Gordon Strachan Player Profile

Gor­don Strachan

Edin­burgh born and bred, Gor­don Strachan star­ted his pro­fes­sional career with Dun­dee before he decided to join forces with Aber­deen. The mid­fielder even­tu­ally came to prom­in­ence in the fine team of the 1980s who won two Scot­tish League titles, three Scot­tish Cups, the European Cup Win­ners’ Cup and the European Super Cup.

A self motiv­ated per­former, Gor­don Strachan was cap­able of drag­ging him­self through a foot­ball match by his moral boot­straps and, as his fame spread, the hard work­ing and strong run­ning mid­field dynamo was even­tu­ally lured to Manchester United by Old Traf­ford Head Coach Ron Atkin­son who splashed out a trans­fer fee of £600,000 for his ser­vices at the begin­ning of the 1984–85 cam­paign. The Manchester United sup­port­ers imme­di­ately took the player to their hearts and he went on to spend five mem­or­able sea­sons with the Old Traf­ford club. What the former Dun­dee and Aber­deen hero may have lacked in height he more than made up for in other areas, being remark­ably quick and extremely power­ful in the tackle. Iron­ic­ally, Strachan was allowed to join Leeds United for a bar­gain fee of only £300,000 at the back end of the 1988–89 cam­paign at a time when the play­maker was enjoy­ing one of his best spells ever with Manchester United. While at Elland Road, the Scot was named Foot­ball Writers’ Asso­ci­ation Player of the Year in 1992 after skip­per­ing The Pea­cocks to their first Eng­lish Foot­ball League Cham­pi­on­ship in eight­een years. At the end of the day, Gor­don Strachan left the West York­shire club to rejoin his pre­vi­ous man­ager Ron Atkin­son at Cov­entry City in the spring of 1995. Gor­don Strachan: “I have said it before and been hammered for it, but the truth is we’re not very good at team sports in Scot­land. Cricket’s always been rot­ten, rugby’s not very good, football’s not very good and any­thing healthy we don’t seem to be good at. We are all right at pub games, darts and snooker. And we are great at heart attacks. We are world lead­ers when it comes to heart attacks.” Gor­don Strachan Fact File: Gor­don Strachan made his First Divi­sion debut for Manchester United in a 1–1 draw against Wat­ford at Old Traf­ford in August 1984 and the mid­field tiger man­aged to notch up a respect­able 33 goals in 160 Foot­ball League out­ings for The Reds. A Scot­land inter­na­tional, the wee man amassed 50 full caps for the coun­try of his birth and is a mem­ber of the Scot­land Foot­ball Hall of Fame.