Exclusive Interview with Gordon Strachan: Manchester United, Scotland and Premier League Insights

Last updated: by Liam Reaney

Scottish football legend Gordon Strachan sits down with the Best Betting Sites team to share his insights on the current football landscape. In this exclusive interview, Strachan discusses Ruben Amorim’s Manchester United rebuild, Scotland’s World Cup dreams against Brazil, Mo Salah’s controversial outburst at Liverpool, and much more. He also reflects on his managerial career and offers his thoughts on the Premier League title race.

Manchester United

Are United finally on the right track under Ruben Amorim?

To be ruthless, you’ve got to have players like Erling Haaland. You need someone who makes it look easy when the ball is flashed across the box and gets a foot in there, or jumps higher than anybody.

That’s not luck. They’re just great players. So what Amorim needs at Man United are great players and great teammates.

I went to see them versus Brighton. I thought Man United won because of their two great players: Bryan Mbeumo and Bruno Fernandes. Now, if you asked me who was the best coached team and who were the better team on the day, I probably would have said, as a team, Brighton.

So it’s great players who can make that difference. I think until you get great players playing for you, you’re going to struggle. You really are going to struggle. A lack of brilliance is not an excuse in the Premier League.

All the top teams have got great players. Man United have got a system. It’s fine. But I think that they can go ahead, and sometimes keep hold of the lead. Sometimes they can make a comeback, too. But there are times when they need to change a game, and what they do is put Amad Diallo on at wing-back.

They’ve let Antony, Rashford and Garnacho go, and they don’t really have someone who can make a difference. I’m not saying it’s wrong to have got rid of those specific players, but they do need those types of players.

That’s a problem with the squad. They’ve decided they don’t need wingers, and they’ve got two No 10s with Cunha and Mbuemo. They’ve nobody to change the game out wide, because making a change at wing-back isn’t going to provide you with a matchwinner.

They’re so wedded to one system, and that system requires specific types of players to change the game if you can’t change the system. And that highlights where the recruitment has been so wrong at Manchester United over the years. Amorim has a squad of players that have been bought for different managers and different systems.

When they’ve got good possession and when they get their wing backs up high up, it’s the same thing that Man City do with one-up, which is Haaland. Man City always try to get two midfield players in the inside right and inside left positions.

United are doing the same as a good Man City attacking formation, but they lack real quality players out wide, and they lack a striker like Haaland. They don’t have someone like Doku who can take people on. They have a similar approach when they attack, but each player in their position is much better at Manchester City.

Despite the improvement, United are still a long way from challenging. Jim Ratcliffe wants a PL title by 2028 – is he dreaming?

It’s great that you have ambition and I think a businessman has ambitions, but I’ve got to say, I like his attitude. I like what he’s done in business elsewhere. But football’s a completely different business.

I keep telling people in most businesses, you can go gradually. You have your analytics, graphs, your meetings and your strategy. You have that in football, but the only thing that matters is that you win and win quickly. That’s the only collateral you can get.

You can have great plans and all the right people behind the scenes, but if someone misses an open goal, it can ruin those plans almost through no fault of your own. You can’t get insurance for disasters like that. The only real protection from those kinds of things is making sure you have enough great players.

Have you enjoyed Mason Mount having a more extended run in the team than we have seen before so far this season?

But where does he go? Where does he go on this team? His best position is probably where Cunha or Mbeumo play. I think he’s the kind of player who needs people around him to help them tick.

I don’t think he has the instinct to pick the ball up and go past people. I think he has the talent to ride a challenge or play a one-two and beat people, but he’s not the same as Cunha and Mbeumo who can eliminate players. Mason isn’t a wing-back, either, so I don’t know where he’s going to play. I’m not sure he could be one of the midfield two, it seems like Amorim doesn’t think so yet. He can’t replace Fernandes, he’s not got his quality.

So he’s in a difficult position because United are always playing a back three, and it’s hard for him to adapt into that. He was recruited into a team that had 4-3-3 or 4-4-1-1, so it’s a very different system for him to adapt to.

United Rumours

Kobbie Mainoo is agitating to leave. That would be another homegrown player out of the door – should United be doing more to keep hold of their youngsters or is it better to flog them?

Paul Scholes blasted Amorim for not picking him, but not picking players isn’t treating them badly. If the manager is speaking to you, telling you what he wants from you, if he’s telling you the truth and treating you as a human, then it’s just him doing his job and making his decisions.

The manager might prefer Bruno Fernandes and Casemiro, so I think that’s not bad treatment, that’s just football and the manager’s decision-making. If he decides Kobbie Mainoo is better than Casemiro next week and drops Casemiro, has he treated Casemiro badly? No, that’s just what you do as a manager.

He’s making the best judgement he can to win matches for the football club and I think it’s silly when players claim a manager doesn’t like them. Trust me, I was giving games to players who I’d never have over for a dinner player. I picked the best player for the job, because they did what I asked him.

But at the same time, it makes sense that the young man wants to go and play football, and at 22, now is the time he needs to be on the pitch regularly. If he misses lots of football now then he will probably miss the chance to be a great player. He has to go and play, but the thing is with the games ahead and, during this busy period, Amorim might be thinking he needs to keep him around. On the other hand, he might think that in the long-term, this is what the club and player needs, for him to get out and develop.

So there will be times that he will actually put the player first. Because he might let him go on loan and weaken his own squad. I’ve been in that position, and you know it can backfire on you. And nobody ever congratulates a manager for risking their own position.

Leeds

Have the last three results kept Farke in his job for the rest of the season?

When you see a manager under pressure, or a team that is struggling, you usually see players who are disheartened, lacking confidence, or having trouble putting effort in. But with Leeds, I never saw that. The players were always putting the effort in.

But at the same time, a lot of Leeds players, I thought if you put them up for sale, I wouldn’t see many Premier Leagues rushing in to buy them. I don’t mean that disrespectfully, it’s just that they didn’t quite have the ability for the Premier League.

But usually you see a struggling manager who loses the dressing room, they say, or the players down tools, but that wasn’t happening at Leeds.

I think they will have to get by on common sense and effort, and hope that is enough, because there are not enough star players there. They’re a bit like Scotland. They need to make the most of what they have and they have to earn their wins as a team, every move has to be earned. Unless they get a Scott McTominay, they will struggle in the best league in the world.

I’m quite happy with how they are going now, because they spent a fair amount, but I don’t want to see them go and spend £300 million that could put themselves back into the crisis they found themselves in a few years ago. Will they beat the drop? I’m saying yes, absolutely.

Coventry City

Should Frank Lampard and Coventry be looking to buy for the Premier League in January?

Basically, no. Premier League level players will want to go to the Premier League. They’ll not want to come down a league. Because what you’ll have if you look for Premier League players, you have to pay them Premier League money.

And then the boys that are there already are going, ‘Well, just a second. We’ve been battling away for ages. Getting to here, top of the league, flying, and these guys are walking in and picking up rewards without doing anything.’

Then you’ll have them all asking for improved wages. You have to have the mindset that Norwich, West Brom or Burnley have had when they’ve gone up. Those clubs know they can go down as well as up.

They’re not going to spend money to have the club go into administration and liquidation. Like what you’re seeing with Sheffield Wednesday or Derby Country. Leeds almost blew up when they spent big. I think you have to accept that and you cut your cloth accordingly. You can’t easily jump to that next level, if you ever can jump at all.

Crystal Palace have done exceptionally well, but at some point someone will take their best players and their manager, and there’s no guarantee that they can repeat the magic.

Is Frank Lampard their best manager since yourself?

I think Mark Robbins also needs some praise for what he did before Frank Lampard arrived. He was forward-thinking, a clever manager. He did an incredible job and laid the foundations for Frank to go in there and succeed.

He was able to get them to a solid place financially, with the new owner too. I think because of that, Mark Robbins is still Coventry’s best manager since Jimmy Hill.

Celtic

What would be a good season for Celtic from here?

But there’s not much wrong at the club. There’s absolutely not much wrong at the club. I think the sticking point might be how to get the club to challenge in Europe once more.

But the good thing is I still have the record: The worst debut for a Celtic manager ever. I’ve got that on my CV, so Wilfried Nancy doesn’t have to worry about that!

Scotland

Is Scotland vs Brazil after an 18 year absence the stuff of dreams?

Well, it is the stuff of dreams because one of my experiences was playing against Brazil in the World Cup in ’82 and that was just phenomenal.

That World Cup. I will never, ever know how Brazil didn’t win it. You think about the midfield of Socrates and Zico.

Jesus. I mean I was at the game, I was playing No. 10. But literally the referee could have given me a yellow card for time wasting for just watching. Being there, it was a phenomenal experience with the two sets of fans getting together and not a bit of trouble, and they had fun.

So that’s the thing, it’s probably the game I’ll try and get to because it is such fun. I didn’t have much fun when I played, but everybody else seemed to have so much fun. So I’m going to try and experience it, try and get to Scotland v Brazil and experience a bit of fun. This might be a chance for me to just appreciate a game of football as a fan, not a manager.

How excited are you now that you know Scotland’s opposition?

I think the new format could be a bit of a problem, a bit like the new Champions League. When you’re 27th in the league, everyone is in it, but it’s all a bit diluted until you get to the knockout stages.

I worry that there are so many games that there’s no longer an edge to them. There’s 48 teams in it now, so you should really be embarrassed if you don’t quality for it. I think you have 32 teams in the next round, too, so really Scotland should think they’ve got a good chance of actually getting into the knockouts.

You used to have only a few weeks for a World Cup. Now, I don’t know how long this one is going to go on for.

Is Scott McTominay as good as any of England’s central midfielders?

Technically, probably not. But you’ve got to find a system that suits you. The people tell me, well, Scotland, they’ve got a striker who doesn’t score a lot of goals. Now, that’s fair. But they’ve got a midfield player that scores a lot of goals, more than many strikers. So why worry, you know, if your goals are coming from somewhere?

Steve Clarke has found a system that suits him. Now, whether he plays three at the back or the back four, it doesn’t matter. He’s in a position where they allow McTominay just to take off and get into the box. They don’t ask him to come back and play with the ball and all that. They ask them to get in a position to be patient and affect the game when it gets in the last third, one way or another, so the system suits him perfectly.

And we know we are not a country with wide men, wide attackers. We’re full of midfield players. Steve has noticed that, and thought there’s no point having some of the best players sitting beside him, and some of the weaker players playing the system.

This is the best system that I’ve got. And what is part of the best system is having McTominay be further ahead than most of them, the other midfield players. So we get the ball in the box. The boys who are not great goal scorers like Dykes and Adams, they get in the box and cause havoc. John McGinn gets in the box and he causes a bit of havoc and Scott gets in the box as well. He’s got that ability to relax when he gets in there, but he’s also an incredibly powerful figure. And it works for Scotland.

The fans themselves will be able to enjoy themselves, and a fantastic atmosphere which will be a one-off atmosphere for them. Not only for the players but for the fans. So it’ll be unique.

Premier League

What did you make of Mo Salah’s extraordinary comments after Leeds draw that “he’s been thrown under the bus” and that “someone doesn’t want me at the club”?

Over the years he’s given us wonderful football. He seems to be a humble guy, who gets on with doing his job.

After that outburst, I hope he wakes up this morning and goes, ‘What have I done?’

I hope he just apologises to everyone. We all have moments of craziness that can perplex the rest of the world, or surprise people around us. I hope he’s thinking about how long he’s been at the club, how he’s been looked after, worked with so many great people and played with so many great players. I hope he realises that being at Liverpool made him a great player, because you don’t become a great on your own. You need a team.

He’s been given time and respect by everybody at Liverpool, and to blow that up in a moment, maybe a mini-breakdown in an instant of disappointment, it would tarnish a great legacy.

I was watching a Kenny Dalglish documentary at the weekend, and what came across is that Kenny is all about looking after your team-mates. Mo needs to keep that in mind.

This was a kind of out-of-body experience. He’s not been singled out, almost every one of those players under Arne Slot this year have been dropped. So don’t tell me you think that doesn’t apply to you.

He’s made some bold, but vague statements. I think he has to make it clear what he means. Either be clear or don’t say anything, don’t leave it for people to guess.

What typically happens when a star player goes to war with his manager / did it ever happen to you (as a manager), and how did you deal with it?

I’ve experienced it as a manager a couple of times, but back then you could have those arguments face to face. It was never an interview in the press that blew up.

You’d have a raging argument with a player, especially if you left him not. I’ve done that, but that was before social media, so it never really got out what had happened, so you were well covered.

As for me as a player, I never had an argument with a manager for leaving me out. But I was never like Mo Salah – he’s never been left out much at all. We also have to wonder whose fault it is. Is it Mo Salah’s?

I think in the euphoria of the league win, we all thought he was just going to go on and on, still scoring goals. He was scoring goals last season when they won the league, but did he have the same influence on the side as when he was alongside Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino? He seemed to be a bigger presence back then. Now, he’s purely numbers. Incredible numbers of course.

I wonder if that was the best it was going to get, and perhaps that was the time to move on. The same with Virgil van Dijk. I thought it might be best just to move on, because that was as good as it was going to get. I think I could only see a wee bit of disappointment for these two guys after their new contracts, because decline was almost inevitable at some point.

Especially for Salah, when they sign forwards like Isak, Ekitike and Wirtz. They were always going to have to make room for them.

You have to wrap this thing up one way or another. Maybe he wakes up and apologises to the club and his team-mates. People would move on and accept that apology. Then his legacy will be protected.

Do you think Arne Slot will see out the season at Anfield?

In a way, I think that Mo Salah’s statement has made Arne Slot’s position stronger. Because when you’re under pressure like that, and something like this happens, Slot will say he’s got to stay here now and show everyone what he can do. And the board at Liverpool now can’t be seen to question the manager after Salah’s outburst, that’s for sure.

That would look weak, and I think over the years the Liverpool board have generally made good decisions about backing their manager. I would think he’s earned the right to stay a lot longer. I also think that changing the manager now wouldn’t really alter much. There are a few players who are underperforming and it just seems to be one season too many for a few of them.

It’s the beauty of management. We’ve all done it as managers, all owners too, they’ve given it one too many seasons.

In the summer, everyone was saying to give Slot everything he wants, give him all the money he wants. You can’t do that. I think perhaps he should have got rid of more players in the summer.

Is this the year that Arsenal finally win the title?

Seriously, I said at the beginning of the season, I thought they’d win the league. I just think that they’ve deserved it as well, because they’ve got close on many occasions, they’ve pushed teams, they’ve took huge disappointment coming second for the last three years.

I think when you’re at a football club, even when I was at Aberdeen as a young man, we had to take a few slaps before we actually started winning anything. I think they’ve passed the slap stage now and I think it’s time for them to win something. And I think they do deserve to win something. If you just look over the last four or five years the football they have played has been outstanding

The manager stayed at it, persevering. Great midfield players. They’ve got a great squad now. I do think they’ll win it.

As for the Champions League, well they can win that too. Yes, they can win both. Will they win both? I don’t know, but they can win one. I think when you do that to Bayern Munich and teams like that, you’re doing well.

They played Aston Villa and got beat, but Aston Villa are probably up there with the top six teams in Europe now in terms of form.

Is Thomas Frank being unfairly treated by Tottenham fans? Are they the worst set of fans in the PL after how Ange was treated?

I think it’s hard to distinguish too much between the character of fans. It’s just a difference in the noise from the size of the crowd.

At Dundee at the weekend, the crowd isn’t as big as it is at Spurs, but all fans are basically the same. They might tell you they’re different. But Liverpool fans moaned and groaned in the past Man Utd the same, Newcastle fans were awful to Alan Pardew. But every set of fans say they are great.

They all do it. It doesn’t change. The only difference is the volume. That’s all it is. But you’ve got a manager at Motherwell last season, because his family was getting so much abuse, he called it a day. Sometimes it can get more personal when the crowds are smaller, because you can hear every word being shouted. You can sometimes see this crazy person.

I remember speaking to Steve McClaren about all the abuse when he was England manager, and I said, ‘Are you earning more than ever?’ He said yes, and so I replied, ‘That’s what you get paid for, all the nonsense that comes with being the England manager.’

It’s the same with the Celtic job. What did I get paid for? I got paid for the stress that comes with it. Not for the fact that I’m coaching. I was coaching great players and it was easy. I actually love walking on the coaching field going, oh, Nakamura, McGeady, Maloney, all these people playing, Thomas Gravesen. It’s just wonderful. I just need to tell them things and they do it. So it was lovely and I enjoyed their company. It was good fun. But I got paid for the stress that comes with it.

So that’s why these managers now get loads of money. So if people boo, fine, as long as it’s booing and it’s not vicious, and they’re not running at your car or attacking you. It’s fine. And actually after a while you don’t hear it. You actually don’t. It doesn’t bother you anymore because you get to the point where, well, that’s the way it is.

Then you go, right, well I’m just going to dig in here and show them what I can do, you know. And then funny enough, when you get over it and you start being successful, you forget all the boos. I can’t even vaguely remember that, so it’s a strange one. But we do get, as I say, well paid for the stress it comes with.

Who is the best midfielder in the Premier League?

I’ve got to say Adam Wharton is the one I like watching more than anybody. I remember watching him for Blackburn in a pre-season game at Dundee many years ago.

Everything about him was just him looking to get the ball forward, and if you’ve seen his passing yesterday (Fulham vs Palace), he ran the game, didn’t he?

But he’s seeing things other people don’t see. It’s the kind of passes he makes. Some players hit 40-year balls and nothing happens from it. This guy takes five players out of the game with one pass over 15 yards.

First of all, you need the vision to do that and second, you need the technique to do that. He’s got both.

There’s some great midfield players in the country at the moment, but I just think that Wharton is the one who, if I was a top team, I would try and buy him. He’d be perfect for Manchester United. Go and get your cash out for him. Go and get him.

Champions League

Out of the current crop, which team would you pay to watch in the Champions League?

I would go and watch Bayern Munich for the whole experience. I just think if I would go and watch them at their home ground, experience that, I would go and do that.

I like to go to Arsenal but it’s hard for me to go and watch them these days. When I was the Scotland manager under the pretence that there may be a Scotland player in the game, it was tough because often there wasn’t a player I could really consider.

You can see everybody look at me and think, ‘What’s he doing here? He really should be at Birmingham’. And I had this kind of look on my face, that I know I really shouldn’t be here, but I enjoyed it.

The Team Behind This Interview

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