After watching Watford demolish Middlesbrough at Vicarage Road on Saturday I had to agree with Robbie’s Savage’s post-match rant on the radio about the poor state of the SPL.
The link is Gordon Strachan. The Boro boss has insisted on shopping in Scotland in his attempt to build a team equipped to return to the Premier League. But the harsh reality is that players like Kris Boyd, who could not stop scoring for long periods at Rangers, is no better than the average striker in the Championship. And Boro are no nearer a winning formula than they were under Gareth Southgate.
Strachan collected three SPL titles in a row with Celtic and never won over the fans who thought his brand of football was too boring.
The difference is at Middlesbrough the fans still don’t like him, but his team is nowhere near good enough to win the Championship.
That brings us to the aforementioned Savage whose post-match banter on BBC Radio 5 Live’s football phone-in has become compulsive listening.
The veteran now plying his trade with Derby County said what a lot of experts are privately thinking when he insisted Celtic and Rangers are a long way short of being good enough to compete in the Premier League.
Rangers may have claimed a goal-less draw against Manchester United in the Champions League last week when they parked the bus at Old Trafford.But as Savage so eloquently argues the Glasgow giants are not even good enough to think about winning the Championship.
My bet is that teams like Watford, Queens Park Rangers, Cardiff and even newly-promoted Millwall would have a good shot at winning the SPL.
