Quite why England's most precious asset was allowed to settle north of Hadrian's Wall is one of those mysteries

Jim White ON SATURDAY

In Glasgow there is a new way to show your tribal loyalty. In addition to the Union Jack tattoo and the membership of the Orange lodge, you can now have your hair teased into an arrangement apparently inspired by watching old Steve McQueen movies while browsing through an Allied Carpets catalogue.

Paul Gascoigne has yet to kick a ball in a meaningful match for Rangers, yet already barbers around Ibrox are being inundated with demands for cuts just like that worn by the pratty one himself. And the really good news for the Glasgow hairdressers is that Gazza is fixated with his barnet, adding bits here, shaving bits off there, changing his style more frequently than Manchester United change away kits. For as long as he remains in the city, their tills will stay ringing.

This is the point about Gazza, he's inspirational, even to the point of inspiring a trip to the snippers. The superb Match of the Seventies, presently ensuring the nation's pubs are empty every Wednesday night, has given added impetus to the tedious argument that what football lacks today is characters.

There aren't any anymore, apparently, the game these days is played by automotons and leather-lunged air-heads, not like back then when men were men and Johnny Giles was attempting on-the-field surgery on Brian Kidd's shins. But this Wednesday's show - apart from the unexpected revelation that Jack Charlton was the sartorial precursor of Eric Cantona, wearing his collars up back in 1971 - hardly provided compelling evidence for the prosecution. True, there was George Best playing keepy-uppy on a Spanish hotel balcony and Rodney Marsh wearing an Afghan coat so extravagant he might as well have cut out the tailor and just worn a goat, but generally, it seemed to me back then that the football was slower, the defending worse and there were fewer moments of Le Tissier-like illumination.

In short there was little sense that football was any more lavishly endowed with talent than today.

What's more, though I have to admit to styling my hair like Willie Morgan about 1975 (a three-tier wedding cake arrangement which required a range of electrical appliances to maintain its architecture) I don't recall anyone back then whose arrival at a club sent dozens of fans straight to the barbers in order to copy his frankly ludicrous coiffure. Certainly not Rodney Marsh, whose arrival at Maine Road in 1972 instead inspired a run on voodoo dolls and pins.

But Gazza does that for people: they sense he is a real character. And it is not just because he plays the clown, (generally, as with his marching band pipe mime, with a breezy lack of fore-thought). It is because he is a great footballer, capable of those moments which make whatever hair you have left on the back of the neck after a visit to the barber stand to attention.

What's more, reports of his performance in his first couple of friendlies for Rangers suggest that his ability has not been lessened by all the injuries, the ice cream and the behaviour unlikely to gain him a second career in the diplomatic corps. If he can keep his elbows down and his ankles out of the way of Scottish hatchet-men, observers reckon, he will make a big splash this season.

And the better he plays, the more several clubs south of the border will rue their decision not to move in for him. Quite why England's most precious asset was allowed to settle north of Hadrian's Wall on his return from Rome is one of those mysteries buried in a fog of agent shenanigans and ridiculous wage demands. It was widely assumed that, as a palliative to Spurs fans when he was first sold abroad, Tottenham would have first refusal on his return. But that chance disappeared with Terry Venables. How the Spurs fans, facing up to the less than appetising prospect of a team built around Chris Armstrong and maybe Darren Peacock, must regret that.

This does not explain why Newcastle, Chelsea, Everton or any other of the summer's big spenders did not move in. Still less why Alex Ferguson, with pounds 14m in the bank and the natives getting restive, felt unable to make a bid. Gazza has, of course, his drawbacks. He is injury prone (not that that appears to be a problem in signing players down Stamford Bridge way, at least); he is unlikely to be the first candidate for a place on your club's Quiz Ball team; and he makes the Duchess of York look like an amateur when it comes to a propensity for embarrassing the family. But, particularly in this era of money fixation, none of those could be construed as drawbacks when he is so evidently capable of putting bums on seats.

Rangers, not a club renowned for taking unnecessary risks, showed more imagination that anyone in England by indicating they were prepared to put up with the hassle in return for the match-winning possibilities he offered. Thus we in the boy's homeland are denied the chance to see him in the flesh. And the barbers of Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester and London must be cursing their local football clubs' lack of initiative.