Gordon Strachan must have been smiling to himself when he heard John Carver describe Scotland’s Oriam training base as a health hazard.
Edinburgh’s multi-million pound white elephant might boast the grand title of Scotland’s national performance centre but in reality it’s little more than a pimped-up public leisure centre with a fancy name. A safety risk? It turned out to be the hill that Strachan died on as Scotland boss – knifed in the back by the SFA’s then chief executive Stewart Regan for stubbornly refusing to bow to the Yorkshireman’s demands to decant his team there to the other end of the M8.
That was why Strachan was kicked to the curb by Regan just days after missing out on a place in the World Cup play-offs by a single point back in October 2017. It was nothing to do with football and was carried out despite a surge in results that had seen Strachan’s side clock up a year without defeat before the draw in Slovenia that saw them fall at the final hurdle.
