Home > Football > Rangers, Celtic - and the English league club SPL fans should be supporting...
by Gerry Horsfield on 11 July 2009
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Whether Scottish football fans would call it bizarre, I don’t know. But as a Welshman born and bred, I’m beginning to think I should buy myself a kilt.
When they Coca-Cola Championship season begins on August 8, Cardiff City FC are likely to take the field for their opening game at their gleaming new Leckwith stadium with as many as SIX Scots in the starting line-up.
Goalkeeper David Marshall, full-backs Kevin McNaughton and Paul Quinn, midfielder Gavin Rae, winger Chris Burke and striker Ross McCormack are all in the running for starting berths - with Marshall, signed from relegated Norwich City, and Quinn, from Motherwell, both making their English league debuts.
And all but one of them are full internationals - and if you believe the rumours, West Ham's Nigel Quashie, capped 14 times by the land of his grandfather, is set to become Scottish Bluebird No.7.
Indeed, judging from the way City boss Dave Jones and his management team are trawling through the SPL for talent these days, the entire line-up could be Scottish by the time the action begins!
Ironically, there will be no more than two Welshman in the Cardiff XI that start the season against Scunthorpe – and if skipper Joe Ledley makes his predicted exit to the Premier League in the next couple of weeks, Paul Parry could actually be the lone Taff on the field.
It’s all so different down the road at Championship arch-rivals Swansea, where the only meaningful whiff of Scotland has just been stubbed out by Wigan Athletic.
I’m talking about the £2million signing of prolific striker Jason Scotland, who had the distinction of sharing second place in last season’s Championship goalscoring charts with Cardiff’s exciting talent McCormack.
The difference, of course, is that Scotland was born in Trinidad while McCormack hails from, you’ve guessed it, Glasgow.
And thereby hangs another tale - because Scotland (the West Indian) spent four years in Scotland (the place) with Dundee United and St Johnstone before joining the Jacks in 2007.
An amazing haul of 65 goals in 97 games for Roberto Martinez’s men demonstrates just why his old boss has just become his new boss at the JJB. (Martinez quit Swansea earlier in the summer to take over from Sunderland-bound Steve Bruce at Wigan, remember?)
The reported fee sounds ridiculously low when weighed against the demon striker’s goals-per-game tally. Cardiff have just paid double that figure to bring Michael Chopra back permanently from Sunderland...and while he’s a dab hand in front of goal himself, there’s no way Chops is twice the player Scotland is.
And I say that as a lifelong Bluebirds fan.
So, the big question for fellow Celts north of the border is this...
Do any Scottish Premier League teams actually have more full Scotland internationals (or internationalists as you guys call them) in their first team than Cardiff?
And while, like so many English clubs, the Bluebirds don’t have a Scottish manager, do fans of Rangers, Celtic and Co now feel an affinity with the club as the English league’s tartan representatives?
Particularly as we aren’t ENGLISH, perish the thought!
Comments (2)
by Steve Bott on July 13, 2009
So you will have a team capable of competing in League One of the Coca Cola cos that's about the all-round standard of the SPL!!!! Burnley are filling their squad with low quality Jocks too. Might as well start planning their itinerary for the Coca Cola again now!!!!
by Eoghann Grant on August 01, 2009
I wouldn't worry fellah. The EPL (aka: International League based in ingirlind) is laughably called an English league....! Spot the ingirlishman! THEN they won'er why a country with 11 times the pop of Scotland is hardly capable of competing with it and other relatively small nations. Ingirlind? Biggest underacheivers, with teh largest mouths in the world. THAT is why the world hates them
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