Tangled Up in Blue

by Stephen O'Donnell

  After Savevski’s goal in the 40th minute effectively killed the tie, the half-time analysis, in an STV studio decked out in Rangers colours, seemed more like an autopsy with pundit Maurice Johnston’s perplexed and gloomy expression totally incongruent against a backdrop of images featuring rejoicing and celebrating Rangers players.

  The 3-0 aggregate defeat amounted to a sobering lesson and a turning point in the manager’s tenure at the club. In two of the previous three seasons, Rangers had exited the Champions League at the first qualifying stage, but the narrow losses were put down to circumstances and bad luck; against Sparta Prague a last-minute blunder by new goalkeeper Goram, deep into extra time, turned a relatively comfortable 2-0 lead at Ibrox on the night into an agonising defeat on away goals, while in Sofia two years later against Levski, another late goal, a wonder strike from Bulgarian international Nikolai Todorov, put Rangers out again, by the same narrow margin.

  Against AEK however, there could be no doubt about who were the superior side, with even Smith admitting that his team had become predictable by the end. The defeat must have been particularly galling for new signing Basile Boli, who, if we were to believe the Scottish press, had turned down a more lucrative offer to play in Italy with Genoa for a shot at Champions League glory with Rangers. Explaining his hopes of recapturing the trophy he had won with Marseille, Boli told the media as he was unveiled at Ibrox, ‘You need skill, experience, good tactics and good players to do that and I think Rangers are capable of it… I did not come to Glasgow just because I like the town. I want to play at the highest level and that is the Champions Cup.’

  Following their elimination, Boli criticised Smith’s tactics against AEK, in particular the strategy of lumping long balls up to the strikers, and complained about being played out of position. Published in a French magazine, the attack on the manager was downplayed publicly in Scotland, dismissed as a case of ‘lost in translation’, but ultimately the Ivorian-born defender’s stay in Glasgow would be brief.

  The early elimination plunged Ibrox into despair and worse was to follow for Rangers at the weekend when they lost badly to Celtic, the Parkhead men earning a deserved 2-0 win on the blue side of the city against a team containing Boli and the club’s other high-profile summer acquisition, Brian Laudrup, the imperious Dane, who had arrived from Fiorentina. Rangers on the day had to cope not only with a sprightly Celtic team, containing 11 Scots and led by new manager Tommy Burns, but also the scorn and derision of their own supporters, which cascaded down from the stands, much of it aimed in a very personal and spiteful way at both the chairman and manager. To compound the misery, another Ibrox defeat then followed when Rangers were knocked out of the League Cup, going down 2-1 to Falkirk, meaning that Smith’s expensively assembled side had somehow contrived to lose three home games in a week.

  Rangers ultimately rallied however, with Smith relying on the ageold tactic of ramping up the siege mentality, and motivating his players to rub their critics’ noses in the dirt and prove the doubters wrong. In October, with a view to adapting their defensive strategy and playing the three at the back system in Europe more regularly, the manager recruited centre-half Alan McLaren from Hearts, raising the club’s spending since the summer to more than £7m.

  When asked if the signings would continue, chairman David Murray replied, ‘We have done more in a couple of weeks than the rest of Scottish football in five years.’

  With Celtic going through a laborious transitional season, ground-sharing at Hampden following Fergus McCann’s takeover, the Ibrox men ran away with the league, eventually finishing 15 points ahead of second-placed Motherwell. They had relied heavily on the peerless Laudrup, voted Player of the Year in his first season in Scotland, who seemed to relish the freedom he was afforded by Smith, in contrast to the rigid tactical formations he was squeezed into in Italy, which stifled his running and creativity, and to a lesser extent on 33-year-old Mark Hateley, who quit the club at the end of the season to join QPR after five and a half years at Ibrox.

  There was to be no mercy for Rangers’ long-suffering opponents as the club once again ramped up the spending in the close season, bringing in the biggest star in British football at the time, maverick Geordie Paul Gascoigne, who signed from Lazio for £4.5m. Joining Gazza at Ibrox, with the club now bidding for eight titles in a row, would be World Cup Golden Boot winner Oleg Salenko (£2.5m from Valencia), Stephen Wright (£1.5m from Aberdeen) and Gordan Petrić (£1.2m from Dundee United), while over the course of the season Smith added Derek McInnes, Peter van Vossen, Erik Bo Andersen and Theo Snelders to his squad.

  Hope sprung eternal in the qualifying round for the Champions League, where Rangers had been eliminated in three of the previous four seasons, when the club were paired with Cypriot champions Anorthosis Famagusta, surely a more beatable opponent than their previous adversaries at this stage of the competition. A stilted performance in the first leg at Ibrox gave Rangers a 1-0 win thanks to a strike from Durie, which was followed by a more assured, but still tense and nervy, display in Cyprus, the goalless draw seeing Smith’s side through to the tournament’s group stages for only the second time.

  Rangers were subsequently drawn in a tough section, which included Juventus and Borussia Dortmund, two teams who would contest the final of the competition only 18 months later. Abject humiliation followed; after losing their opening fixture in Bucharest against Steaua, with McLaren sent off in a 1-0 reverse, then drawing at home to Dortmund, Rangers were routed by Juventus in Turin, 4-1 the final score, although, at 3-0 after 23 minutes, the Italian custom of easing up and showing a reluctance to embarrass already beaten opponents spared Rangers, a team who still harboured delusions of grandeur at this level. The unfortunate patsy was journeyman full-back Alex Cleland, who was so bamboozled by the merciless skills of Alessandro del Piero that he ended up scything the Italian maestro to the ground and being ordered off. After the game, Smith appeared shell-shocked, with Goram reporting, ‘He came into the dressing room and never really said much.’ Later, according to the goalkeeper, the manager encouraged the players to get drunk on the flight home, ‘Walter stood up and said, “If I see any of you are sober by the time we arrive back in Glasgow then you are getting fined.” He just wiped the slate clean and it worked because we had a big game on the Saturday and we went out and battered Hearts in the league.’

  If their experience in Turin wasn’t enough, Juventus then arrived in Glasgow two weeks later and humbled Rangers again, extending the margin of victory this time to 4-0, with the visitors not flattered by late goals from Ravanelli and Marocchi. Despite these painful reverses, Rangers, theoretically, still had a chance to qualify, although they needed to win both their remaining group games. The club’s perilous situation seemed to offer Gascoigne an opportunity to belatedly step into the limelight, but the player’s performances in the final two fixtures, both drawn, seemed to sum up the mercurial Geordie – he scored a blinder against Steaua and was sent off against Dortmund. Despite, or perhaps because of the influence of their unknowable midfielder, Rangers finished bottom of the group.

  Domestically, this was the season which saw the belated introduction of the three points for a win system in Scotland. A reinvigorated Celtic, rehoused back at their spiritual home in a partially rebuilt Parkhead, were playing the best football in the country under Tommy Burns, and lost only one league game all season, a 2-0 home defeat to Rangers in September. At half-time in the match, a furious Smith read the riot act to his players, who had been totally outplayed by the home team up to that point, despite Rangers’ Cleland opening the scoring shortly before the interval, before Gascoigne sealed the win late on. The other three games between the title rivals finished even, including a rollicking 3-3 draw between the pair at Ibrox in November, but, in addition to their failure to beat Rangers, Celtic’s inability to finish teams off and, when necessary, grind out important wins against dogged opponents meant that too many games were drawn, 11 in total, and they were beaten to
the championship by Smith’s more ruthless and efficient side, who collected their eighth title in a row.

  The Ibrox men also eliminated Celtic from both cup competitions, meaning that, at a time when the Parkhead side were re-emerging from the club’s worst slump in 30 years, Rangers were able to hold off their rivals’ resurgence and keep them at arm’s length. Smith’s men eventually took the title in the penultimate game of the season at Ibrox, when Gascoigne scored a terrific hat-trick to beat Aberdeen 3-1, including two late goals which sealed the win with a virtuoso performance from the Englishman. A few weeks later, in the Scottish Cup Final, it was Laudrup’s turn to dazzle as the Dane set up Durie for a hat-trick and then added two goals himself, Rangers rounding off the season with a 5-1 thrashing of Hearts at Hampden.

  The Ibrox side’s stranglehold over the Old Firm fixture would serve them well the following season as Rangers looked to match Celtic’s record of nine consecutive titles. The pattern always seemed to be the same; Celtic attacks foundering on a strong defence, Rangers counter-attacking, relying on the strength of their defenders at set pieces and on the predatory instincts of McCoist, who would overtake legendary Celtic forward James McGrory and move into second place in the list of all-time leading scorers in Old Firm games. Rangers were particularly dependent on the heroics of goalkeeper Goram, who admitted, ‘We were never gonna outplay Celtic at Parkhead, we all knew that. It’s a hard place to go. The amount of times we came away from Parkhead winning 1-0 after getting a doing was ridiculous.’

  Throw Gascoigne and Laudrup into the mix, and the result was clear – Rangers won all four of the league fixtures between the teams in 1996/97, a record which would prove decisive in the final tally. A frustrated Tommy Burns would be left to lament, ‘Put on my tombstone, “Andy Goram broke my heart”.’ Celtic owner Fergus McCann had no time for such sentimentality, as he sacked his manager at the end of the season.

  Smith’s side geared up for the assault on the historic ninth championship with seven straight wins at the start of the campaign, culminating in a 2-0 success over Celtic at Ibrox, with Gascoigne’s last-minute clincher handing the Parkhead men their first league defeat in almost a year. Rangers also negotiated their way past Russian champions Alania Vladikavkaz in the Champions League qualifiers, after a 3-1 win at Ibrox was followed by a remarkable 7-2 victory in the second leg in North Ossetia. The club’s European ambitions at this time were aided by the legal dismantling of UEFA’s notorious ‘three plus two’ foreigner rule, which had limited the availability of non-national players in European competitions. Based on the idealistic, old-fashioned premise that clubs should be encouraged to nurture their own talent, or at least source their players locally, instead of buying up and retaining a team full of foreign mercenaries, the directive ultimately fell foul of EU law and was abolished, following the landmark Bosman ruling by the European Supreme Court. Rangers vice-chairman Donald Findlay welcomed the court’s decision, ‘We are delighted with the verdict. It means that our foreign players are now just Rangers players, pure and simple, and are available for every game.’

  Rangers had lost their last remaining excuse and were determined to make an impact on the continent for the first time in many years. With no restrictions now in place over non-Scots in the matchday squad and with nine domestic titles in their sights, Rangers had bolstered their options over the summer with the acquisitions of the Hamburg captain Jorg Albertz, who cost £4m, Swedish international defender Joachim Bjorklund, a £2.7m purchase from Vicenza, and in January they added Sebastian Rozental, the lesser-spotted Chilean striker, who cost £3.5m from Universidad Catolica, but seemed to be permanently injured. The newcomers to the set-up were immediately made aware of the importance of the season domestically, summed up by the supporter who told club captain Richard Gough that if Rangers didn’t win the league this season, then all the other eight titles were effectively worthless.

  For the group stages of the Champions League, Rangers were drawn in a seemingly more accommodating section, after the trauma of the previous season, when they were paired with Grasshoppers Zurich, Ajax and Auxerre. Maybe their minds were on nine-in-a-row, maybe it was something far more fundamental, but Rangers were awful; they lost all four of their opening fixtures, which included a particularly insipid 3-0 defeat to Grasshoppers on matchday one in Zurich, when their defensive frailties were once again exposed, and a 4-1 drubbing by Ajax in the new Amsterdam Arena stadium, in a game which saw the immature Gascoigne dismissed for an off-the-ball kick at Winston Bogarde.

  Branded ‘inexcusable’ by team-mate McCoist, Gazza was shifting once again between genius and liability as Smith had to contend with the very public news of the player’s abusive relationship with his wife, after the tabloid press were full of reports that the icon had assaulted Sheryl Gascoigne in a drunken rage at Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire. In addition, there were rumours in the media about the Rangers players’ indulgent lifestyles, with some of Smith’s charges accused of excessive drinking and nightclubbing, leading to the issue of ill-discipline being raised at the club’s AGM, where the manager was forced to defend his men.

  Rangers eventually finished bottom of their group again, with one win and five defeats from their six matches. The club’s persistent series of failures in Europe left everyone scratching their heads; how could such an expensively assembled team, containing acknowledged stars of the calibre of Gascoigne and Laudrup, alongside stalwarts such as Gough and McCoist, be so repeatedly found wanting on the European stage, even against equivalent or inferior sides? The most painful aspect was the raising of hopes, which were then dashed. After their dismantling of the Russian champions in the qualifiers, Rangers were considered by some in Scotland to be favourites for the group, but they had fallen flat on their faces once again. In reality, Smith’s side were nothing more than Champions League cannon fodder.

  Owner David Murray blamed all the talk surrounding the season’s domestic significance for the club’s dismal start to the European campaign. ‘Nine-in-a-row is having a negative effect on us. Rangers will stand still until it disappears,’ the chairman complained to the Daily Record in October. ‘It’s like a monkey on our backs. I’ve said before, I’d rather see success in Europe than nine-in-a-row and I stand by that now. Of course I’d take satisfaction out of nine-in-a-row – I’d love to see 19-in-a-row – but it is becoming a real strain on us.’

  To be fair to the manager, he rarely allowed European failure to affect his team’s domestic form and all the focus that season was on the league. Rangers even seemed half-hearted in their attitude towards the Scottish Cup, as they allowed themselves to go down to a rare defeat to Celtic in the quarter-finals, only their second loss to the Parkhead men in two and a half years. Rangers had won the opening league game between the rivals, 2-0 at Ibrox in September, and the return fixture was at Celtic Park just six weeks later, by which time the Parkhead men had moved to the top of the league. After a positive start from Celtic, Laudrup scored from his side’s first attack, which left the home team desperately trying to press for an equaliser, but in the process leaving themselves glaringly exposed at the back.

  On numerous occasions, Rangers failed to extend their lead with eye-opening chances on the counter-attack, most notably when van Vossen ran through and was teed up by Albertz, only for the Dutch winger to shoot over the bar instead of rolling the ball into the unguarded net, a miss which left Smith apoplectic in the stands. Rangers were then awarded a penalty when Kerr fouled Laudrup, but the young goalkeeper redeemed himself by saving Gascoigne’s spot kick. With minutes remaining, Celtic won a penalty of their own after Gough’s foul on Donnelly, but Goram saved from van Hooijdonk to keep Rangers in front. Almost unbelievably, the game had finished 1-0, and Smith’s side moved back to the top of the league.

  The crucial, defining fixture between the pair, however, came at Ibrox, on 2 January. In another titanic struggle, Albertz shot the home team into an early lead with a thunderous free kick, before Di Canio sl
otted home a deserved equaliser early in the second half. It seemed that the tide had turned in Celtic’s favour, but Rangers regained the lead in the 83rd minute when a mix-up in the visitors’ reorganised defence allowed substitute Erik Bo Andersen to score. At that point, a gripping battle between the two title rivals became mired in controversy; with just three minutes of normal time remaining, Celtic’s Cadete struck an instinctive volley past Goram, but the goal was wrongly ruled out for offside by linesman Gordon McBride. It was a particularly baffling error by the official, as instantly available TV replays showed that at no point was the Portuguese striker in an offside position, with Petrić standing behind him when the ball was played, and even when it was received. Moments later, with Celtic still protesting the decision, the nimble Andersen clinched the game when he raced through to score again, a goal which sent Walter Smith racing down the touchline, his overcoat flapping in the breeze, celebrating with the fans as if nine-ina-row had been clinched there and then.

  It was, however, an unsatisfactory end to an engrossing contest. Referring to the disallowed goal, Smith’s biographer, Neil Drysdale, wrote, ‘The controversy sprang from the fact that this did not constitute an everyday cock-up by an official. Television pictures proved emphatically that Cadete had been comfortably onside when he had collected the ball, and that he had not strayed offside when he had polished off his shot. Even to the naked eye it looked an awful call, and yet Scotland’s two main tabloid newspapers hardly mentioned the incident the following morning. What they did eventually reveal was that the linesman at the centre of the dispute was a Rangers season ticket holder, who drank in his local masonic club and was a self-confessed “loyal” fan of the Ibrox organisation.’