Gordon Strachan has broken his self-imposed vow of silence as he puts the final touches to his preparations to secure a fourth successive Clydesdale Bank Premier League title. The Celtic manager revealed yesterday that he need a break from the media scrutiny after his team became champions two months ago.

Strachan adopted a low profile at Tannadice on May 22 when Celtic clinched the third title of his tenure and has not spoken during pre-season games in England or Portugal. However, he gave his reasons yesterday to the club’s official magazine, the Celtic View, ahead of today’s trip to the Netherlands for the Rotterdam tournament, where Celtic will face Tottenham Hotspur tomorrow and Feyenoord on Sunday, before launching the defence of the league crown on August 10 at home at St Mirren.

“We had won the league and if anybody wanted to talk to the players I didn’t have a problem with that,” he said, “but I just felt that the team themselves could do the talking if they wanted to and I just wanted to get away. I didn’t want stressful questions during my holidays and people were asking, ‘Why don’t we do something?’ and my attitude was, ‘It’s my holidays.’

“All people want to do is talk about transfers, who’s coming in, who’s going out, and from a two-minute interview you’ll be splashed all over the papers, who then have their comment and go on to ask you to explain what you’ve said. So that two-minute interview can take three days. I just needed a break. I don’t have a problem with the players speaking, but I’d imagine that most newspaper guys needed a break from me as well.”

Celtic secured an impressive friendly win in Portugal last Saturday by defeating FC Porto, their nemesis from the 2003 Uefa Cup final, and Strachan hopes that the Rotterdam tournament will serve as a dry run for a successful Champions League campaign this season. “We will try out a few systems against good opposition and ask ourselves the question, ‘Will this be good enough to use in European games away from home?’ ” he said. “I have to think of that.”