IN HIS brief explanation of his decision to withdraw his services from his national team, Kris Boyd tried to lay the blame firmly at George Burley's door.
Those who have sided with the Rangers striker have attempted the same thing, with some cruder pundits implying the Scotland manager must be little short of a halfwit if he could not see the merits of using Boyd against Norway.
Burley's tactics in
the 0-0 draw were certainly debatable at best, but he could rightly argue that if he is indeed blind to Boyd's virtues he is far from being the only one. Walter Smith frequently decides he can do without Boyd in his starting line-up at Rangers, and he did the same thing during his reign as Scotland manager. Does he, like Burley, simply not understand football well enough?
Paul Le Guen, Smith's forerunner at Ibrox, was another to be peculiarly immune to Boyd's charms. Was he also sadly lacking in his appreciation of the game?
Hardly. The point is, if Burley were the only one to be sparing in his use of Boyd, his detractors might have a case. But the fact is that several managers who have dealt with the player have come to the same conclusion – he is a talented finisher who has not done enough to develop other aspects of his game.
It is a vicious circle, of course. You cannot sharpen up and prove your utility at the top level of either club or international football if you do not get a regular game.
But then there are things you can do to try to persuade a manager to pick you. Knuckling down and working hard at training is one of them. Going in a huff is not.
Perhaps part of Boyd's problem lies in the fact that his talent came quite so easily to him. He is a natural goalscorer, with an enviable instinct for positioning, as he soon proved when given a chance at Kilmarnock.
Born in Irvine in 1983, Boyd was on the books at Rugby Park before his 16th birthday. For three consecutive seasons from 2002-03, he was Kilmarnock's leading goalscorer, and Cardiff City and Sheffield Wednesday were among the clubs to show an interest in him.
His own interest, however, was in securing a move to Rangers, and terms were agreed just before Christmas in 2005. He left Kilmarnock on a high by scoring the winning goal in their match at Falkirk.
Given the manner in which he had thrived in a relatively modest team, there were many who expected Boyd to make significant improvement at Rangers, where he could learn from more experienced and sophisticated team-mates. He certainly began well, scoring a hat-trick on his debut – albeit only against Peterhead in the Scottish Cup – and ending the season as top scorer for both his current and previous employers.
But then the problems started. He was not an automatic starter under Le Guen, who had taken over at Ibrox by the start of 2006-07, and he courted controversy by publicly siding with Barry Ferguson after the latter had been dropped from the team.
Le Guen was soon on his way, but Smith, his successor, appeared no more convinced of the need to play Boyd regularly. Indeed, the new Rangers manager had already given proof of that when in charge of Scotland.
And so it has gone on. Boyd's champions point to his goalscoring record, but his detractors say he needs to make his game less one-dimensional.
And, as Burley said last week, you cannot simply look at someone's scoring figures in isolation. You have to assess them in the context of which teams the goals came against, and at which level of competition.
Internationally, for example, Boyd has an apparently highly credible seven goals from 15 appearances. But his goals have come against Bulgaria, Georgia, South Africa, the Faroe Islands and Lithuania – relatively humble opponents.
The tougher the opposition, the more Boyd's flaws are exposed. Yes, he might still pop up in the right place at the right time to score against the likes of the Netherlands, but by the time he did so his low work rate might already have played a part in allowing the Dutch a couple of goals.
The fact that he has not acknowledged his own deficiencies only makes things worse. Until he does, he is likely to find that managers – including Burley's eventual successor – will continue to be immune to his appeal.
FACT BOXKris Boyd has faced Celtic or Rangers 30 times in his career as a Kilmarnock or Rangers player, scoring four goals.
30 January 2002 (SPL): Kilmarnock 2 (Boyd 85, Johnson 90 pen), Rangers 2 (Ronald de Boer 34, Flo 55)
26 February 2005 (SPL):
Rangers 2 (Prso 29, Novo 41), Kilmarnock 1 (Boyd 76)
11 December 2005 (SPL):
Kilmarnock 2 (McDonald 61, Boyd 82), Rangers 3 (Lovenkrands 16, 42, 72)
5 May 2007 (SPL): Rangers 2 (Boyd 34, Adam 55), Celtic 0
The full article contains 851 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
