Tangled Up in Blue

by Stephen O'Donnell

  In the semi-final against Fiorentina, a dull 90-minute tussle in Glasgow was followed by an equally stultifying 120-minute slog in Tuscany with neither side able to produce a goal over the two legs, an outcome which had even the traditionally overcautious Italians bleating about Rangers’ crushingly negative tactics, after the Scots won the resulting penalty shoot-out and qualified for the final in Manchester.

  Rangers’ opponents at the City of Manchester Stadium would be Dick Advocaat’s Zenit St Petersburg, who had dispatched Bayern Munich 5-1 on aggregate in the semi-final. The Ibrox men may not have attracted many plaudits for their style of play or won over many neutrals to their cause, but it was still a notable accomplishment to make the final, regardless of the crescendo of criticism surrounding their tactics, which was added to when former Rangers player Fernando Ricksen, still with Zenit after being sent into exile by Le Guen, described his old team as ‘boring’. Yet Smith’s side, spurred on by enormous mega-bonuses for reaching the latter stages and perhaps seeking to emulate Celtic’s similar achievement in 2003, had somehow managed, on more than one occasion, to find a way past superior opposition. But having made it to Manchester and matched Celtic’s exploits in the competition, the Ibrox men seemed to lose their mojo in the final against the Russians and went down to a tame 2-0 defeat, with a goal from Denisov and a last-minute clincher from Zyrianov giving Advocaat a famous victory over his former charges.

  There would be no respite for Smith’s men following the disappointment of the UEFA Cup Final as they had to switch their attention abruptly back to the domestic campaign and a title race which was heading for a dramatic conclusion. Once again the derby fixtures with Celtic had provided the most pivotal moments over the course of the season; in October, Rangers had earned a deserved 3-0 victory over their rivals at Ibrox, but the return game at Celtic Park, scheduled for the New Year, was called off in tragic circumstances after the untimely death of former Celtic midfielder Phil O’Donnell, who suffered heart failure while playing for Motherwell against Dundee United on 29 December. The next game between the sides, after further call-offs due to the weather, would therefore also be at Ibrox at the end of March and the match was settled by a Kevin Thomson goal just before half-time, giving Smith his fourth successive victory in the derby since his return to the club. A deflated Celtic then further handed the initiative to their rivals in their next match when they stumbled to an ignominious 1-0 home defeat to ten-man Motherwell, a result which left the Parkhead men six points behind Rangers, having played two games more. Of their eight remaining matches, however, two would be on home soil against Smith’s side.

  Rangers by now were accumulating a backlog of fixtures, which could not be easily accommodated into free midweek slots because of their continued progress in the UEFA Cup. The next derby game, held over from the New Year and squeezed in to an already crammed schedule on 16 April, saw Celtic take the lead through a brilliant swerving shot from Nakamura, before Novo equalised early in the second half. The influential Japanese then won a penalty for Celtic when his netbound shot was handled on the goal line by Cuellar, who was ordered off, but adding to the tension, McGregor then saved McDonald’s spot kick, despite the Rangers goalkeeper sustaining an injured ankle which required him to be immediately substituted. With the home side piling on the pressure against Rangers’ ten men, Vennegoor of Hesselink nodded in an injury-time winner, which ultimately saved Celtic’s season.

  The pair then met again at the end of April, the third encounter between the sides in four weeks. McDonald struck after just four minutes to give the home team an early lead, but the Ibrox men hit back and scored two almost identical goals, as first Weir, then Cousin headed in successive corners to turn the tables and give Rangers the advantage. Despite dominating the game, Celtic found themselves behind after conceding two soft goals from set pieces, although the Parkhead men managed to restore parity before half-time with another strike from McDonald. In the second half, the decisive moment came when the busy Australian striker was felled in the penalty box by Broadfoot and Barry Robson stepped up to settle the match from the spot. The title race, it seemed, was very much back on.

  By this stage of the season, the matter of Rangers’ remaining fixtures was becoming a source of controversy. On 22 April, as had been customary in the SPL since the introduction of the end of season league split in 2000, the fixture card for the remaining five games of the season was published. This year, however, there would be a notable difference, with the league announcing two alternatives schedules, dependent on whether or not Rangers won their pending semi-final against Fiorentina and reached the UEFA Cup Final. If Rangers went through, the season would be extended by four days to accommodate their backlog of postponed matches, which is ultimately what happened after they saw off the Italians on penalties in Florence. Rangers protested bitterly over the announcement however, because it meant that they would have to cram two midweek games into the final week of the season and they were also denied the opportunity to have some extra time off before the final, which put them at a perceived disadvantage compared to their well-rested opponents.

  Conversely, some of the league’s other clubs, most vocally Celtic, also complained that the integrity of the competition had been compromised by the extension to the season and argued against any leeway being given to Rangers at all. In a previous era, Rangers would simply have been asked to play their games in hand beyond the end of the season unilaterally, but the modern, internationally recognised practice was for the final round of league fixtures to kick off simultaneously, so all three matches on the last day of the season involving the top six sides were eventually moved back from the weekend to Thursday, 22 May.

  In many ways, the League found themselves in the midst of a perfect storm and having to deal with a myriad of exceptional circumstances, including the tragic and unforeseeable death of Phil O’Donnell, the otherwise innocent postponement of Rangers’ game with St Mirren prior to the Scotland versus Italy encounter in November, the rearrangement of the Gretna game, delayed before the Lyon defeat, further disruptive cancellations over the winter due to the weather, bad even by Scottish standards, as well as Rangers’ run to the UEFA Cup Final, all of which contributed to what SPL secretary Ian Blair described as ‘an exceptionally challenging season in terms of fixturing’. In the end, the League handled the situation as best they could with a compromise which inconvenienced both Rangers, by asking them to play four games in eight days, as well as the other five clubs in the section, by holding their final matches over until the following Thursday. As SPL chairman Lex Gold observed only partly in jest, they must have been doing something right if nobody was entirely happy with the outcome.

  Almost as soon as Rangers had ensured their place in the UEFA Cup Final, however, and the league extension was confirmed, club chairman Sir David Murray was demanding the postponement of his team’s game with Dundee United, which was scheduled to take place four days before the Manchester final, on 10 May. Murray’s advocated solution was either to delay the final round of fixtures until 27 May, after the Scottish Cup Final, a proposal which would have required the other teams in the league to hang around for two and a half weeks after the penultimate round of matches in order to complete their seasons, or to move the date of that final, the traditional season-ending game, after which players usually either go on holiday or join up with their international squads.

  With Scotland due to play the Czech Republic in Prague on 30 May and with other pre-Euro 2008 games arranged for some of Celtic’s foreign players, the SPL turned down Murray’s request, announcing that there was ‘no viable alternative’ to the published schedule and endorsing the decision to end the season on 22 May. The SFA also confirmed, through its chief executive Gordon Smith, a former Rangers player, that the Scottish Cup Final would not be moved and that the showpiece event would go ahead on the arranged date, with Rangers’ opponents in the final, Queen of the South, already having to wait four weeks without a competitive gam
e before taking on Smith’s side in their first ever final.

  Murray’s response to the ruling bodies’ inflexibility was to claim that the football world would ‘laugh at this decision in disbelief’. Such was his indignation in fact that Murray, and his manager Smith, seemed to completely forget, in their subsequent criticism of the SPL, that the league season had already been extended on Rangers’ behalf, an accommodation which was not afforded to Middlesbrough in 2006, when the Teessiders twice had to squeeze in two midweek games between their standard weekend fixtures while en route to the UEFA Cup Final that year, without any recorded complaints about the English Premier League being a source of global ridicule.

  Rangers were, understandably perhaps, pursuing their own interests, but with a dogmatic disregard for the concerns and the potential impact on other affected parties including Aberdeen, Dundee United, Hibs and Motherwell, who were all still battling for a UEFA Cup spot. The fixture congestion was unfortunate for the Ibrox club, especially as Zenit St Petersburg, their opponents in Manchester, had not played a league game since 26 April and their last competitive match had been the 4-0 semi-final second-leg win over Bayern Munich on 1 May. With plenty of time to rearrange fixtures in a league still operating on a summer schedule, the Russian authorities had agreed to postpone Zenit’s match away to Luch Energiya, meaning that Advocaat’s side did not have to endure a 15,000km round trip across seven time zones to Vladivostok days before the final in Manchester.

  However, as well as the unforeseen circumstances, Rangers had not helped their own cause by their failure to eliminate Hibernian and then First Division Partick Thistle at the first time of asking from the Scottish Cup, with both Ibrox ties requiring schedule-busting replays before they eventually progressed. The real folly, though, was the Gretna postponement in December, an unnecessary and unprecedented indulgence at the time, which now returned to bite the Ibrox club at the most inopportune moment, because despite all the cancellations and rearrangements and the unavailability of certain dates, there was only one outstanding fixture that could not be accommodated into the normal routine of two games per week once the league season had been extended, namely Rangers’ visit to St Mirren, called off before the international break in November, a match which could have been played in January on the date which was allocated the rearranged Gretna game.

  So Rangers, having lost the UEFA Cup Final on the Wednesday, now had to play Motherwell on the Saturday and St Mirren on the Monday before meeting Aberdeen in the final round of fixtures on the Thursday. It proved too much for them, with a draw at Fir Park handing the initiative to Celtic, due to their superior goal difference, although victory over St Mirren put Smith’s side back level on points. The title therefore came down to the final game, with Rangers needing either to score half a dozen goals against Aberdeen at Pittodrie or better Celtic’s result against Dundee United. With pubs across the west of Scotland betraying their allegiances by choosing which game to show, the tension continued to mount as both matches stood goalless at half-time. Early in the second period the pendulum swung Celtic’s way when Lee Miller’s goal for Aberdeen was followed by a red card for Rangers’ Novo, with the errant Spaniard foolishly clapping the travelling fans, who he had just let down with his indiscipline, as he left the field.

  The Celtic supporters at Tannadice were now increasingly confident that the night would end as they hoped, when Vennegoor of Hesselink scored what proved to be the only goal of the game, heading in Hartley’s corner with 20 minutes remaining. A second goal for Aberdeen at Pittodrie only confirmed Celtic’s third title in as many years, as the Parkhead men celebrated at the end of what had been a gruelling season for all concerned. At one stage Smith’s side had been on course for an unlikely quadruple, after beating Dundee United on penalties in the League Cup Final in March, but now Rangers had to settle for the two domestic cups, following a 3-2 victory over Queen of the South in the Scottish Cup Final at the weekend, less than 48 hours after losing the league.

  There would be revenge for Smith’s Rangers the following year, as the Ibrox side finally regained the championship after yet another final-fixture denouement, a result which saw Celtic manager Gordon Strachan leave Parkhead after four years in charge. The season started alarmingly for Rangers, however, as they were knocked out of Europe at the first hurdle, losing 2-1 on aggregate to Lithuanian minnows FBK Kaunas after conceding a late, decisive goal deep into the second leg, a dreadful anti-climax after the drama and elation of the previous year’s run to the UEFA Cup Final.

  The defeat reinforced Smith’s view that there was a general lack of flair and overall quality in his squad and his response to adversity was to spend big once again as Rangers signed nine players over the summer, most of them after the Kaunas reverse, including Kenny Miller, the striker returning to the club in a £2m deal from Derby after a short, largely unsuccessful spell at Celtic, Andrius Veliĉka, another striker, formerly of Hearts, but now with Viking Stavanger of Norway, who received £1m from Rangers for the player, Madjid Bougherra, an Algerian defender from Charlton Athletic for £2.5m, Kyle Lafferty, once coveted by Celtic, who came in from Burnley at a cost of £3.25m, the Portuguese midfielder Pedro Mendes, a £3m capture from Portsmouth, and Maurice Edu, an American midfielder, £2.6m from Toronto FC, while the loan signings of Andy Webster and Steven Davis were converted to permanent transfers, at a combined cost of £3.5m.

  In addition to the transfer fees, the wage bill at Ibrox had trebled since Smith’s return, but chief executive Martin Bain defended the budget that was being made available to the manager, even in such uncertain economic times. ‘We know what our supporters demand and we know the quality that they like to see on the pitch,’ he explained, summing up the source of Rangers’ difficulties rather neatly, it seemed. It wouldn’t be long before such blithe statements about the club’s spending power would be a thing of the past at Ibrox.

  Rangers received transfer fees from the sales of Cuellar and Cousin, just as they had the previous season with Alan Hutton, who had to be almost frog-marched to Glasgow airport when a £9m bid was received from Tottenham in January, after the full-back appeared initially reluctant to leave Ibrox. But this income, along with the money earned from their European adventures, was making little or no impact on Rangers’ net debt, and the downsizing which might have saved the club if it had been implemented properly and opportunely was not taking place.

  Murray’s confident prediction in 2004 that the club would be back in the black within a year turned out to be another moonbeam, and although the debt stood at a manageable £6m in 2006, vastly reduced from two years earlier, Smith’s extravagant expenditure on his playing squad in the 18 months since his return to the club had helped to push the total level back up to around £30m. Part of the problem seemed to lie in Smith’s initial reluctance, having been in charge of Rangers during such a successful era in the 1990s, to preside over a period of managed decline in the club’s affairs and to work within a more limited budget, something which his predecessor, Paul Le Guen, had been far more sanguine about. The ability to make and enforce such decisions, however, would now be taken out of the Ibrox club’s hands.

  Rangers, it seemed, were already well down the road to ruin when, in September 2008, the club lost the ability to independently govern its own affairs following the crisis in the international banking system. The credit crunch, as it became known, an economic earthquake which had been rumbling away in the background for some 12 months or so, had already claimed its first victim in the UK, when fears about a liquidity crisis and potential bankruptcy the previous September had caused a run on the Northern Rock bank, which was eventually taken into public ownership in February after customers queued up round the block to withdraw their savings at the bank’s branches.

  Just as with the dotcom bubble crisis a few years earlier, from which lessons had clearly not been learnt, Rangers and the Murray Group found themselves at the sharp end of the crisis due to their high levels of debt, which they w
ere unable to effectively service. This time, however, the financial meltdown was far deeper and more serious, with the victims including not just debtors, but creditors too. Further bailouts followed for the collapsed banks, funded at eye-watering levels of cost to the taxpayer, with the most reckless lenders the worst affected, such as Rangers’ bankers HBOS, who were left in a hopeless position due to their near suicidal policies in the retail banking sector and their penchant for ‘rolling over’ and repackaging troublesome corporate debts.

  In September, two days after the collapse of American investment firm Lehman Brothers and with HBOS now heading for a liquidity crisis similar to that of Northern Rock, but on a far larger scale, only a government-approved merger with former competitors Lloyds TSB, effectively a takeover by a smaller, but more stable and better capitalised bank, allowed HBOS to continue trading.

  Having acquired Rangers’ debt as part of the merger, it’s fair to say that Lloyds were utterly appalled by what they found once they peered under the bonnet and took an unflinching look at the club’s financial position and the indulgent relationship which had existed between HBOS and the Murray Group. New rules applied, as Rangers’ entire squad of players were made available for sale in the January transfer window, as Lloyds attempted to implement the cutbacks which should have been put in place years earlier. Having gorged themselves on a diet of expensive signings for the best part of a generation, Rangers fans were now apoplectic at the club’s suddenly diminished position, with Ewing Grahame noting in the Telegraph, ‘The fear is that Rangers’ self-styled status as Scotland’s premier sporting institution (which they consider themselves to be) may be heading the way of other national totems such as the Bank of Scotland, which funded much of the borrowing which saw Rangers outperform the domestic opposition during the 1990s.’