KRIS BOYD and Champions League football; traditionally as incompatible as oil and water, or Madjid Bougherra and punctuality.
There is a popular view often bandied about that the Rangers striker is not built for the demands of European football, and certainly not in a situation that calls for one forward who will run himself into the ground with little or no support.
You could almost commit the words to paper and then laminate them, given how close it has come to becoming an accepted fact: Kris Boyd does not play in the Champions League.
Walter Smith, the Rangers manager, has made his own feelings on the subject known through deed as much as word.
In the Ibrox side’s four Champions League group games this season, Boyd has made only one appearance, and that as a late replacement with Rangers already trailing Sevilla at home by three goals to nil.
Boyd has somewhat resigned himself to his fate. Even after scoring against Kilmarnock last weekend, a goal that carried him to within nine of Henrik Larsson’s all-time Scottish Premier League record, there was a weary air of dejection when questioned whether he expected to be asked to reprise his partnership with Kenny Miller against VfB Stuttgart at Ibrox this evening. To be blunt, it would be a surprise to almost nobody if Boyd begins the contest with his backside once more planked on the substitutes bench.
Miller, though, would like to see that trend reversed, although hoped the inclusion of Boyd, who is a slight injury doubt in any case, would not come at his expense. “Well, as long as I’m playing I don’t really care,” he joked, before expanding on the reasons why his strike partner should be given a rare European run-out as Rangers look to keep alive their hopes of reaching the last 16 of the competition. “The manager picks the team and one he thinks can win every game, and I don’t think anybody would argue that he gets it right more often than he gets it wrong,” Miller said with due deference. “But I would like to see Boydy get a wee run.
“It’s a game we need to win and he brings a goal threat that no other player in the country could bring. You can always count on him, not necessarily to always get a goal, but to always get the chances. On a night when we need to win the game, those kind of attributes would be great for us.”
Miller and Boyd has always been a curious partnership but one that has worked to varying degrees since the former returned to the club in the summer of 2008. Miller runs and runs like a dog, willing to sacrifice himself for the good of the team, but lacks a striker’s instincts in front of goal.
Boyd, on the other hand, has a reputation for being quite the opposite, happy to let others do the work before poaching the glory for himself, although Miller insists that is not entirely fair on Boyd.
“We both help each other,” he said. “I bring different things to the team than what he does, but that goal threat is what Boydy brings. On Saturday you could see he is working hard for the team and you can see he’s doing that side of things a lot better now. When I’ve got Boydy up beside me, it does take the pressure off me to get a goal because you know, more often than not, he will get one. I said last season I felt he was putting in a lot more effort in the other sides to the game, not just sniffing about the box for a goal. He was closing defenders down, and on Saturday we even saw him run a channel.
“That was a bit of a change. It’s not that he doesn’t want to do these things, it’s maybe more that he can’t do them. But he’s definitely added a lot more since I came back to the club. I’ve seen a big difference in his workrate and that’s had no effect on his goal tally, which has been good.”
