Pic: John Kilbride/STV
Walter Smith used to follow Rangers as a youngster and has never lost the faith even now that he is in his seventh decade. Obsessed with football and stridently loyal to his friends, he and his fellow Glaswegian, Sir Alex Ferguson, used to take part in the occasional game of Trivial Pursuit and, according to the former Scotland coach, Craig Brown, they treated that as they do everything else. “If Fergie named every member of the cast of “The Magnificent Seven”, then Walter would come back at him with the list of actors from “The Great Escape.” They have been like that for as long as I can remember: ultra-competitive men, who enjoy their success, but suffer in defeat as much as any fan.”
I relate this anecdote, for no other reason than as evidence that, wherever the fault may lie for Rangers’ current predicament, it most certainly isn’t at Smith’s door. Indeed, in the midst of these last few days of endless revelations about the parlous state of the club’s finances, and how they are effectively being run by the bank – whatever other people might claim – the 61 year-old’s decision to reveal the full extent of the impoverished circumstances in which he is being forced to operate has been one of the few shafts of decency in the whole sorry business. It would have been easy for Smith, now entering the last furlong of his tenure, to have kept his counsel and shuffled silently off stage when his contract expires in January, safe in the knowledge that he never needs to work another day in his life if he so chooses. Yet, even at this stage, when he has nothing left to prove to his detractors, Smith plumped to tell it as it is: namely, that a once-mighty institution, a club whose former chairman, Sir David Murray, once pledged: “For every pound Celtic spend, we’ll spend two” currently finds itself ploughing down the road to hell.
No wonder Smith has looked saturnine during the past week. This, let’s remember, is the fellow who guided a mediocre Rangers squad to a European final less than 18 months ago, and was rewarded for his labours in edging past the likes of Sporting Lisbon, Werder Bremen and Fiorentina, by being accused of resorting to sterile, negative tactics – or, to sum up the tabloid bile: “Uncle Walter meets Anti Football.” Even at the time, the criticism struck me as strange, but what was even more peculiar was the realisation that much of the fury aimed at Smith emanated from the same Rangers fans, who had watched their team being reduced to laughing-stock status under the hapless Paul Le Guen.
In many respects, it sums up the queasy relationship between Old Firm followers and those in charge of running the show at Rangers and Celtic. For every aficionado who has criticised the omission of Kris Boyd or bemoaned the sale of Barry Ferguson, there is another who regards Boyd as a one-trick liability, while Bazza had long since ceased to be as good as he thought he was. Such selective vision is not, of course, unique to Scotland, but when one looks at the dire financial straits into which the Ibrox club has navigated, it seems crazy, and even churlish, to try and pretend that Smith hasn’t achieved terrific success with men not fit to lace the boots of their 1990s counterparts. After all, if you look back to the Rangers side which was thrashed 4-0 by Juventus in 1995, it reflects the penury which now affects the Glasgow side. Among those in the ranks were Andy Goram, Richard Gough, Ian Durrant, Paul Gascoigne, Stuart McCall, Ally McCoist, Ian Durrant (with Brian Laudrup injured), who would march into the Class of ’09. In which light, it surely testifies to Smith’s ability to work with meagre resources that, during the last two seasons, he has brought four trophies back to Ibrox, comprising an SPL title, a League Cup and a brace of Scottish Cups. And that is even before one recalls how close his charges were to winning an unprecedented quadruple in 2008.
Nobody’s perfect, mind you. There have been instances where Smith’s personnel have lapsed into near-parodies of themselves, and the manager has sometimes looked eerily reminiscent of the Fast Show character, Unlucky Alf, whose every escapade turned to calamity. Yet somehow, through grit, and cussedness, and determination to rage against the dying of the light, Rangers remain unbeaten in the SPL, and are still nipping away at the heels of a Celtic team, whose own deficiencies have been highlighted, to varying degrees, by Hamburg, Hamilton and Hearts in the last week. For much of this season, Smith’s players have been horribly unconvincing – with the Unirea debacle proving the nadir – but there again, it’s hardly surprising that they have struggled to find their best form, given the mounting crisis which has been growing behind the scenes.
And, now that Smith has blown the cover of a board lacking hard cash, he has also shown that honesty is the best policy. For years, rumours and Rangers have gone together, to the effect that supporters were shelling out hard-earned money on season tickets without any serious investment in the squad. Now, we know the reason why that happened.
In short, Smith might not be everybody’s cup of tea, but heaven knows where Rangers would have been without him. Or how far ahead Celtic might be by this stage. Time, perhaps, for some of his critics to accept his contribution to the Ibrox cause!
