League, I doubt that players equivalent in quality to Sutton, Thompson or Lennon would come north in 2004 as those three did in 2000.

In some of the recent matches I've watched youngsters like Beattie and Wallace have shown enough to have me worried that they might just be the latest in a long line of under-achievers in the tradition of the players mentioned earlier. I hope I'm wrong but I believe there are difficult times ahead, even if we do win the league by miles this season. Retaining the services of Martin O'Neill is as important now as it was in landing him in 2000. With MON's ability to instil self-belief in the minds of his players we can continue to confound bigger teams from superior leagues.

But back to Liam Miller and the return of reality. One of the most depressing things for any fan must be the realisation that the thing that won't enter a player's thoughts when it comes to negotiating a contract is the support. But it's true.

In the past supporters might have meant something to the great Celtic players who won a European trophy but we haven't been much of a factor in that respect since those days in all but a few isolated cases. Miller is just the latest in a long line of players going back to Lou Macari who have claimed to be Celtic fans (I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of Lou, Davie Hay, Charlie Nicholas or any of them on that point, incidentally) but who have left the club at the earliest opportunity.

What made me sick about the latest episode wasn't Miller saying that he was really a Manchester United fan all along (I believe him on that) but the news that some of the current first team squad were reported to have encouraged him to take his chances at Old Trafford. Just as insulting was the fact that a couple (at least) of the current Celtic first team squad were quoted as encouraging the fans not to be critical of Miller, especially not to boo him, in the unlikely event that he is picked to play before the end of the season.

All I can say to those players is, 'You don't really care about us so why should we care about anything you do or say unless it's on a football pitch? So just shut the feck up and get on with playing.'

And that is the saddest reality of all.

JIM PAYNE