Gordon Strachan Team Quotations

But I remember playing in a team which won ten games on the trot but ended up fourth. I am not saying they're going to do that, but it can happen.

I've seen teams spend £150 million and get nowhere near the Champions League. It has taken Manchester City a billion to get there. There are no guarantees.

People talk about how you make team spirit - is it golf days or going out drinking together? That doesn't count. When you drink, you just tell lies to each other anyway and talk rubbish.

The reality, ... is that I need to win games of football. That's where the pressure and the sleepless nights come from. There's a fantasy pressure with this job but none of that matters. I need to make this team into a good unit, need to take it forward, give it a change of pace, need to get it younger and to use the experience of the lads we've got here. I need Lennon and Sutton and people like that to go and show how you handle being a Celtic player.

He [Sir Alex Ferguson] used to play tapes of Bill Shankly talking. I remember that and a singer he liked. I don't know who it was but it was crap. He played it on the team bus too, and all the boys hated it. Until one night it got chucked away. If he's still wondering who threw that tape off the bus, it was me. So maybe he was right and I'm not to be trusted.....

When you make those decisions, it is hard because you know you have to let down people who are playing well. I just wish we had that sort of competition everywhere in the team. Two of our best players form-wise have not been getting a game, but I don't have that dilemma elsewhere. The rest of the team really picks itself.

I am happy to have him in the squad and, if fit, to train with the first team unless something drastic happens.

I lived in England for 21 years and I know that everybody, apart from some of the teams that think they might get relegated, would love Celtic and Rangers to be in the English League. I think it will happen eventually.

I've never thought about it that much; I just try to have a plan of how to play the game. Within that plan you have to take teams that are good at defending physically and make them think. In the first half we didn't make Hearts think enough. We made them defend physically, which they handled. We made them think more in the second half. Again, you just can't play the one way all the time. If the team you play against can get in that mentality, then all they have to do is defend. If you can make opponents think, then defend physically, then think... that is what you are trying to achieve that with your team.

What you have tomorrow is two teams in a rich vein of form. I won't kid my players - they are playing against a very good Hearts team.

It was hilarious this morning. I actually used it in my team talk. Nobody bothered one little bit. It took our minds off the game for a wee while.