Tangled Up in Blue

by Stephen O'Donnell

  Determined to build on his success, Souness continued spending over the close-season as he brought in ex-Liverpool man Avi Cohen for £100,000 from Maccabi Tel Aviv. Young Ian McCall came in from Dunfermline and more Englishmen arrived in the form of Trevor Francis and Mark Falco, from Atalanta and Watford respectively. The manager had experience of mixed dressing rooms from his time at Liverpool and he was keen to replicate in Scotland many of the successful training methods used by his former club. He added an intensity to the sessions, something which the coaching staff encouraged, although occasionally the cross-border banter and rivalry went too far, and for the practice matches on Friday mornings, with the squad divided along the lines of Scotland vs The Rest of the World or ‘Scots’ vs ‘Anglos’, with the manager siding with the English contingent, tempers would often flare up, and Walter Smith would have to intervene and take the ball away.

  By now the media were so obsessed with finding Rangers’ first Catholic signing of the modern era that they took to phoning up Mark Falco’s mother to inquire about his religion, on the grounds that Mark and Falco were a rather suspicious sounding combination of names. Mrs Falco disappointed the hacks when she informed them that they would have to carry on looking, because her son was no Catholic, and in the end, despite their assurances, Marlborough and Holmes would eventually leave Ibrox, like others before them, without delivering on their promise to sign a Catholic footballer for Rangers. In this case, however, serious attempts were made to end the policy, with Souness in particular genuinely determined to abandon the sectarian agendas and the old boys’ networks in the west of Scotland, which he had never been party to. Nevertheless, a succession of suitable names, such as John Collins, Ray Houghton and Ian Rush all turned the club down.

  The spending strategy continued however, although on the whole Scottish clubs were reluctant to do business with Souness, but he eventually picked up Richard Gough from Spurs for £1.1m. Dundee United had refused to sell the defender to Rangers a year earlier, but the manager eventually got his man as Gough, the Tottenham captain, became the country’s first million pound player, doubling his wages on his return to Scotland. Another English veteran, Ray Wilkins, arrived from Paris Saint-Germain for the bargain price of £150,000 and by the end of the season Souness had signed John Brown from Dundee, Jan Bartram from Aarhus in Denmark and ‘Rangers daft’ youngster Ian Ferguson from St Mirren, possibly with an eye to eventually replacing the manager, for a whopping £850,000. When Mark Walters arrived from Aston Villa, it lifted Souness’s spending in his two years at the club above the £6m mark.

  At times it seemed hard to keep up with all the comings and goings, as another eight players left the club in 1987/88, some of whom Souness had only just signed. Described by Gough as a ‘revolving door’, and by others as ‘permanent revolution’, the turnover of the playing staff was remarkable. Francis lasted only four months, and exited without scoring a goal, Falco a little longer and there would be early departures for two other new arrivals in Mel Sterland and Kevin Drinkell, while Graham Roberts left the club under a cloud after telling the manager to ‘fuck off’.

  Clearly Souness was willing to discard those who didn’t seem entirely at ease with his management style, but his dressing room psychopath reputation has to be qualified by the knowledge that it was often his players who would take the initiative in team disputes, particularly at half-time, if an individual was believed not to be pulling his weight. Souness describes how the verbal, and sometimes physical, dressing down by players such as Gough, Brown and Butcher would already be well under way by the time he arrived in the changing room, usually from his vantage point in the stand where he had been ordered to sit after a series of touchline bans, leaving the manager to merely observe while calmly drinking his half-time cup of tea, as the situation was resolved ‘in-house’.

  It was a dressing room culture and a style of management which wasn’t to everyone’s taste, even if it did prove effective at times, particularly when things were going well on the field, but it became more problematic during the difficult periods, when most of the arguments and fall-outs tended to occur. On the whole, however, these were few and far between during the Souness era; in 1987/88, an inspired Celtic team, under returning manager Billy McNeill, would win the league and cup Double in their centenary year, but in the grander scheme of things, it was only a temporary interruption to a period when Rangers held absolute dominance over the domestic game in Scotland.

  It was a different story in Europe, however, as Rangers struggled to make an impact internationally over Souness’s time in charge of the club. Not long after his appointment as Rangers’ CEO, David Holmes had pledged that the club would do everything it could to bring the European Cup to Ibrox at some point in the near future. It was a tantalising promise, because no matter how many domestic honours Rangers won, the club’s fans would always be envious of their rivals from across the city, who had secured the prestigious trophy, as well as Glasgow’s European bragging rights, when Celtic famously defeated Inter Milan in the Lisbon final of the competition in 1967.

  Souness was aware of the prestige and the importance to any big club of European football from his time at Liverpool and his heavily incentivised team had eventually qualified for the UEFA Cup for the start of the 1986/87 season. In the first European tie of the Souness era, in September 1986, Rangers were paired with the unknown Finnish side Ilves Tampere. A hat-trick from Robert Fleck at Ibrox helped the team to a 4-0 first leg victory and progress was assured despite a limp 2-0 defeat in front of barely 2,000 fans in Finland, meaning that Rangers would face Portuguese outfit Boavista in the next round.

  Narrow home and away wins saw Rangers through to a third-round tie with Borussia Mönchengladbach, who held Rangers to a 1-1 draw at Ibrox, and then eliminated the Ibrox men on away goals following a tight, scoreless second leg in Germany. Their first foray into Europe under Souness had ended in November, but nevertheless Rangers were encouraged by what they considered to be an unlucky defeat against a strong German side. At Ibrox, a sloppy pass in midfield by Derek Ferguson, standing in for the injured manager, allowed Borussia to launch a counter-attack from which striker Rahn scored the crucial away goal, and in the return leg in the Bokelberg Stadium, Rangers had two players sent off, Cooper and Munro, and still managed not to concede, as the wily West Germans orchestrated their narrow win. The result came at a time when Scottish sides were still feared around Europe and Dundee United would show Rangers the way by reaching the final of the competition that season, with a run which included a 2-0 aggregate victory over Borussia in the semi-final, before the Taysiders were denied the trophy in the final by Gothenburg.

  The following season, Souness’s side won the league and qualified for the European Cup for the first time since the late 1970s. English clubs, who had dominated the tournament in Rangers’ absence, were now banned from European competitions following the Heysel Stadium tragedy, for which Liverpool fans had been partially culpable. The subsequent ban had a deleterious effect on the strength of UEFA’s flagship competition and many clubs including Rangers, in a particularly weak season for the tournament, sensed their opportunity to claim European football’s ultimate prize.

  Unfortunately, in the first round Rangers were drawn against the Soviet cracks Dynamo Kiev, one of the favourites for the competition, who had beaten Celtic with some ease the previous year on their way to the semi-final, where they had lost narrowly to the eventual champions, Porto. In the first leg in Kiev, in front of over 100,000 spectators, Souness played a containing game, with five men in midfield behind lone striker McCoist, and restricted the hosts to a 1-0 lead on the night, the game’s only goal coming from the penalty spot, converted after 72 minutes by future Rangers player, Alexei Mikhailichenko. It had been a qualified success and Rangers had given themselves a chance for the return leg at Ibrox two weeks later. Perhaps in desperation, and in all probability sensing that if they could beat Kiev then the later rounds would hold no great fears for
them, Souness resorted to the dubious tactic of narrowing the Ibrox pitch, from its customary width of 80 yards, to 70, the minimum allowed under the regulations.

  Kiev were an eclectic, star-studded team, but Souness believed that their main threat came from their two wingers, both former European footballers of the year, the veteran Oleg Blokhin and his young apprentice Igor Belanov, who had excelled for the Soviet Union at the recent World Cup in Mexico. It may have been a questionable strategy, but it had the desired effect, and on a pulsating night at Ibrox, during which a frustrated Belanov had to be substituted, Rangers won 2-0 to progress to a second-round meeting with the Polish champions Gornik Zabrze. Strange as it may seem, certainly to modern fans of the convoluted Champions League, following a 4-2 aggregate win over the Poles, Rangers were through to the quarter-finals after only two rounds of the competition.

  Their opponents in the spring would be Steaua Bucharest, who had won the European Cup in 1986, the first season following the English clubs’ enforced absence, and the Romanians would reach the final again three years later in Barcelona, where ultimately they were handed a footballing lesson by Arrigo Sacchi’s AC Milan, the first truly great European team to emerge since Heysel. Nevertheless, it was a time in the game’s history when the talent pool in European football was spread more evenly across the continent, unlike today perhaps when it is concentrated in a few rich super-clubs, and Steaua were a team with some illustrious players, most notably winger Gheorghe Hagi and deeplying striker Marius Lăcătuş.

  Rangers lost the first leg 2-0 in Bucharest, and in the return at Ibrox, the home side were hampered by the ineligibility of four new signings, including winger Mark Walters. In addition, with the revolving door at Ibrox in full swing, Souness had sold two of his main attackers, Fleck and Falco, leaving McCoist as his only option in the striker’s position for a game which Rangers needed to win by three clear goals. The manager’s tendency to form impulsive, quick-tempered judgements on players had arguably cost his club on this occasion, as Rangers lost 3-2 on aggregate, and Souness’s misery would be complete when an injury he aggravated in the second leg of the tie effectively ended his playing career.

  Rangers’ attempts on Europe subsequently petered out under Souness. In 1988/89 they were back in the UEFA Cup, suffering elimination in the second round at the hands of Cologne. The following year, they were knocked out of the European Cup in the first round by old foes Bayern Munich and in the season after that, Souness’s final at the club, a 10-0 aggregate walkover against Valletta of Malta, by the end of which goalkeeper Chris Woods had been invited forward to take and subsequently miss a penalty, was followed by a second-round defeat, 4-1 on aggregate, at the hands of eventual champions Red Star Belgrade, after a 3-0 trouncing in Yugoslavia. ‘How can I possibly win the European Cup with 11 Scots in the team?’ Souness lamented after the defeat, an odd excuse given that less than half his team were Scottish. Despite the quarter-final appearance in 1988, by the time Souness left for pastures new in April 1991, Rangers were no closer to European glory than when he arrived at the club.

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  By the start of 1988/89, Graeme Souness was beginning to gain the distinct impression from David Holmes that he was tiring of the continued spotlight on his joint roles as chief executive and now also chairman, and that his boss Lawrence Marlborough might be willing to sell his controlling interest in the club, particularly if Holmes was indeed close to packing it all in. When the manager eventually approached Holmes about the matter, his suspicions were confirmed and Souness immediately conveyed this information to his friend in Edinburgh, the businessman David Murray. In November 1988, after a series of meetings, Marlborough sold the club to a Murray-led consortium for £6m, with Murray himself taking a 70 per cent stake in the club and effectively becoming the new owner. The deal also involved taking on Rangers’ overdraft, which, despite the vastly increased revenue generated over the previous two years, stood at an estimated £9m, chiefly as a result of the club’s extravagant spending policy. The manager came in on the deal himself, investing enough of his personal wealth to make him the second largest shareholder at Rangers and putting him in the unique position of being player, manager, director and shareholder at the club.

  Murray was another self-styled Thatcherite entrepreneur, the kind of which seemed to be popping up with increasing regularity in the late 1980s, with many going on to become involved in the football boom of the following decades, both north and south of the border. Despite hailing from Ayrshire, Murray was already an established part of the Edinburgh set and he had crossed paths with Souness almost as soon as the player returned to Scotland. Souness liked to use the Murray-owned Norton House Hotel near the city’s airport to accommodate his squad and the pair soon became well acquainted.

  Cultivating celebrity friendships would become an important part of the Murray mystique over the years ahead but, in this instance, he and Souness genuinely seemed to have plenty in common; contentious, egotistical, both men seemed to ooze belligerence from every pore, expressed in Souness through physical intimidation, while Murray’s demeanour always smacked of the arrogance of money. True blue Tory boys, unlike David Holmes who had maintained his support for the Labour Party, it seemed like a marriage made in heaven when they embarked on the often risky venture of extending their established friendship into a business partnership.

  Murray was born in Ayr in 1951, the son of a gambler and convicted fraudster. After his parents split up, he was forced to relinquish a private education at the exclusive Fettes College in Edinburgh, eventually leaving the nearby Broughton High School with five O Levels. At the age of 23, he formed a company, Murray International Metals, which traded in steel, and later, as his empire grew, his group of companies acquired the more corporate-friendly title of Murray International Holdings Ltd (MIH). Gradually over the years, the group’s portfolio expanded into property, call centres, catering and even the media, although Murray’s newspaper, the Sunday Scot, launched in partnership with Souness’s old friend at The Sun, Jack Irvine, folded after only 18 weeks. In 1976, he lost both of his legs when he rolled his sports car, crashing into a tree at high speed after a tyre blowout on his way home from a rugby match. Using strips of cloth ripped from his jacket as tourniquets to staunch the bleeding, Murray’s quick thinking saved his life, but his mangled legs were beyond repair and had to be amputated, leaving the young entrepreneur requiring the use of crutches for the rest of his life.

  Around the same time, his father died and an early, unsuccessful business venture left him £100,000 out of pocket, but despite these setbacks, which he later admitted made him stronger and more determined, Murray was named Young Scottish Businessman of the Year in 1984. His interest in football had been piqued by Souness, and he had moved to acquire home town club Ayr United in early 1988, although his bid was rejected by the club’s shareholders after manager Ally MacLeod, he of Argentina ’78 fame, threatened to resign if the tycoon’s offer was accepted. Murray had connections with the banking community in Edinburgh, and the Bank of Scotland, through its treasurer and managing director Gavin Masterton, had been lending money to Murray’s companies as far back as 1981, when Murray became chairman of MIH.

  The bank subsequently loaned the industrialist the necessary capital to acquire Rangers in November 1988, putting the club into the red right from the start of Murray’s ownership. Throughout the 1990s and beyond, Bank of Scotland would lend Rangers ever more exorbitant sums of money, in an increasingly reckless and irresponsible manner, as the chairman’s ambitions for the club seemed to grow exponentially with every trophy they acquired.

  Souness was a hands-on manager, and after his joint acquisition of the club, he would now be running its affairs on a day to day basis, as initially, with David Holmes remaining chairman until the end of the season, Murray only came through to Glasgow when his presence was required, for matches and board meetings. Under the new regime at Rangers, the policy of speculate to accumulate continued, as the
stadium underwent another facelift with a third tier added to the Main Stand, increasing the capacity to almost 50,000, and both the Govan and Main stands were furnished with a new array of executive boxes. In the same season, Souness signed a further three English players, including international right-back Gary Stevens from Everton for £1.25m, as Rangers regained the league title, notching up emphatic 5-1 and 4-1 wins over Celtic at Ibrox along the way.

  However, with the Treble in sight, the Ibrox men lost the Scottish Cup Final to their old rivals, when Stevens’s short back-pass let in Joe Miller to score the only goal of the game, as the famous old trophy continued to elude Souness. Undaunted, the spending increased the following season as the manager brought in Trevor Steven from Everton for £1.525m and Maurice Johnston from Nantes for £1.25m. Youngster Chris Vinnicombe arrived from Exeter and former Chelsea and Liverpool man Nigel Spackman came in from QPR, both for half a million pounds, with Rangers subsequently going on to retain the title for the first time since 1976.

  On it went: in 1990/91, Rangers spent £500,000 to acquire England international Mark Hateley from Monaco. Unwanted back in his homeland, centre-forward Hateley had enjoyed spells in France and Italy at a time when a number of continental sides were experimenting with the idea of using a more physical and direct, British style of play on the back of successive English triumphs in the European Cup, before the post-Heysel ban allowed them to return to their traditional methods. Rangers, however, would be stung by criticism of their unsophisticated tactics, epitomised at this time by their strategy of playing long balls up to strongman Hateley and relying on his scurrying partner, initially Johnston then later McCoist, to win the second balls.