In a career sprinkled with sliding doors moments, this was the one which would eventually change everything. For both Scott Brown and Celtic.
Brown’s fledgling Parkhead career had reached a crossroads following the departure of Gordon Strachan as manager. And although an old mentor in Tony Mowbray had arrived on the scene as the new boss, within six months Brown had been written off as £4.4million worth of dead wood. In December of 2009, Mowbray pulled the injured 24-year-old aside at the club’s Lennoxtown HQ and instructed him to find himself a new club in the January window.
When Record Sport broke the bombshell news, Celtic issued an angry denial and went to the lengths of releasing a statement in Brown’s name, denying that any such conversation had taken place. On February 2, Brown returned to action from Mowbray’s bench with 16 minutes remaining in a 1-0 defeat at Kilmarnock. To his astonishment, he was given the armband for the first time before stepping onto the pitch.
