“I’m not asking any player or supporter to like me. All you want as a manager is respect.” – Gordon Strachan, June 2007.

Some would have you believe that these words have come back to haunt Gordon Strachan in the past seven days, but they haven’t. And if Celtic lose to Rangers this Saturday at Ibrox without Aiden McGeady, the man banished by Strachan for two weeks, then the Celtic manager still won’t be haunted by them. A football manager’s principles have to be more weather durable and longer lasting than that.

If it is true that McGeady called Strachan what various witnesses have claimed – and “you are an a***hole” seems about the most tame of the McGeady outbursts – then it is hard to argue with the stance the Celtic manager has taken against the player. It can only be repeated: if a boss, a manager or a foreman in any walk of life allows an underling to abuse him in front of his staff, and then proceeds to treat it lightly or airily, it can only lead to the dilution of his own authority.

In punishing McGeady as he has done, Strachan has one aim and one aim only: self-protection.

It is true that the Celtic punishment of McGeady is draconian. It also seems true to me that, at some point or other, the day will come when a British footballer will take these Dickensian disciplinary codes of football – instant, swingeing punishment and Siberian-style banishments – and challenge them in a court of law. When it happens, I’d really like to be there to see the jaws drop at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg at the sheer backwardness of the game. What a laugh it will be.

Let’s just take this one step further.

Suppose that Peter Lawwell, the Celtic chief executive who has enacted this punishment on McGeady, was found by a superior at Celtic – Dermot Desmond, for argument’s sake – to have stepped out of line in quite a strong fashion. Can anyone seriously imagine Lawwell being ordered by the club to vacate his office for two weeks and clean the Celtic Park loos and sweep the steps? That, though, is what has happened to McGeady.

I defend Strachan’s right to admonish the player and, in so doing, to protect his authority. But it is the system and method of football’s punishment which occasionally seems so ludicrous.

Various rumours have been sweeping around about Strachan (and they have only reaffirmed Strachan’s long-held belief that it is best to remain utterly and gloriously oblivious to these things). It is said that he has his “Parkhead favourites”. It is claimed that some Celtic players find him “too fussy” and intense. Oh, really?

Might this be in the same way that Martin O’Neill was found by some at Parkhead to be “woolly-headed”? Or might it be in the same way that many an Old Trafford player down the years is said to have “hated” Sir Alex Ferguson? In truth, if you are a football manager, and you have the strength of character to remain in charge, then who cares what a player thinks about you? As Strachan famously said in June 2007: “I’m not here to be liked. All you want as a manager is respect.”

If Strachan goes on to win a fourth successive SPL title, such rumours about certain Celtic players bitching about him will only look absurd. Having won three successive titles, such suggestions already look pretty silly, but a fourth title would make the Celtic manager bombproof. And, right now, one of those rare things has occurred: a majority of the Celtic support are with Strachan over his current spat with McGeady.

The 22-year-old Ireland winger, in my experience, is a polite, courteous and engaging figure, and I don’t mind saying so. I like McGeady, I always have done, much in the way that many footballers – Barry Ferguson being one, Neil Lennon being another – come over as affable and impossible to dislike.

But McGeady is in the wrong. You cannot abuse your manager and not expect to suffer. I doubt there can be any way back for McGeady at Celtic, but if there is, he will be weaker, and Strachan much the stronger for it.

And another thing...

Scottish clubs winning in the transfer stakes

The more you watch Pedro Mendes, the more immense he is in the middle of the park for Rangers. And, having watched Mendes quite a few times now, I’m also left asking: what is it with these totally skewed values which make up the cross-border transfer market in Britain?

Mendes, we are led to believe, cost Rangers £2.75 million from Portsmouth. That figure, I think, is reasonably accurate – certainly, Rangers couldn’t afford to go much higher than that these days. Meanwhile, Alan Hutton goes south to Tottenham Hotspur from Rangers for £10 million, and Carlos Cuéllar to Aston Villa for £8.5 million.

Is Mendes really worth just a fraction of these two players? I doubt it. All of which makes you think that, somehow, Scottish clubs with their lesser resources do better out of the transfer market than their English equivalents with their barrowloads of TV money. The truth is, if Rangers hadn’t just got Mendes in August for such a tidy sum, they’d be wanting £6 million minimum for him now.

My critics and their disappearing act

I’ve had quite an intriguing experience recently while making a mini-documentary about the Old Firm which is to be broadcast this coming Friday evening on The World Tonight on Radio 4 – the day before the Old Firm derby at Ibrox.

The remit from the BBC was quite simple. “You have been highly critical of Rangers FC in your writing and broadcasting, especially in regard to Rangers supporters and bigotry,” it said. “So let’s hear your case – and let your critics have their say, too.”

I must say it all sounded fair enough to me. But, blow me, see when it came to rounding up “the critics” as they are self-styled... I’ve hardly seen so many people scurrying up alleyways or suddenly going lame from old shrapnel wounds, making their attendance at the debate impossible.

For those Rangers supporters from the various groups who have wanted to “argue football” with me, I mistakenly thought, here is their golden chance. But no, various ailments and sneezes meant that quite a few – the serially-aggrieved Rangers Supporters Trust among them – couldn’t come to the microphone with me.

In football, you quickly come to appreciate the empty bluster of hardcore fans.

In the end I did manage to meet a group of Rangers supporters, who put their case robustly to me. But to those others who have tried to be on my case, I say, come on chaps, play up!