Jock Stein famously said the Celtic shirt doesn’t shrink to
fit inferior players.
That much is true, but there is a magical quality to the
green and white hoops. Sometimes they can make inferior players grow to fit
them.
Celtic makes great players, but once that green and white
shirt is removed, the magic often wears off and very few players go on to
greater success when they leave.
Ask Charlie Nicholas – one time darling of Celtic Park who
burst onto the scene as a teenager in the early 1980’s.
The Cannonball Kid was the hottest property in British
football at the age of 21 in the summer of 1983. He could have signed for
Liverpool or Manchester United, but chose to head for the bright lights of
London instead, to sign for Arsenal.
The British football landscape had a very different look to it
back then. Arsenal was not the dazzling, inventive purveyor of the beautiful
game it would become under Arsene Wenger.
Arsenal was not even a particularly successful club back
then either.
They were a stuffy, defensive outfit and the young Nicholas
soon found his natural exuberance curbed to the extent he once found himself
tasked with man-marking Bryan Robson in a match at Old Trafford.
After four decidedly average years at Highbury, he found
himself returning to Scotland with Aberdeen in late 1987, a 26 year old whose
career was on the slide.
The Cannonball Kid was gone, and a slower, bulkier Nicholas,
despite still showing flashes of the old outrageous skills he once possessed in
abundance, never again hit the heights of those early years at Celtic.
Charlie Nicholas returned to Celtic at age 29 in 1990 for
the swansong of his career and left without winning a trophy in 1993.
His was a career that never came near to fulfilling that
early promise.
As Victor Wanyama ponders his options this summer, he would
do well to remember another Celtic midfielder who once had the world at his
feet, only to see his career nosedive on leaving.
Liam Miller joined Celtic as a teenager and made his debut
at the end of season 1999-2000 against Dundee United.
A series of injuries curtailed his appearances, and after a
loan spell in Denmark, his next league appearance came in August 2003.
Breaking into a Celtic team that had appeared in the UEFA Cup
Final the previous season, Miller was a revelation in the first half of the
season, the highlights being a barnstorming performance in 1-0 win at Ibrox
against the now-defunct Rangers FC, where he dominated his opposite number,
Mikel Arteta, now of Arsenal.
He followed this with a scoring appearance as a substitute
in the group stages of the Champions League, scoring in a 2-0 win over Lyon and
a hugely impressive display in a 3-1 win over Anderlecht where he opened the
scoring after 17 minutes.
Miller was forced to from the field through injury during
that match against Anderlecht in the 75th minute and left to
thunderous applause from the packed stands.
By that point, Miller had made himself an indispensable member
of a team that included luminaries such as Paul Lambert, Neil Lennon, Stilyan
Petrov, Henrik Larsson, Chris Sutton and John Hartson.
He was a star in the making, but looking back, he must
surely acknowledge that it was both the high point of his career, and the night
his career went into a downward spiral.
Sitting in the directors’ box that November night was Sir
Alex Ferguson, who had come to run the rule over a 17 year old Anderlecht
defender by the name of Vincent Kompany.
Ferguson would not in the end pursue his interest in the
Belgian, but Miller had very definitely caught his eye.
Two months later, in January 2004, Liam Miller signed a
pre-contract agreement to join Manchester United at the end of the season.
After just 26 league appearances, at the age of 23, Miller
was swapping the green and white hooped shirt that had made him a star for the
red of Manchester United.
Things would not work out for Miller at Old Trafford and
after just nine league games in two seasons, the second spent on loan at Leeds
United, he was moved on to Sunderland on a free transfer in 2006.
From Sunderland he moved to Queens Park Rangers in January
2009, but was released at the end of the season.
Miller returned to Scotland so join Hibernian in August 2009.
After two moderately successful seasons he left in June 2011 to sign for Australian
side Perth Glory and earlier this year moved on to Brisbane Roar.
Now at the age of 32, Miller can look back on a career
during which he has gained one SPL championship medal in Scotland, and one
Championship medal in England.
He could, and should, have won so much more.
The stories of Charlie Nicholas and Liam Miller should serve
as cautionary tales for Victor Wanyama this summer.
Very few players have ever left Celtic Park and gone on to
reach greater heights with other clubs.
Only two in the last 40 years can truly claim to have done
so – Kenny Dalglish and Henrik Larsson (an honourable mention should also go to
Brian McClair, although he never came close to the heights scaled by the other
two).
The other thing Dalglish and Larsson have in common, as
opposed to Nicholas and Miller, is that they left Celtic as mature, established
professionals, well-equipped to handle the pressures of playing for huge clubs
in pressure-cooker environments.
Dalglish was 26 years old and had scored over 100 league
goals by August 1977. He had also appeared in two European Cup semi-finals for
Celtic, and represented Scotland at the 1974 World Cup Finals.
Perhaps the most important factor in Dalglish’s post-Celtic success,
was that he joined Ian Paisley’s all-conquering Liverpool, a trophy-winning
machine of which he was to become the lynchpin.
Larsson was almost 26 by the time he joined Celtic and left
after seven trophy-laden seasons and a UEFA Cup Final appearance. At the age of
32, he joined Barcelona and would win the Champions League two years later,
making a decisive contribution from the bench as Barca came from behind to
defeat Arsenal.
So what of Wanyama? Should he leave Celtic this summer?
My advice to Victor would be to choose his next step wisely.
At 22 years old, he has a decade or more in front of him as a top
level footballer. Time is very much on his side.
Should he leave now, he will undoubtedly earn far more money
than Celtic can offer (although he’ll hardly end up a pauper if he stays), but
what will he have to show for it at the end of his career?
Right now, his options seem to be mid-table EPL at best.
Even if the rumours of Liverpool interest are true, the Merseyside club are a
shadow of their former selves, and he would be unlikely to win many trophies
there.
His best move may be to stay with Celtic for another
two-three seasons, winning trophies and competing in the Champions League,
before making that next step as a player at his peak. By then, should his
development progress as expected, he would have his pick of the top clubs and
be better equipped to flourish there.
Above all, Wanyama should be aware that the magic often wears off when you remove those green and white hoops. Leaving Celtic is,
in only very exceptional circumstances, an upward step.
