CHRIS SUTTON was part of the Celtic squad When Gordon Strachan was appointed Celtic manager. Succeeding Martin O’Neil, Strachan was appointed in June 2005.
The former Scotland boss resigned in 2009, after failing to secure winning four titles in a row, winning the previous three.
However, during his time managing Celtic it was noticeable that he and Chris Sutton had a fallout. During an interview on Open Goal, Sutton explained his version of events, detailing how the friction started.
“I never wanted to leave Celtic. Not even when Strachan came in. I was happy carrying on. New ideas, new methods, that’s fine. I didn’t necessarily have an issue with Gordon up until the first day.
“I injured my cheek, it was a bad injury. My vision was impaired. We had a disagreement about that. He didn’t really bother his backside with me and didn’t speak to me much. I was angry with him.
“I was sitting upstairs one day and he was talking to me, he started to try and joke. I just ignored him and carried on eating my soup. Then we had a conversation in his office. He asked what that was all about and that ignoring him wasn’t on. I told him he ignored me for six weeks. He said he called me. We agreed to disagree because he didn’t call me. We got on and it was fine after that.
“Then he pulled me in before Christmas and said he wanted to change the terms of my contract. I said if you want me leave, I’ll leave but if you want me to stay those are the terms. He said I’d been injured a lot. There wasn’t a lot I could do about that. In the end, we fell out. I didn’t want to leave and I felt I was wronged in that instance. I didn’t want to leave Celtic.”
It is now evident that the pair have drawn a line under the disagreement as they both appear regularly on TV together doing punditry work.
It is a shame Chris Sutton’s time at Celtic was cut short due to him and the manager not seeing eye-to-eye seeing him join Aston Villa on a free transfer in 2006.
He was a great player for the club scoring on 63 occasions in the league.
