Press ganged

EVEN WHEN he is right, Gordon Strachan can appear to be in the wrong. It is a predicament that will stalk the Celtic manager's every move for the rest of this season, no matter whether his side emerge victorious from the Old Firm derby on their home patch this afternoon. Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink should know how that feels.

A strong case can be forwarded for stating that, overall, the Dutchman has been a sound contributor to the Celtic cause since his £3.4m move from PSV Eindhoven in July 2006. Indeed, his strike-rate of 37 goals in only 72 appearances suggests his efforts are deserving of greater appreciation than they have engendered.

Yet currently it is a toss-up between the striker and Gary Caldwell as to who the club's supporters would place first when compiling a list of players they blame for their team's domestic struggles this season. Strachan has a contrived explanation as to why this should be so.

"The problem is that he doesn't have too many mates in the press," he says. "Some of our strikers, Maciej Zurawski being another, have been marginalised because of that. Absolutely. Does it start with the media first, or the fans (when a player is unpopular]? You media boys have the ability to start wars. So it is very naive of you to say 'it is the fans really'. It is the way it works here.

"Listen, Jan has a place in the Dutch national side. If we put him up for sale tomorrow I know there would be four or five clubs in the Premiership who would want him. He could go to most top clubs. His goal record here is one in two."

It is equally naive of Strachan to believe that some sort of campaign in the press and over the airwaves has turned supporters against Vennegoor of Hesselink. They have required no coaxing to come to the conclusion that he is not their sort of player. Granted, it hasn't helped that some journalists have pursued a preposterous line that, for all his ability to find the target and good touch and awareness, he is some sort of lumbering, work-shy dud. And his nationality might be a factor in that.

Scottish players, especially those who perform with distinction for the national team when it is on the up, are given latitude by controversy-spinning commentators not afforded to Johnny Foreigners not hitting the heights. How else to explain the contrasting treatment of Vennegoor of Hesselink and Kenny Miller last season. The dreadfully hackneyed term 'jury is still out' was applied to Vennegoor of Hesselink as he was bagging goals at a rate only bettered by Henrik Larsson and Mark Viduka in the past decade. At the same time, Miller was treated with kid gloves as he found scoring more of a conundrum than any Celtic forward since the mid-1990s.

Strachan, though, requires to be coaxed to pinpoint the real reason Vennegoor of Hesselink will always figure highly in any unpopularity contests among Celtic followers: he doesn't look the part. He is not the blood and thunder, battering-ram attacker Scottish supporters expect of frontmen who possess imposing 6ft 3in frames. He has a tendency to blow his jaws and stand with hands on hips as if overwhelmed by the sheer physicality of the game in this country.

"I know how you look can count against you," Strachan says. "People who played here like Billy Stark were terrific but there are some players the fans don't recognise as the type of person they want them to be."

Vennegoor of Hesselink works best as a static pivot in Celtic's final third, from where he can look to provide headed knock-downs, dink balls across the box or produce close-range finishes. In part, admittedly, that is because he lacks the mobility to chase down the channels – a deficiency considered an unforgivable crime in the eyes of a football populace who demand perpetual motion from those turning out for their team. It is for this reason that Scott McDonald has been largely forgiven a recent form slump that has left him with only three goals from his past 14 appearances. Across the same number of matches, his Dutch strike-partner has netted eight times and has not gone more than two games without finding the net since early December.

Yet, even the fact Vennegoor of Hesselink has turned his season around after a largely unproductive first four months – during which he was hampered by injury – has been given a negative spin. He has only bucked up his ideas because Georgios Samaras's arrival on loan forced him to look over his shoulder is the accepted wisdom. Yet couldn't it be that he has started scoring again regularly because, with 90 goals in 187 league games for PSV and 64 rig-rippling moments in 160 league encounters with FC Twente, that is what he has done throughout his career?

Maybe Vennegoor of Hesselink made a breakthrough in his quest for acceptance when his 93rd-minute winner in the last derby 11 days ago brought him a first goal against Rangers. It was only his third major occasion strike following sumptuous efforts in Champions League encounters with Manchester United and Barcelona.

That is a modest return. But the striker is in good company when it comes to having to wait to open his goal account in the Old Firm confrontation. Last week was his fifth appearance in the fixture. It took John Hartson the same number of them to find the net against the club's great rivals. Henrik Larsson didn't do so, meanwhile, until his seventh derby. And that is the only respect in which Vennegoor of Hesselink will ever be mentioned in the same breath as those two venerated forwards.

Strachan accepts the club had "better players a couple of years ago." No one would demure. But he is entitled to ask the Celtic supporters to accept that Vennegoor of Hesselink, even with his deficiencies, might still be good enough.