Former Celtic and Scotland manager Gordon Strachan has been speaking about penalty shoot-out hero David Marshall after his heroics sent Scotland to their first major tournament in 22 years on Thursday night.
Strachan succeeded Martin O’Neill at Celtic Park and inherited David Marshall in goals at the time. Rober Douglas was done and David was Celtic’s number one, he started the season under Strachan but the manager brought Artur Boruc to the club and he quickly became number one shortly after.
This left Marshall on the sidelines and becoming more and more frustrated. Strachan revealed David came to his office to request a transfer but he didn’t want to let him go:
“I’ve known Marsh since he was a young man. He had that wonderful game in Barcelona before I got to Celtic, and he was unfortunate that Artur Boruc came along and kept him out of the team” Strachan told the Daily Record.
“David went and asked for a transfer because he wanted to play which is right. I wanted him to stay at Celtic, he’d have been a lot less hassle than Artur, that’s for sure” he concluded.”
Marshall would go out on loan to Norwich before moving there on a permanent basis, he had a very long spell at Cardiff. Now playing at Derby, the goalkeeper actually made a howler for his new club before heading off to international duty, he has made up for it big time for Scotland.
We should never have let him go. He should have been No:1 and somebody brought into be back up.