THOMAS GRAVESEN has lifted the lid on what it was like to play under Gordon Strachan at Celtic and gave some insight from his perspective on why things never clicked.

The midfielder was somewhat of steal from Real Madrid in 2006 for an estimated £2million fee.

The Dane would go onto play just over 20 times for the Hoops in his first season but the cracks were beginning to show between himself and the manager throughout that season.

After butting heads on more than one occasion, a pre-season friendly would be the end of Gravesen’s short lived Celtic career with the manager officially giving up on him.

Speaking back then Gordon Strachan said: “I won’t work with him any more than I’ll work with any of my players,”

“It’s quite simple – Marcello Lippi always said if you tell a player four times where to be and what to do and they don’t get it, then forget it. He got the same time as everyone else last year and it’ll be the same again.”

With Gravesen being a financial success away from football he now resides in Las Vegas, living it up in luxury.

Speaking to tipsbladet.dk he spoke of his time at Celtic.

Unfortunately, I ran into an opposition to myself in the form of a coach called Gordon Strachan. His time was unfortunately while I was there. It did not work between him and me.

“He clearly had the best team and yet we did not have to go out and play the field. Gordon was a defensively-minded coach of a world famous club. This corresponds to FC Copenhagen going out to be defensive against Hobro.

“There is no criticism of Hobro, but the budget that FCK has is far bigger. I could not understand why he did as he did at Celtic because we were so much better than the other teams.

“In the few matches we were allowed to, we were much better. It was always, ‘back’, ‘little further back’. I could not understand it and therefore Gordon Strachan and I were ripped apart.

“I remember that I scored a hat-trick against St. Mirren – the only one in my career – and his only comment was ‘remember the defence, we just have to control that’.

“He was nervous about losing, afraid of losing a match as the boss of the mighty Celtic.”

3 COMMENTS

  1. What can you say about the Ghord,that nobody knows, apart fae when he gave Tommy Burns the reins, as he was in hospital getting his ego removed. That Tommy got Celtic to Tic and play, good entertaining attacking fitba from all over the park. One of the last times I saw Tommy smile when the crowd song his Name in unison.

  2. Thomas was also right. During Strachan’s first few months as manager, Celtic were outstanding but after New Year it was all defensive stuff. I remember struggling to watch the team at that time because of it.

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