Giving Aberdeen great Alex McLeish the nod to start in the Greatest Premier XI ahead of Rangers’ talismanic Nine-In-A-Row-winning captain Richard Gough had many readers up in arms.
Naming Celtic skipper Scott Brown as the defensive midfielder ahead of John Greig and Graeme Souness, who didn’t even make the five man shortlist, had others questioning our sanity.
As for leaving Shunsuke Nakamura out altogether? First Minister Nicola Sturgeon may well get a few letters in the post about the state of the free press in this country in the coming days.
But, to paraphrase the legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, we stand by our selection.
Football, as the old saying goes, is all about opinions. No two fans have the same view on a player or a team. Supporters also have an emotional pull towards an exceptional individual they watched as a child or saw a lot of at the peak of their powers. And an aversion to those who inflicted defeats on his heroes.
A Rangers fan who grew up in the 1970s will swear blind Derek Johnstone is the best header of the ball the Ibrox club ever had. But another who started going to games in the 1990s will argue nobody has ever been better than Mark Hateley in the air.
There are, of course, also tribal loyalties. An Aberdeen diehard will have little love for a Dundee United legend. And vice versa. It was always inevitable that there would be objections, indignation, outrage even, when we unveiled our dream team.
But it is hard to deny that Andy Goram (goalkeeper), Danny McGrain (right back), Maurice Malpas (left back), Alex McLeish (centre half), Willie Miller (centre half), Scott Brown (defensive midfielder), Paul Gascoigne (attacking midfield), Brian Laudrup (right wing), Davie Cooper (left wing), Henrik Larsson (striker) and Ally McCoist (striker) is a pretty useful side.
As Archie Knox, the former Aberdeen, Manchester United, Rangers and Scotland assistant manager who worked with many of those picked and considered for a place, commented: “From 1 to 11 those are the best players”.
There are five Rangers players, three Celtic players, two Aberdeen players and one Dundee United player in the starting line-up. Brown and Goram also played for Hibernian. Cooper, Goram and, very briefly, McLeish featured for Motherwell. McCoist, meanwhile, started his career at St Johnstone and ended it at Kilmarnock.
You would have thought that would have kept just about everyone happy. But you would have been wrong!
The most difficult call was picking McLeish ahead of Gough. There was just nothing between them. The former just edged it due to his European success, something that eluded the latter, and the fact that Miller, who he formed a renowned defensive partnership with for club and country, was the other centre back.
Craig Brown, the former Scotland captain who gave his expert opinion on our contenders, certainly agreed with the decision.
“I just feel that McLeish and Miller were inseparable,” he said. “They did so well together.
“I went to Mexico (the 1986 World Cup) on the coaching staff and Alex Ferguson was obviously a McLeish and Miller man. But he played Gough at right back to accommodate Gough.
“But Richard Gough, in my experience with him when I was assistant to Andy Roxburgh, wasn’t too reliable. He was liable to give a rash foul away. I just didn’t think he was the kind of guy you would put your mortgage on.
“There is no doubt he was an outstanding player. He could play in any company. But we lost one or two games and afterwards you could point the finger at Gough a bit for the goals we conceded.
“Whereas I couldn’t think in any context of a game where I would say Alex McLeish cost us a goal.”
There will be few in Govan who agree with that assessment. This entire exercise has shown that when it comes to Scottish football there is rarely if ever any consensus. But the dissenters certainly had strong arguments. This is a team made up of those who didn’t get handed a spot?
Stefan Klos (goalkeeper), Sandy Jardine (right back), Arthur Numan (left back), Richard Gough (centre half), Virgil van Dijk (centre half), Paul Lambert (defensive midfielder), Paul McStay (attacking midfielder), Gordon Strachan (right midfield), Giovanni van Bronckhorst (left midfield), Kenny Dalglish (striker) and Mark Hateley (striker).
These guys didn’t even make the shortlist. Artur Boruc (goalkeeper), Stuart Kennedy (right back), Gary Naysmith (left back), Paul Elliott (centre back), Alan McLaren (centre back), Graeme Souness (defensive midfielder), Shaun Maloney (attacking midfielder), Shunsuke Nakamura (right wing), Neil McCann (left wing), Kris Boyd (striker), Brian McClair (striker).
It was a thankless task which made us realise what exceptional players we have been blessed to have in this country since the Premier Division was formed 45 years ago. But we enjoyed it immensely. We hope you, despite all of the paranoia and the protests, did too.
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