When Rangers came calling for him back in December 2001, Alex McLeish didn’t need much persuasion to head west. Then in charge at Hibs, the former Aberdeen player had heard whispers that the Ibrox club were interested in bringing him to his boyhood club.

As McLeish reveals in episode two of The Football Years – broadcast on Thursday January 14 on STV from 9pm – despite being head hunted by outgoing manager Dick Advocaat, he had initial anxiety over taking the Rangers post. Fearing he was going to be a flop – with Martin O’Neill’s Celtic team conquering all before them – he consoled himself with the fact that at least he could look back and see he had once managed at Ibrox, regardless of how his spell turned out.

“The first week I thought ‘even if I get sacked after my first game and I’m hopeless as a Rangers manager, everybody will see in the history books I was the manager of Rangers once’," said McLeish.

“Of course we had a bit of belief in ourselves and felt we could turn things around and to win the two domestics in that six month period was absolutely thrilling because it did give us the confidence and belief to show we could win trophies in probably what then became quite a turbulent time for them financially. It was great for us to do that against such a strong Celtic team at the time."

After media reports of an internal dispute in the dressing room and player unrest, manager Dick Advocaat was moved upstairs into a director of football role and pinpointed McLeish as his successor. Even then, with rumours intensifying about his possible new job, he chose to ignore those rumours until he heard anything concrete. Then one day in December the phone call came. It was David Murray, who didn’t even need to introduce himself to his prospective new boss.

“I got a phone call from David Murray one afternoon while I was still Hibs boss and his first words were ‘I bet you never thought you’d get this call’,” recalls McLeish. “I recognised the voice right away, he never even introduced himself. I said that I’d heard a couple of rumours but I’d dismissed them until it was actually the real deal.

“He said that he’d approached Hibs and he had permission to talk to me and would I like to become Rangers manager and I said ‘of course, absolutely’. Five minutes of negotiations I think was all it took and I found myself winging my way to Ibrox. It was my boyhood dream and to think I would manage them someday was a fantastic thrill for me.

“I thought that my future might have been to go down south and not quite any of the Old Firm as big names as that. Rangers. My team.”