Tangled Up in Blue

by Stephen O'Donnell

  Graeme James Souness was born in Edinburgh in May 1953. He grew up following his local team, Hibernian, but made occasional trips through to Glasgow to see Rangers, the dominant force in Scottish football at the time. His footballing talent was spotted by Celtic, who took him on trial, but he failed to impress at the Parkhead club and on one occasion, perhaps in anticipation of how he would later be viewed in that part of the city, he was confronted at a bus stop outside Celtic Park by a man wielding a sword.

  His playing career began at Spurs, but he made little impact at the north London club. ‘He was impatient, arrogant and tended to be flash,’ youth team coach Pat Welton remembers, and at one point the youngster packed his bags and headed home to Edinburgh, apparently homesick, but also frustrated at a lack of first team opportunities. In more reflective mood years later, Souness recalled, ‘Tottenham had Alan Mullery, England captain. They had Martin Peters, World Cup winner, ten years ahead of his time. They had Steve Perryman. And there was this little squirt from Carrickvale Secondary knocking on Bill Nic’s [Nicolson’s] door demanding to know why he wasn’t getting a game.’

  Spurs eventually gave up on their young prospect and sold the player to Middlesbrough, where he benefited from the down to earth, homespun wisdom of England World Cup hero Jack Charlton, helping the north-east club to promotion in 1974 after they won the Second Division by fully 15 points. On Teesside, he gained invaluable experience playing alongside European Cup winners Bobby Murdoch and Nobby Stiles, but a change of manager brought more frustration for Souness, and he was transferred to Liverpool in January 1978. The European champions were managed by soft-spoken Geordie Bob Paisley, whose strong north-east accent meant that even those who were close enough to hear him frequently couldn’t understand what he was saying.

  Yet Paisley, who had succeeded the legendary Bill Shankly at Anfield in 1974, became arguably the most successful English manager of all time, as over the course of the next five and a half years he added two further European Cups and four more league titles, thanks in no small part to his Scottish triumvirate of Souness, Alan Hansen and Kenny Dalglish. Describing the young Souness, Paisley observed, ‘Most midfields are made up of a buzzer, a cruncher and a spreader. This boy is all three.’ It was a worthy accolade for which Dalglish provided the layman’s translation, ‘There’s no one I’d put in front of him when it comes to accurate and dangerous passing. He wins the ball then distributes it and dictates the pace of the game.’

  Even in such illustrious company, Souness was known within the Anfield dressing room as ‘Champagne Charlie’ because of his lavish lifestyle and his rich boy affectations. Scotland team-mate Archie Gemmell dubbed him ‘the chocolate soldier’, not because he was no use in a fight, but in the belief that, had he been made of chocolate, he would have eaten himself. ‘And he was dead right,’ Souness later admitted.

  He appeared in a cameo role as himself in the TV series Boys from the Blackstuff, a gritty drama written by Alan Bleasdale about a group of unemployed Liverpudlian tarmac layers struggling to find work in Thatcher’s laissez-faire Britain. Souness didn’t agree with the programme makers’ politics, but he liked the idea of appearing on a television show nonetheless.

  When Liverpool added a further European Cup to their array of trophies, under Paisley’s successor Joe Fagan in 1984, beating Roma in the final at their own Olympic Stadium after a penalty shoot-out, Souness decided to quit Liverpool and try his luck in Italy at the Genoese club Sampdoria. Throughout his playing career and subsequently, Souness has candidly admitted, without any apparent sense of embarrassment, that he was a mercenary footballer who played primarily for money. Knowing the riches on offer in Italian football at the time, he decided to ask his new employer for double the wages that he was earning on Merseyside. When Sampdoria, with their initial offer, proposed instead to quadruple his basic salary, Souness quickly accepted, but later regretted that he didn’t have the presence of mind to haggle for more. The Mediterranean lifestyle and culture suited Souness. He was a natural show-pony and the Italians, unlike the Scousers perhaps, loved him for it. He had a three-year contract in Genoa, but within barely half that time Rangers came calling.

  The original plan had been to appoint Souness at the end of the season, but with Wallace’s inept side lurching from one low to another, the move was brought forward to early April. Fortunately, his Genoese club proved very accommodating, but the new Ibrox manager still had to return to Italy to complete the season in advance of his transfer and Souness was forced to watch from a distance as his new team played out the remainder of the season in excruciating mediocrity. With newly appointed deputy Walter Smith in charge for the penultimate three matches, Rangers eventually limped over the line in fifth position, having lost more games than they won over the course of the season, including ten defeats and only three victories from 18 matches on the road.

  But Souness had offered the players a bonus to qualify for the UEFA Cup, which they eventually achieved, meaning that over the summer he would be able to entice the big names to the club with the prospect of European football, something that was not available in England following the Heysel Stadium disaster. The new manager, only the second in Rangers’ history to have no previous connection with the club on his appointment, took charge for the final game of the season and was surprised to note that, despite European football being secured the previous week when Celtic beat Dundee, the dressing room was apparently on a downer, because their city rivals had gone on to pip Hearts for the title on the last day of the season. Souness was under no illusions that he would have to reshape his squad’s priorities.

  Rangers’ new player-manager then flew off to Mexico as part of Scotland’s squad for the World Cup, and while stopping off en route at the Scots’ training camp in Santa Fe, Souness decided to make tentative enquiries to the accompanying media about the potential impact of signing a Catholic for Rangers. One journalist, Chick Young of the Evening Times, pointed to the gold cross, which was dangling immodestly around Souness’s neck, and suggested that the quasi-religious symbol might arouse ill-feeling in certain quarters. The crucifix was a gift from Souness’s first, Catholic wife, Danielle Wilson, a millionaire heiress whose father had founded the Army and Navy stores after World War One – not a working-class, west of Scotland Catholic to be sure, but a Catholic nonetheless. Souness wore the cross not for religious reasons but because he was a poser and, understandably, couldn’t understand the aversion.

  Bizarrely, Walter Smith was one of Souness’s technical bosses in his role as assistant manager of the national team, while rival Alex Ferguson, still several months away from his appointment at Manchester United and in charge of Aberdeen, was the national coach. Ferguson had stepped into the role on a temporary basis the previous autumn following the untimely death of Jock Stein at Ninian Park in Cardiff at the end of a nervy World Cup qualifier against Wales, when the draw secured by Davie Cooper’s late penalty allowed Scotland to progress to a play-off against Australia and ultimately ensured their participation in Mexico. Sadly the World Cup didn’t go well for either Scotland or Souness. Drawn in the ‘group of death’, with Uruguay, West Germany and Denmark, the ‘Holland of the 80s’, Scotland failed to progress to the second stage and, after persistent squabbles between the pair, captain Souness was dropped by Ferguson for the final group game against the South Americans in favour of the Celtic youngster Paul McStay.

  On his return to Ibrox, Souness wasted no time in getting to work on the huge task which lay ahead of him to reshape his squad of players into a force that could challenge for honours. One of the first changes to be implemented at the club by the new executive duo of Souness and Holmes was the abolition of the frugal salary structure, which was perceived to be holding the club back. When he arrived at Ibrox, the maximum wage at Rangers was £350 a week, but Holmes knew that in order to make the club appealing to the very best players, they would have to pay top dollar, so the limit was quietly done away with. Over the next few yea
rs, Rangers would pay some of the best salaries available in British football and attract to the club some of the most high-profile players in the country.

  In many ways, Holmes’s plan was sound economics; he borrowed money from the bank in order to fund the increased wages and the escalating transfer fees, and then hoped for a return over the short to medium term. Crowds had been down as low as 15,000 by the end of the Wallace era, and the intention and belief was that success would pay for itself through renewed interest and increased gate receipts. He also opened the club’s first executive box, the Thornton Suite, situated in the heart of the Main Stand, which provided hospitality packages for the club’s more well-heeled supporters. Combining football and fine dining, Rangers were one of the first clubs in Britain to appreciate the positive financial implications of this important new revenue stream. Holmes’s strategy was a risk, something that would never have been countenanced under the sparing, puritanical stewardship of Willie Waddell, who had dogmatically refused to allow the club to fall into debt, but his time had passed and the new approach captured the Thatcherite mood of the day.

  It didn’t take long for the spending strategy to get under way, with the arrival from Watford in June of striker Colin West, who was allegedly ‘tapped up’ by Souness’s international team-mate, David Speedie, in the players’ lounge at Stamford Bridge after a game between Watford and Chelsea. The initial acquisition of West was quickly followed by the more eye-catching singings of England internationals Chris Woods, who cost £600,000 from Norwich City, and Terry Butcher, a £725,000 capture from relegated Ipswich Town, who arrived fresh from his own troubles at the World Cup after the infamous ‘Hand of God’ incident involving Diego Maradona, which saw England eliminated from the tournament at the quarter-final stage by Argentina. Tottenham Hotspur were left flabbergasted and disappointed when Butcher, the England captain, rejected a late move by manager David Pleat to bring him to White Hart Lane, with the player blazing a trail which others would soon follow by choosing instead to play his football north of the border.

  Goalkeeper Woods was immediately asked about his religion when he was unveiled at Ibrox, but before he could reply Holmes intervened, ‘We’re not curious, he’s a goalkeeper.’ The CEO remonstrated with the media while Woods and his wife were left staring at their toes, ‘He’s 6ft 2in, four English caps, he’s coming to Ibrox, that’s all we want to know.’

  The signings continued, with the manager often giving the English based players a personal tour of the spanking new stadium and selling the club to them; by the end of the year Souness had acquired Jimmy Nicholl, returning to the club from West Brom, Neil Woods from Doncaster and the English contingent was further augmented when no nonsense defender Graham Roberts joined the club in December from Spurs for a cool £500,000. Davie Kirkwood and goalkeeper Lindsay Hamilton, who between them managed just seven first team appearances for Rangers, completed Souness’s signings in his first season, by the end of which he had spent over £2m of the club’s money.

  As for the players he inherited, Souness left them under no illusions about where he was intending to take the club. Winger Ted McMinn describes his first impression of meeting the new boss during those early days of pre-season training in the summer of 1986, ‘There was a grit and determination in him, and a constant pent-up aggression. He told us that he was a born winner who wouldn’t stand for second best and that our years of underachievement were now over.’

  The manager accused many in his original squad of adopting bad habits and showing a lack of professionalism so it came as no surprise when, within two years, 23 players had left Rangers, many of them immediately, while others lingered on until they could be sold or their contracts expired, playing little more than a bit-part role in the Souness revolution. Another winger at the club, Bobby Russell, a stalwart of the team under Greig and Wallace, played just one league game for Souness at the start of the season, before eventually being transferred to Motherwell after kicking his heels in the reserves for almost a year. In a subsequent game against his former side, Russell nutmegged Souness and shouted ‘Nuts!’, to which Thatcher’s man reportedly countered, ‘How much money is in your bank account?’

  Having been officially unveiled at the club back in April, Souness didn’t make his playing debut for Rangers until the first match of the following season, when he was sent off at Easter Road, late in the first half, for an impetuous kick at Hibs’ George McCluskey, another debutant on the day following his summer transfer from Leeds United. Souness later admitted that he had been warned by his assistant Smith about an opponent who was likely to go after him, but in trying to get his retaliation in first, he had unfortunately targeted the wrong man and subsequently sparked a mass brawl.

  The most experienced player on the pitch, it was an inauspicious start for Souness, who would later describe being ordered off on his debut, against his home town club, just a few miles from where he grew up and in front of his watching father, as, ‘the biggest low I ever had in football’. Afterwards in the dressing room, the player-manager was forced to apologise to his team-mates and admit, in a rare display of contrition, that he had been out of order. Rangers lost 2-1 in a game which saw eight yellow cards and one red, although the SFA later took retrospective action and issued cautions to all 21 players involved in the Souness-inspired mêlée, including Colin West who had thrown a punch at home defender Mark Fulton. Only Alan Rough, Hibs’ keeper, who had stayed on his line during the incident, escaped censure.

  CEO David Holmes was panicking. ‘I could see all our good work disappearing,’ he later admitted, and the slow start for Souness’s Rangers continued the following week with a 3-2 home loss to Dundee United, in a game which Rangers had led 2-0. After scraping past East Fife in the Skol (League) Cup on penalties, the turning point seemed to come in the first meeting with champions Celtic at Ibrox. Form suggested that the visitors were favourites, but Rangers deservedly shaded the encounter, after Durrant scored the only goal. It was the first Glasgow derby in the league to be televised live and the match provided Rangers with a welcome financial windfall as well as a morale-boosting win. Victories over Celtic would prove crucial over the course of the season, as the August result signalled an end to the team’s sluggish start under the new manager, while in late October, Rangers defeated their old rivals 2-1 in the Skol Cup Final to give Souness his first trophy in charge of the club.

  A 1-1 draw between the teams in November at Celtic Park left the Parkhead club with a comfortable lead in the championship, which by the end of the month had stretched to nine points over their city rivals, but on New Year’s Day, a 2-0 victory for the Ibrox men in the traditional derby fixture, with Souness strutting about like a peacock by the end, taunting Celtic with a display of flamboyant back-heels and step-overs, brought about such a surge in form that, by the time they headed up to Aberdeen for the penultimate match of the season, Rangers had overturned the deficit completely and required only a draw to secure the title.

  During the six and a half years he enjoyed at Liverpool, Souness had not been sent off once, yet he was dismissed three times in what was a relatively brief playing career in Scotland, including on his debut at Easter Road and, framing the season nicely, on the day that Rangers clinched the title at Pittodrie. Despite the loss of the player-manager midway through the first half, after a second poor challenge on Aberdeen’s Brian Irvine, who was clearly trying to wind him up, Terry Butcher opened the scoring with a header from Cooper’s free kick. And although the home side equalised on the stroke of half-time, the ten men held on for the draw they needed to all but guarantee the title, which was confirmed mathematically when the result came through from Glasgow that Celtic had lost at home to Falkirk.

  It was Rangers’ first championship victory since 1978 and it immediately provoked a mass invasion of the Pittodrie field, involving many fans who had been locked out of the ground before the game. The stadium was utterly trashed in the ensuing mayhem; goals were dismantled, seats were
ripped out and advertising boards smashed, leaving Rangers with a bill for damages that ran to many thousands of pounds. Amid the chaos, which threatened to get out of hand as the terrified Rangers players had their jerseys and boots ripped off them by over-exuberant fans, McCoist lost his gold chain and Butcher had to be rescued from the crowd by the police. Nevertheless, having made it back to the dressing room, the skipper joined in the celebrations, claiming, ‘This is the happiest day of my life. It really was murder out there at the end, but I loved every minute of it.’

  On his own misconduct, Souness admitted afterwards, ‘On a personal note I have clouded the occasion by being sent off. I was not proud of that but it will never affect our style of play. Football is a physical game and we will continue to be a physical side.’ Much later, the manager freely admitted that during his time in Scotland he allowed opponents to get under his skin far too easily, and that his big ego wouldn’t allow him to walk away from situations, and instead he stupidly took the bait. Nevertheless, his first season had been a success, as Souness became the first manager, other than Jock Wallace, to win the league for Rangers since Scot Symon’s Baxter-inspired domestic clean sweep of 1964. The chemistry in the dressing room seemed to be working, with level-headed assistant Walter Smith seemingly the perfect foil for the manager’s more confrontational approach. The only blip came in January against Hamilton in the Scottish Cup, when Rangers suffered early elimination from the competition following a 1-0 defeat at Ibrox, after which Souness put his foot through the dressing room TV set.

  Overall though, the impact of the manager’s arrival had been positive for the club, with Scottish and indeed British football now forced to sit up and take notice. The mood music coming out of Ibrox was totally transformed, as in little over a year Rangers had gone from being a mediocre Scottish team to one of the best-placed clubs in Britain, challenging for further domestic honours and with almost unbroken access to European football. With a winning team on the park full of exotic new signings, the crowds rushed back to Ibrox, allowing the club to astutely exploit the law of supply and demand, as supporters were now asked to pay for their season tickets, on average, double what they had cost under Wallace.