Tangled Up in Blue

by Stephen O'Donnell

  In a mirror image of the first leg, Hateley, who had been overlooked by English clubs as his contract ran down at Monaco and whose form in Scotland had failed to earn him a return to his country’s national team, clipped in a spectacular volley from distance early in the game. The big striker then set up his partner McCoist for the crucial second goal on the counter-attack, which rendered Cantona’s late consolation effectively meaningless.

  With the gracious Elland Road crowd applauding them from the field, many of the Rangers players, in spite of the success the club would go on to enjoy over this period, later recalled the double header victory over Leeds as one of the highlights of their careers. They had beaten the English champions home and away in front of a UK-wide audience, most of whom had written them off before a ball had even been kicked as the champions of a Mickey Mouse league. It was a considerable achievement for the Scottish side, but not one they could afford to dwell on as the club progressed to the group stages, which were set to get under way later in November.

  The eight qualified teams were divided into two groups of four, with Rangers drawn against Marseille, Bruges and CSKA Moscow, who had eliminated holders Barcelona in the previous round. It looked like a decent grouping from Rangers’ point of view, but with only one team qualifying from the section, the Ibrox men’s chances looked doomed when, in the first game at home to Marseille, they found themselves two goals down to arguably the most talented team in the tournament.

  The French champions were considered one of the favourites for the competition, with renowned international performers such as Desailly, Deschamps and Barthez in their ranks, as well as foreign strikers Bokšić and Völler, whose goals shot the visitors into a half-time lead. With McCoist injured and having watched his team being outplayed for most of the match on a soggy Ibrox pitch, Smith threw on another tall striker in McSwegan, as Rangers began to bombard the Marseille penalty box. The ploy worked as late headed goals from McSwegan and Hateley brought Smith’s side level and the match finished 2-2.

  Rangers were well and truly back in contention when they defeated CSKA Moscow in the next game, with the former Soviet army team forced to play their ‘home’ fixture, due to the harsh conditions of the Russian winter, in Bochum, Germany. Then in the spring, Rangers faced a double header against Bruges, drawing the first game in Belgium and winning the return 2-1 at Ibrox, despite being reduced to ten men after Hateley was ordered off. The winner in the second half was an extraordinary fluke from defender Scott Nisbet, as the ball from his deflected cross-cum-shot flew up into the air, caught the breeze and looped down into the net after bouncing over the goalkeeper’s head.

  The only disappointment was the red card issued to Hateley, which meant that the striker would be suspended for the rest of the campaign. Having enjoyed a fruitful spell against Marseille when he was a player at Monaco, the Englishman maintains to this day that the referee, Ryszard Wójcik from Poland, was bribed by the French club’s crooked president, Bernard Tapie, who was later found guilty of match-fixing and sent to prison for six months.

  Without Hateley in the side for what Smith described as the club’s biggest game in Europe for 30 years, Rangers managed a creditable draw in the Stade Velodrome, when a shot from Durrant equalised Franck Sauzée’s opening strike, and the Ibrox side were still confident of reaching the final going into the concluding game. With Marseille top of the group on goal difference, Rangers needed Bruges to do them a favour against the leaders, and there was certainly no love lost between the Belgians and the French side, while the Ibrox men took care of CSKA in Glasgow. In the end though, a disappointing draw against the Russians, combined with Marseille’s 1-0 victory in Belgium, saw Rangers eliminated and Marseille progress to a final meeting with AC Milan in Munich.

  However, it was around this time that scandal began to engulf the French champions and in particular Bernard Tapie, the club’s controversial owner and president. Tapie was later convicted of instigating the bribery of three players from lowly Valenciennes, including striker Jorge Burruchaga, who had netted the winning goal for Argentina in the World Cup Final in 1986. With the club closing in on their fifth consecutive French title and despite the fixture being brought forward to clear the weekend and allow his team more time to prepare for the Champions League Final, Tapie wanted to ensure that Valenciennes would ‘take their foot off the gas’ against his team, in their last domestic game before the meeting with Milan in Munich six days later.

  The plot, however, was revealed the next day, when 250,000 French francs were found in an envelope at the house of the in-laws of Valenciennes player Christophe Robert, a former team-mate of Marseille’s Jean-Jacques Eydelie, who was the alleged intermediary in Tapie’s scam. In a season in which they both soared to new heights and plunged to unprecedented depths, Marseille went on to beat AC Milan 1-0 in the inaugural Champions League Final, the only goal coming from the head of defender Basile Boli just before half-time. Marseille consequently became the first French side to lift the European Cup, but it didn’t spare them in their disgrace, as the club were stripped of the French title and demoted to Ligue 2, but despite these sanctions and the disrepute which was overwhelming the club, UEFA took no further action against Marseille and their title as European champions of 1993 was allowed to stand.

  Rangers had made a name for themselves in the competition, as the Ibrox men came close to reaching the final, playing a minimum of eight players affiliated to Scotland under the new non-national rule. They had found a style of play, relying on team spirit and direct football, which Smith hoped would prove effective against European opposition in the years ahead, as midfielder Ian Durrant noted, ‘The manager got us playing in a real British style. We were hard to beat and teams definitely didn’t like playing against us. That was down to the way the manager organised us and the way he set up the team.’

  But the revelations which were emerging surrounding rivals Marseille left a bitter taste in the mouth. In subsequent years, all sorts of conspiracy theories concerning other alleged irregularities during the European campaign surfaced and were lent credibility: CSKA’s 6-0 capitulation in France, the way the Russians celebrated after drawing their last, supposedly meaningless match at Ibrox… had they been bought? Bruges’s indifferent performance in their final game against a team they supposedly despised… had they too been got at? And what of Hateley’s red card against Bruges? If the referee really had been bribed to send off the striker and trigger a suspension, as Hateley maintains, claiming that he had been warned in advance of the game about a potential situation by a mysterious telephone caller, then it was decidedly convenient of him to shove his elbow in the face of the Bruges defender as he went up for a challenge, and then raise his hands to the same opponent just a few seconds later. Hateley had committed two separate offences, either one of which could easily have seen him red-carded by an impartial official, but still the rumours of alleged impropriety persist to this day.

  In the end, regardless of all the unsubstantiated allegations, it had been a tremendous effort from Rangers, despite winning only two of their six group games. They had, however, managed to remain unbeaten and, perhaps an even greater achievement, they had belatedly won some respect from the English press, who, having been so dismissive of their chances against Leeds earlier in the season, were treating the Glasgow side as one of their own by the end of the campaign.

  It wasn’t quite enough though, and ultimately the season represented a high-water mark for Smith’s team in Europe. Chasing the dream of European glory and burning huge amounts of cash in order to achieve it, a series of subsequent embarrassing and painful failures on the Continent would eventually lead to the manager’s downfall at Ibrox.

  * * * *

  Rangers knew that if they wished to continue to qualify for the revamped format of the Champions League they would have to maintain their dominance of the domestic game in Scotland, and to that end Smith splashed out a British record £4m in the summer of 1993 on Dundee United
striker Duncan Ferguson. The Tannadice club had a long-standing policy of refusing to sell their best players to other Scottish sides, but Rangers’ offer simply blew that idea out of the water, as chairman David Murray’s extravagant spending continued at Ibrox.

  The club’s task at this time appeared to be made considerably easier by the declining challenge from their rivals, and in particular from their perennial adversaries Celtic, who found themselves engulfed by an extraordinary crisis in the early part of the decade. The Parkhead club was controlled by a trio of dynastic families, the Whites, Kellys and Grants, who had been stakeholders in Celtic and represented the club at boardroom level since the Victorian age. By the early 1990s, however, much like Rangers a decade before, the club had been allowed to wither on the vine and the board appeared ill-suited and unwilling to adapt to the transformations which were reshaping modern football.

  Eventually, following a lengthy and often acrimonious tussle for control of the club, matters came to a head in March 1994 when the incumbent board were forced out and replaced by the Scots-born Canadian émigré, Fergus McCann. The new owner immediately paid off the old board’s debts and set about recapitalising the club through a phenomenally successful share issue so that by the time of his departure from Celtic, on schedule at the end of his five-year plan in April 1999, McCann had increased the turnover of the company from £8.7m to £33.8m, rebuilt the old ground into a 60,000-capacity all-seater arena and won the league, preventing Rangers from attaining an unprecedented sequence of ten titles in a row.

  Such a series of accomplishments must have seemed a long way off to Celtic’s supporters back in 1994, but it was by no means just the Hoops who were feeling the squeeze at this time, as the challenge of Aberdeen by now was also wilting badly, and the team which had latterly done so well to compete with Rangers, on a fraction of the Ibrox club’s budget, found that they could no longer keep up with Smith’s cash-rich side.

  It was a similar scenario for the other half of the ‘New Firm’ as Dundee United saw long-standing manager Jim McLean step down in the early 1990s to be replaced by the idiosyncratic Serb, Ivan Golac. In 1995, a time when Scottish football seemed to be diminishing in stature and prestige, ailing badly in comparison to the upsurge that was simultaneously taking place at the top of the English game, the two teams from the east coast, former rivals for European glory just a decade earlier, finished bottom of the league, with United sent down to the First Division, while Aberdeen, managed by former captain Willie Miller, only avoided a first-time relegation after overcoming Dunfermline in a two-legged play-off. Over in Edinburgh meanwhile, Hibs and Hearts, who avoided Aberdeen’s fate only on the last day of the season, were squabbling with each other. Such was the perilous financial position at Hibernian, following an aborted takeover by a conman named David Duff, that Hearts chairman Wallace Mercer tried to merge the two clubs, effectively pursuing a hostile takeover which would spell the end of the Easter Road side.

  With their rivals falling like flies, the task facing Rangers became increasingly clear; Celtic hadn’t managed even a second-place finish since the centenary season Double of 1988, but having got their ducks in a row off the park under McCann’s new regime, Rangers soon realised that if they could hold off the renewed threat from the east end of Glasgow, there was no other team in the league who would challenge them. Smith harboured no sentiment or illusions in regard to the guff spouted so often in more recent times about Scottish football needing a strong Celtic and Rangers. He viewed the potential rebirth and resurgence of Celtic, quite rightly, as a threat to his club’s hegemony. Rangers responded to the Celtic renaissance in the only way that they knew how; they went out and bought players. Smith’s spending at Ibrox, already excessive, was about to go through the roof.

  Rangers had secured their fifth consecutive league title but at times, especially in the first half of the 1993/94 season, their form had been unconvincing both domestically, with the team acquiring the unfortunate habit of being unable to hold on to a lead, and in Europe, where an away goals defeat to Levski Sofia of Bulgaria sent them spinning out of the Champions League in the first qualifying round, ensuring that there would be no repeat of the previous season’s heroics. Rangers won only five of their opening 14 league fixtures, a sequence which included home losses to Kilmarnock, Motherwell and Celtic as well as a 2-0 defeat to Aberdeen at Pittodrie, although the League Cup was won in October, with the winner against Hibs in the final at Celtic Park coming from substitute McCoist, returning to the team after breaking his leg on international duty in April, who settled the match with an acrobatic overhead kick.

  The following week, however, Smith’s side lost to Celtic, suffering a demoralising last-minute defeat, after a mistake from number two goalkeeper Ally Maxwell allowed Brian O’Neil to net the winner and give new Celtic manager Lou Macari victory in his first game in charge. With their indifferent start to the season continuing, Rangers spent £1.2m to acquire another striker, Gordon Durie, who was signed from Tottenham in November. The turning point in the season eventually arrived on New Year’s Day at Celtic Park, when Hateley scored within the opening minute and Rangers soon raced into three-goal lead, a scoreline which provoked some Celtic fans in the main stand to start throwing chocolate bars at the directors’ box, where the old board were still housed. The home team pulled it back to 3-2, leaving Rangers supporters worried that another established lead would be thrown away, but nerves were eventually settled by a decisive fourth strike from Oleg Kuznetsov. The Ibrox men subsequently notched up 17 games undefeated, taking them to the title, although they failed to land the Scottish Cup, which was lost in the Hampden final to Ivan Golac’s first-time winners Dundee United, ending the dream of unprecedented back-to-back Trebles.

  In April, the season was marred by an incident involving new signing Duncan Ferguson, making only his second start since September after spending most of his first year at Rangers on the treatment table. During a match at Ibrox, the volatile striker head-butted Raith Rovers’ full-back Jock McStay, or ‘nutted him a dull yin’ in the Glasgow vernacular, following an innocuous challenge between the pair, after McStay, a relative of Celtic captain Paul, had allegedly questioned the excessive fee paid for Ferguson’s services by the Ibrox club. It would lead to the striker’s third conviction for assault, and a 44 day stint at Her Majesty’s pleasure in the notorious Glasgow prison, Barlinnie.

  Rangers’ off-field problems continued when goalkeeper Andy Goram went on an unsanctioned bender in Tenerife, for which he was placed on the transfer list by Smith, but the goalkeeper was later reprieved due to a lack of interest from other parties. Goram would go on to play a key role in Rangers’ success over the next four years; however, Ferguson’s career at Ibrox proved to be short-lived, although the club did well to recoup over £4m for the forward when he joined Everton, as English clubs, enjoying their new found wealth in the lucrative breakaway Premier League, began to catch up with free-spending Rangers.

  For some time there had been talk at Ibrox and in the media of the club matching Celtic’s ‘nine-in-a-row’, the run of consecutive titles won by the Parkhead men under Jock Stein between 1966 and 1974. With six titles now in the bag, the chatter which Smith had been at pains to play down publicly was rising to a crescendo, with the Scottish players, in particular, aware of the significance of their target.

  Goram recalled the mood among his team-mates at that time, ‘When we got to that stage the pressure was really on us. We were beginning to edge closer to nine-in-a-row. We knew we had to try and win nine-in-a-row because the club might never get another chance to achieve it.’ Defender David Robertson agreed, ‘The first title win [in 1993] was special but the second one wasn’t quite as enjoyable. The first time I remember the joy, but after that the pressure was on as we tried to go for nine-in-a-row. In the end each title became more of a relief than anything else.’ Fellow rearguard man John Brown recollects how early the squad had their objective in mind as well as their confidence that
they could ultimately achieve it, ‘From our second or third title in a row we really believed that we were strong enough and good enough to make it nine-in-a-row.’ Smith himself observed more cautiously, as his team closed in on their goal, ‘You can’t get ahead of yourself in these situations. When you have won two or three championship titles, nine seems an awfully long way off in the distance. Then when you have six or seven, you feel that it might be coming within touching distance. But ultimately, getting this close just makes you appreciate what a great feat it was by Celtic in the first place.’

  Curiously, for a club with an acknowledged superiority complex, there was scant reference by anyone associated with Rangers – players, fans or management – to beating Celtic’s record and extending their winning run of titles to ten. All the talk was of nine.

  With six of those championships now under their belt, Rangers were hit with a serious setback before the new domestic campaign was even under way when they lost the opening leg of their Champions League qualifier, 2-0 to AEK Athens in Greece. Playing a sweeper behind two centre-halves with pushed-on full-backs, a defensive system which had been untested even in pre-season, Smith’s men were undone at the back in the hostile atmosphere of AEK’s Nikos Goumas Stadium with only goalkeeper Goram’s heroics keeping the tie alive for the second leg. For the return two weeks later, in a similarly febrile environment at Ibrox, it was hoped that the Greek side could be put in their place, but instead it was Rangers who were brought down to earth as the underestimated Athenians, a team of relative unknowns in comparison to the Ibrox club’s high-profile and expensive signings, out-thought and ultimately outplayed the Scottish champions, passing them to death at times, with tactically inept Rangers reduced to pumping hopeful long balls up to Hateley and Ferguson, surely one of the shortest-lived striking partnerships in the club’s history.