Enigmas Riordan and Boyd fail to live up to amateur experts' assumptions

AT A social gathering, John Grisham, one of the world's most successful authors, was approached by a fellow guest and regaled with a familiar revelation. "I have a great idea for your next book," said the man. "So do I," said Grisham, demonstrating as concise and gentle a way imaginable of indicating that the suggestions and advice of amateurs are tiresome, uninformed and generally worthless.

It is an anecdote that springs to mind with every instance of football fans telling managers how to go about their business. Bemoaning under-achievement on the field of play is the inalienable right of every fan, but telling professionals which players to sign, which to play and which to ditch presumes a level of knowledge and insight that is not supported by facts.

Of course, like Grisham, or even Shakespeare – not all of their works are considered masterpieces – managers are not flawless. But the very singularity of their position allows them advantages in their working environment to which outsiders have no access. That latter group, it should be acknowledged, includes sports journalists as well as a club's followers.

This difference between what a manager knows and supporters assume is revealed in a number of ways, but one of the commonest is the clamour from the public for the selection of a player who has, apparently, become a legend in his own absence. The most recent and famous examples of this discord between the professionals and the supporters would be Gordon Strachan's indifference to Derek Riordan at Celtic and Walter Smith's misgivings over Kris Boyd at Rangers.

Riordan's time at Parkhead prompted more debate than that of any other player at the club in the past few years, his fleeting appearances giving subscribers to hotlines, websites and forums cause to indulge in some vein-bursting protests over Strachan's allegedly unfair treatment. None of the most hostile critics seemed to consider the possibility that, in working with Riordan every day, Strachan would be privy to the weaknesses that would preclude his regular selection for the first team. Nor did any of them seem prepared to recognise that, on those occasions when he did appear, Riordan hardly impressed as the exceptional contributor his champions claimed.

Riordan is clearly endowed with natural talent, but he is certainly not alone in lacking some of the other attributes – including exhaustive commitment and application – required to warrant regular inclusion at a club where the pursuit of honours is relentless. Even his most vehement apologists will surely have noted that, since his return to Hibs, he has also not been an automatic first choice.

Like Riordan, Boyd tended to become a great player when sitting in the stand, his absence from those occasions on which Rangers would slip up giving rise to ludicrous hypotheses over how different it would have been had he been on the field. None of these suppositions seemed to take account of the innumerable times when Boyd's lethargic performances had effectively left the Ibrox side a man short.

The vituperation directed at Smith over Boyd's omission would be at its most wounding after the ignominious defeat by FBK Kaunas at the qualifying stage of the Champions League. His appearances as a substitute in both legs of the tie, however, could not alter Rangers' course towards elimination from the tournament.

Like Strachan with Riordan, Smith's reservations about Boyd derived from daily contact on the training field. Unlike his Celtic counterpart, though, the Rangers manager clearly became so irritated by the vilification that he was moved to hint publicly at the player's seeming indolence and lack of motivation in his everyday exercises in the workplace.

This was an aspect of Boyd's overall profile that was also highlighted by the Scotland manager, George Burley, during the controversy that arose from his exclusion from the team for the World Cup qualifier against Norway in October. Burley, in common with Smith, seemed so irked by widespread condemnation of his selection policy that he felt obliged to reveal that Boyd's preparation had been unsatisfactory. Once again, the Rangers forward had been acclaimed a "phantom" saviour by many supporters on a day when he did not leave the bench.

It seems to be no mere coincidence that the events of that weekend, when he announced his refusal to play for Scotland as long as Burley was manager, appear to have triggered a personal reformation in Boyd. Since then, his work at Murray Park has been described by Smith as exemplary and his form, marked by extraordinary productivity, has led to this week's offer of around £3.8 million – more than nine times his purchase price from Kilmarnock – from Birmingham City.

Cases such as Riordan and Boyd, however, are not unprecedented. Around ten years ago, there was an orgy of rage among Celtic supporters over the possibility that Mark Burchill would be lost for want of a "decent" pay offer. Burchill was then a largely unproven teenage striker who had made the occasional first-team appearance and scored some goals. Some hotline callers said it would be "a disgrace" and "a scandal" if the "penny-pinching" Celtic did not meet the youngster's wage demand.

Within six weeks of the start of Martin O'Neill's first season as manager in 2000, Burchill was on his way to Birmingham on loan. From there, it was on to Ipswich (loan), Portsmouth, Dundee (loan), Wigan (loan), Sheffield Wednesday (loan), Rotherham (loan), Hearts (freed after four months) and Dunfermline. Nowadays, at the still-young age of 28, Burchill is to be found back at Rotherham in Football League Two, the lowest tier of the English game.

Curiously, those who thought him a latter-day Jimmy McGrory seemed to lose their tongues. Maybe it was the arrival of Chris Sutton that did it.