Trail runs cold

At Wigan, Paul Jewell had Lee McCulloch and Gary Teale but has now added Andy Webster from Hearts, although Fifa must decree the fee before the centre-back will receive international clearance to play. McCulloch, on target against Newcastle yesterday, has been a rare survivor in Wigan’s rise and is now the club’s longest-serving player along with Stevie McMillan, who also moved there from Motherwell in March 2001 but has suffered with injuries. Paul Jewell has already joked that he will need to offload a Scot to make way for Webster in case they start “taking over”, says McCulloch, who was consulted by his manager in the latter stages of the signing. “I said I had played with Andy a few times and he was a great player and would be brilliant for our squad,” said the 28-year-old. “I think he’ll suit Wigan because he’s honest and hard working.”

If it wasn’t for these two havens, sightings of Scots would be few indeed. Paul Dickov might get a chance to ruffle some of Chelsea’s expensive feathers this afternoon at Stamford Bridge and Darren Fletcher may find a place in Manchester United’s midfield in the first month of the season with Michael Carrick injured and Paul Scholes suspended for three games after today’s opener at home to Fulham. Christian Dailly hopes he will be more than the odd-job man he was for Alan Pardew last season at West Ham, filling in wherever a first-choice defender or midfielder was missing, but must have noted that his manager signed three defenders in the summer. At least as Reading’s captain, Graeme Murty should play at right-back for the newcomers, but Scots in the Premiership are mostly squad players rather than starters these days.

It is all a far cry from two decades ago when any team near the top of English football had a Scot somewhere along its spine. When Liverpool won the old First Division 20 years ago, Kenny Dalglish was their player-manager, Alan Hansen their captain, and Steve Nicol played just about everywhere. When they needed some midfield dig in the run-in they reached into their reserves for Kevin MacDonald, an unheralded midfielder from Inverness who was not capped by his country then but who would certainly gain one now. Liverpool’s closest pursuers were Everton, with Graeme Sharp a selfless partner to Gary Lineker, while West Ham were propelled to third by the goals of Frank McAvennie and Manchester United, fourth in their last full season pre-Fergie, had Gordon Strachan and Arthur Albiston as regulars.

On top of that, Steve Archibald was with Barcelona in the season before the 1986 World Cup and Graeme Souness was at Sampdoria prior to joining Rangers as player-manager. Walter Smith was to become Souness’s assistant then successor at Ibrox and they plotted the club’s revival together in Mexico. How Smith would love it if one of his current strikers played in La Liga or if his captain was a Serie A midfielder.

Sharp, now working for a Manchester-based radio station, finds that English football supporters are distinctly underwhelmed by Scots these days. Fletcher featured in 27 of United’s Premiership matches yet is sometimes referred disparagingly to as the “Scottish Player” by some of the club’s hypercritical fans, who believe his place in the team owes much to sharing the same nationality as his manager. They seem to forget the number of young Scots, including his own son, that Ferguson has previously deemed not good enough for his first team. “We also get a lot of Blackburn fans on,” says Sharp, “and quite a few of them feel that Barry Ferguson came down from Rangers and didn’t really hack it. Kenny Miller wasn’t a big, big hit either.”

Old Firm fans may wonder why Scotland’s manager sometimes prefers Teale and McCulloch to Chris Burke and Shaun Maloney but the answers are probably pace and power, two qualities the Premiership demands. Teale may not have Burke’s skill but is faster, while McCulloch may not be as subtle as Maloney but you would certainly know if his 6ft 1in and 13st 7lb frame came crashing into you at the back post from the left midfield role he has assumed for club and country. “

You have to have pace or power, preferably both, to play in the Premiership these days,” adds Sharp. “If you look at someone like Thierry Henry he is tremendously quick, or Peter Crouch, who is massive. It’s almost getting to the stage where you have to be at least 6ft to get in.”

McCulloch was linked with a move to Rangers in the summer but has just committed to a new three-year deal with Wigan, deciding that the Premiership, for now, is the place to be. “There was a bit in one of the papers but I didn’t pay too much attention to it,” he said. “I am happy where I am and that’s why I signed for another three years. I don’t want to give up the Premiership at this moment in time, but Rangers and Celtic are really big clubs so you never know.”

Sharp believes Scottish internationals will learn more in the Premiership because they will face a higher quality of player. Defenders such as Weir and Webster can only improve, he argues, when dealing with the differing tests presented by Henry, Crouch, Wayne Rooney or Andriy Shevchenko, while forwards such as McCulloch and McFadden will learn from playing against John Terry, Rio Ferdinand and others. “It is an education for them and it helps Walter and the national team, too, because they encounter a wider variety and a higher standard of opposition in their club football.”

If the Premiership is a university, then Scots are permitted fewer places in it than previously. As Smith prepares to enter another Group of Death, 20 years after Denmark, West Germany and Uruguay provided the opposition, he must occasionally wish he could draw more of his squad from it.