Gordon Strachan yesterday lamented the current mess of Scottish football and urged the game north of the border to “try to look as if it is in the 21st century”. The Celtic manager bemoaned the game’s continuing afflictions, with matches being post-poned, the saga of the Fir Park pitch, and the plight of Gretna.

Celtic were informed last night that their twice-postponed Clydesdale Bank Premier League game against Gretna would go ahead this Sunday at Almondvale Stadium in Livingston, though the news did nothing to lighten the mood around Celtic Park. The current situation has only strengthened Celtic’s conviction that both halves of the Old Firm need to leave Scottish football behind and try again to negotiate a move to the Barclays Premier League. Yesterday, on the eve of his team’s Scottish Cup quarter-final replay against Aberdeen tonight, Strachan admitted to a sense of frustration.

“The situation doesn’t help us at all, when we’re trying to sell our product around the world to sponsors,” he said. “We’re trying to give our game a higher profile while all this is going on. It’s not for the best. We have to try to show the best of Scottish football and that means everything: players, stadiums, surfaces, crowds, everything. We are trying to sell a brand and when people from around the world watch our games, I want them to see the best we have to offer. I know there’s no easy answer, and that the recent weather has been a factor, but that is what we should be doing.”

For a while yesterday, while the Celtic manager waited to hear where the game against Gretna would be played on Sunday, he was left to wonder aloud at Scottish football’s current miseries.

“OK, so we want to sell our product,” Strachan said. “[This Sunday] Celtic are away to Gretna, who aren’t sure if they’ve got a team. And we don’t know where we’re playing. We might go to a stadium that was built 60 years ago, or to one that can only hold 8,000, or to another stadium with only two stands. Or we could go to a ground where the ball gets kicked into a field.

“The package has to be good. If you are watching a game from Germany or Spain or England on TV, it fills the screen. How do we get there? I don’t know, but we all work in Scottish football, so when you go abroad you want to be proud of the league in which you are working.”

Strachan admitted to a recent episode involving a foreign player whom he was thinking of buying, in which he grew wary of what the player might think as he tried to sell Scottish football to him.

“The lad was going to a game with John Park [Celtic's head of football development], and I said to John, ‘what game are you going to?’ When he told me I said, ‘don’t even think about it.’ I don’t think it would have helped us.”

When asked about the venue for the Celtic-Gretna match, Strachan replied: “For me it will come down to what is the best surface. But I hope we play in a stadium that makes us look as if we are in the 21st century.”

Last night the SPL finally decreed that Almondvale would stage both the Celtic-Gretna game on Sunday, as well as the Gretna-Inverness Caledonian Thistle match on April 5.

Lex Gold, the SPL chief executive, said: “This is the most difficult and unprecedented fixture situation that we have faced. We thank Livingston, and the other clubs with whom we have been in discussion, for their assistance.”

— Barry Ferguson will see a specialist today about an ankle injury which has been increasingly dogging him on the field. The Rangers captain was aware of a problem during Sunday’s CIS Insurance Cup win over Dundee United but he was still named yesterday in the Scotland squad to face Croatia at Hampden Park next Wednesday. George Burley, the Scotland manager, said: “The last time Barry was with us he couldn’t really train and he is going to see a specialist about the problem.”