The Guardian is reporting that Scotland manager Craig Levein will not be calling up Aston Villa midfielder to the squad while the club's investigation into his arrest remains pending. That rules Bannan out of Scotland's friendly against Cyprus on November 10th, and one would imagine there will be repercussions beyond that. As it stands Bannan has been told to stay away from the club's training ground until the club has completed its inquiry. Which seems a bit silly to me, honestly.
I am not going to say that I feel sorry for Bannan; he did a dumb thing and it's certainly going to end up costing him. He's going to have to pay fines (likely both legal and to his employers, most likely) and the place in the team Bannan worked for hard to lock up is now certainly in doubt. The nature of international football being what it is, Bannan is probably going to face a bit of a hiatus from the Scotland team. His personal reputation has been pretty badly damaged. So what's the point of keeping him out of training? Unless Aston Villa is prepared to release him from his contract over this, it seems like a counter productive measure. But then again McLeish seems pretty intent on sending a clear message about discipline to the team, so I guess it's not a huge surprise.
In any case, the damage continues to mount for Bazza. It's not like this is the first time we've heard about Bannan's lack of maturity and poor decision making getting him into trouble. Perhaps the fallout from this incident will be enough to whip him into shape. I hope so at least; at this point Barry Bannan represents a lot of the hope I have for the club going forward. He's way too talented and too important to the future to throw it away on being an idiot.