Emergency exit

He asked Murray for “transparency”, to “hurry along” a formal announcement that had been planned for whenever Rangers exited the Champions League, a respectable defeat to Villarreal would have done nicely. Murray would not have needed any persuading to accelerate the process, though. It is unlikely McLeish could have stopped him anyway, given that the supporters’ protests following the dreadful home Scottish Cup exit to Hibs had gone beyond mere calls for the manager’s head and accused Murray himself of some false pronouncements regarding January spending plans, with Kris Boyd the lone Rangers recruit. They say the truth hurts, but sometimes avoiding it can be even more painful.

The official version of events released at the time of McLeish’s meeting with Murray on December 8, two days after the 1-1 draw with Inter Milan that confirmed Rangers’ place in the last 16 of the Champions League, was that the manager would be remaining in charge on an “indefinite” timescale. Even at the time, there was something suspicious about that. Murray had previously claimed McLeish already knew his successor. In a broadcast interview after the apparent surprise vote of confidence in McLeish, Murray muttered something about “not wanting a caretaker”, which, in retrospect, was a decent clue.

McLeish was staying, but only in as far as he wasn’t being dismissed there and then. It is probable all that was established at this meeting was that he had sufficient desire to stay until the end of the season. Again there is an official line that it was instead an unspecified date in January that this summer departure was agreed. McLeish, though, has since admitted that he first mentioned in conversation to Murray as early as last summer that he was considering making this his last season. “I said that hopefully we’ll have a successful season and that I’d probably call it a day at the end,” said McLeish, “but didn’t want to make anything public at that early stage.”

He mentioned on Friday that there has been “too much conjecture and innuendo” about his position and that the supporters had a “right to know”. There is, still, plenty they don’t know, however. They have been asked to believe that the parting is “mutual”; McLeish hasn’t resigned and Murray still hasn’t sacked a manager. Can both really be true?

BARRY FERGUSON has been sold and bought by McLeish. The Rangers manager never wanted him to go to Blackburn and always wanted him back. The initials ‘BF’ remained on his Murray Park locker throughout Ferguson’s 17-month stay at Ewood Park. That brief liaison with the Premiership aside, Ferguson is a one-club man. He has said he wants to finish his career at Ibrox and perhaps, someday, even manage the club. If anyone doesn’t need telling how the Rangers fans feel just now it is him, because he considers himself one of them. But he heard anyway last Saturday.

“I sat in the dressing room after the Hibs game listening to the fans outside calling for the manager’s head and the chairman’s, and it was a nightmare to hear. I cannot remember people being outside shouting under Dick Advocaat,” said Ferguson. “To be honest, I cannot remember the journey home on Saturday. I remember getting in and sitting down and not speaking to the missus and ignoring the kids, but not the journey there. I was in a daze. I didn’t speak to anyone for about three or four hours. It’s hard to explain. It was a crazy feeling.”

There is one irate Rangers supporter who even turned on Ferguson: himself. The Ibrox captain admits he has not being playing anything like he can do. Even in midweek, he missed a relatively straightforward chance that would have halved Rangers’ deficit to Aberdeen five minutes into the second half. The swagger that characterised his best Rangers performances, most evident during the season before his departure to Blackburn in August 2003, has gone. He hopes temporarily.

While McLeish’s latest introductions have been blamed for not performing, a not unreasonable accusation as it can be argued that none of last summer’s signings have improved the team, matters have been compounded by established players like Ferguson and Fernando Ricksen declining in influence.

When asked if he feels he has let McLeish down, Ferguson offered a reluctant nod. “I feel responsible because I’ve not played to the standard that I can, but in any walk of life, any job, you will go through bad times,” he said. “One of you will maybe write a bad story.” A pause for dramatic effect for the benefit of the journalists. “Every week,” added Ferguson with a smile, before resuming in a more serious tone. “No, that’s the thing that disappoints, that I’ve certainly not played to my standard, but it’s not through lack of trying. It’s important to me I can regain the form that I had. I’d never use fitness problems as an excuse, every player has minor injuries or a few niggles. It’s not down to that, it’s just a lack of form.”

At times Ferguson has looked as powerless on the field as his manager has on the touchline. Booting the ball away with such power it almost reached the M8 on the final whistle as Rangers conspired to draw 2-2 at Livingston was just one example of his obvious frustration. “I’m not hiding the fact I grew up a fan and this is the hardest time I’ve ever gone through as a Rangers player,” he said. “But I’d like to think there are a few boys in there hurting, the guys brought up in Scotland, guys that have played here for a number of years. It’s not fair on the fans. The fans pay a lot of money to come and watch us and they have got to know what’s going on inside. The chairman has made the decision to let them know and I think the fans are happy with that. You get people coming up to you in the street and saying things, but they’re entitled to because the guys pay their money to come and see us, I don’t have a problem with that. We’ve got to hold our hands up and say we’ve not been doing it.” Ferguson and Dado Prso, his fellow players’ representative, were the first to be told about McLeish by Murray on Thursday morning. That, seemingly, wasn’t all he was told. Ferguson declined to answer when asked if he now knows who the club intend to appoint as McLeish’s successor, but he hinted as much. “It was fine, we had a good meeting with the chairman and Martin Bain (the chief executive),” said Ferguson. “Seeing the chairman face to face, he was hurting, it means a lot to him, too. Obviously I can’t say what was said, but we know what’s happening. Things are clearer. We spoke indoors and that’s going to be kept indoors.”

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Ferguson offered to talk to the remainder of the players on Friday morning, but McLeish told him he would rather speak for himself. According to Ferguson, McLeish told the squad “not to be sad” and to do what they could for him to “go out with a bang”. Just avoiding a whimper would be a start: McLeish must ensure his replacement Champions League qualification with a top-two finish. Managers who have given notice can find players giving them less attention, even Sir Alex Ferguson found that when he briefly set a leaving date at Old Trafford, so what can the players do to prevent this? “We just need to perform on the pitch, which we haven’t been doing in the past couple of days and most of the season,” asked Ferguson.

Is he playing for McLeish, though, or whoever will replace him? On this one, the captain was categoric. “The new manager, whoever comes in, will probably know a lot about the players and who he wants to keep. I don’t think I need to go out and impress. I’m not thinking about impressing whoever comes in, I’m playing for Alex McLeish. If a new guy comes in with new ideas and he doesn’t like you, that’s life. I’m not even thinking about the new guy, the manager here is Alex McLeish and I’m trying to get as many wins as I can for him.”

So what do Rangers need to do then? “Win every game,” shrugged Ferguson. “Simple as that.” Only somehow it hasn’t been this season. Rangers have now failed to win more than half of their league fixtures, a mere 12 victories in 25 games ahead of today’s meeting with Celtic. What kind of mindset they are in for that game is difficult to assess. Ferguson, a confirmed Roy Keane fan, at least until he joined Celtic, was asked how he was considering the prospect of facing him for the first time in Scotland, the pair having previously clashed in the Premiership. “You know what,” smiled Ferguson, genuinely taken aback, “I’ve not even thought about it.” It has been that sort of week.

WHAT if McLeish had never joined Rangers? Where would he be now? He had taken Hibs to third position and a Scottish Cup final in season 2000-2001, and that summer Rangers first informally mentioned to him about possibly becoming their manager, at a later date. In the intervening months, however, Hibs lost their momentum and when McLeish left they had already dropped into mid-table. He would probably have survived one indifferent season at Easter Road, but a poor start to another? Managerial stock always falls faster than it rises and McLeish may already have been on the way back down. A couple of years on and it would have been Craig Levein who impressed Rangers. With McLeish, timing was everything.

December 2001, the start of things for McLeish at Ibrox, was Rangers’ emergency stop. That is no coincidence. By his own admission, it is what got McLeish the position. Murray had allowed Dick Advocaat to spend money at a rate the club could not sustain and every criticism of McLeish’s signings has to be seen in that context. The majority of his failures were Bosmans and loan signings, the type Murray himself now says there “will be no more of” with talk of “ spending real money again”. Advocaat lavished more than £20m on Tore Andre Flo, Andrei Kanchelskis and Michael Ball alone. McLeish’s net gain for Rangers on all transfer dealings is around £14m. He has made mistakes — trusting the judgment of Jan Wouters, his coach, on £1m Dragan Mladenovic was one — but they have been nothing like as expensive. Which was always the idea.

“The time was right for me to come to Rangers,” conceded McLeish last Friday. “The George Grahams of this world would have demanded millions. It was time to restructure financially and I fitted the bill. I think that’s why I’m still here four-and-a-half years later. How could I have knocked it back? The financial footing of the club is now in a position where the new guy can get some money.”

McLeish shook his head when asked if he resented that irony. “If the chairman said, ‘Do you want to stay for another four years? Here’s £10m to spend’, I’d say, ‘No’,” he claimed. “If you’re asking for an obit, and I’m writing it myself here so I’m biased, people I’m sure will look at the facts and see it was a time of downsizing, but there was some decent success there. In the circumstances, I’m pretty proud. It’s frightening to think what I could have done with £20m.”

It is another of those unanswered questions. How effective a manager would McLeish have been with the same spending power as his predecessor and now, it seems, his successor? When given money for substantial wages, he lured Prso and Jean-Alain Boumsong under freedom of contract when Premiership clubs wanted both. Likewise, Thomas Buffel has justified his £2.3m arrival last January, McLeish’s biggest single spend bar Ferguson’s return and the ratifying of the Mikel Arteta deal effectively already agreed by Advocaaat. The nadir has been the panic buying when the transfer window has called last orders, notably forwards Egil Ostenstad and Francis Jeffers; the only thing striking about both was their lack of talent.

You would imagine, having been a pretty decent one himself for Aberdeen and Scotland, that McLeish knows a thing or two about centre-halves. How then has it become the Ibrox club’s problem area? Since the Craig Moore and Lorenzo Amoruso partnership he inherited from Advocaat separated, McLeish has, excluding Boumsong, signed six further central defenders but none has got it together. With Julien Rodriguez injured, but looking fairly lame when fit, Marvin Andrews and Sotirios Kyrgiakos were culpable again at Aberdeen. It is McLeish’s last home Old Firm game today and he is likely to opt for Ian Murray, hardly a natural in the position, if only because he can trust him.

Yet is the reality still that McLeish has done everything possible with what was an impossible task? As recently as last Tuesday, he was bemoaning that only domestic and European success will satisfy the demands at Rangers when, on a limited budget, it has to be a case of either or. Rangers are unlikely to have gained the first of the two last-day Premierleague titles under McLeish had they not exited the Uefa Cup early to Viktoria Zizkov the same season Celtic reached the final of the tournament. It has taken McLeish until this season to finally put Europe right, which qualification for the Champions League last 16 has done, but this time it has coincided with Celtic having no overseas competition after their premature ejection by Artmedia Bratislava. “Europe was what stopped me thinking about moving on last summer,” said McLeish. “I still had that niggle to try and make some kind of impact there, but I didn’t want it to be at the expense of our domestic campaign. We wanted both and that’s the future ambition of a club of this stature.”

Does he regret then not having left sooner? “Play the smart card, you mean? I don’t look back and regret anything,” he countered. “Even the bad times. The experience has stood me in good stead. I’m proud of the way my family has handled it, too. Their mentality is stronger. I’m sure my kids will have more confidence in the big world out there.” At mention of the Portsmouth job — the Premiership club were refused permission to speak to McLeish — he added: “I wasn’t interested.”

Did their interest in him lift his self-confidence, though? “I’ve got a lot of people around me who already do that. They aren’t sycophants either, they’re loyal people. I’m not immune to criticism, but their reassurance gave me a lot of support. Managers come and go. If you’d said to me on my first day here, ‘We’ll see you in four-and-a-half years’, I’d have said, ‘T remendous’, because to stay that long will mean I’ve done something.”

It was strange to hear McLeish talking about Rangers predominantly in the past tense and a new habit, perhaps, he will need to coax himself out of in the coming months. His legacy is not quite determined yet. Seven trophies is liable to be his final tally, but he would be remembered even longer for negative reasons were he to become the first Old Firm manager to finish outside the top two since Tommy Burns took Celtic to fourth in his first season, 1994-95.

The pressure is not quite yet off McLeish. Today at Ibrox the intensity will still be there. His job may no longer be on the line, but his reputation is. Yet having recently passed 47, he laughed away a suggestion that the Rangers role has aged him beyond his years. “Nah,” he retorted with a grin. “I’ve just had too much good living.”

Despite everything, McLeish has still enjoyed it at Rangers, and you have to admire him for that.