At Glasgow Rangers, as a support we pride ourselves on being loyal to our club and loyal to the Management and the players.
Often I have heard its not the Rangers way to complain, this proves a major stumbling block for me as I want to do nothing more than see my team progress season on season, sure I can accept that sometimes lady luck won't shine on us. I can even accept being tactically out foxed by superior managers, I can even accept being beaten by a better team in quality.
But I feel its my given right as a supporter to complain about my team’s short comings whether these are accepted by others or not, I shouldn't hear from fellow supporters that this makes me a Timmy lover, Celtic sympathiser or whatever you would like to call me for criticising the management.
Rangers over the past few seasons have looked a shadow of the team I watched under Advocaat, the silky passing football has been replaced with battling qualities or so were told gone are the 30 pass movements which I witnessed under the Advocaat stewardship but really that's me getting away from the point in hand.
This is not necessarily the worst example of McLeish's mismanagement but this is one that signifies for me his lily-livered regime.
March 2005: Rangers v Inverness CT at Ibrox. McLeish had stated in his pre-match press conference that he did not expect on-loan striker Bajram Fetai to line up against Rangers: "There is an understanding I think. If I see him warming up, though, I may have to give Craig a pull. They WILL respect my feelings on the situation."
Fetai came on against Rangers in the 70th minute whilst McLeish stood helplessly by. The Rangers manager was utterly humiliated at Ibrox Stadium by a rookie boss of a small-town club. As retribution, or at least some vain attempt at saving face, he should have cancelled the agreement immediately. He did nothing. For a man who worked under Alex Ferguson, he's a mouse.
That was the point I realised there was no point having any expectation of Alex McLeish. If he could not be trusted to do such a small thing then he cannot be expected to do great things.
McLeish's team selection and tactics are characterised by constant indecision. You'd think McLeish was just in the job and still finding his feet and not someone approaching his fourth anniversary and with two Championships under his belt. If he isn't confident and sure of himself now then when will he be?
At Tynecastle the other week, McLeish deployed his SEVENTH centre-half pairing this season. He has used a staggering 25 players in just twelve matches this season. McLeish even joked in the Champions League press conference that he wouldn't be employing three at the back again such was the calamitous nature of its operation. Yet this result left Rangers in mid-table, a staggering 11 points behind the leaders in September!, and leaves the possibility of retaining the title distinctly remote.
It seems to me that Dick Advocaat was removed in December 2001 for being 12 points behind Celtic and having suffered five defeats in a row to Celtic - at that point, our worst Old Firm run in 30 years. McLeish has already suffered an even worse Old Firm run - seven defeats in a row - and is already 11 points behind the league leaders in September.
What price the gap by December? Advocaat was sacked for not getting results though his side still played good football. McLeish is not getting results and his side play an utterly tedious style of football that is a monumental step backwards. I can think of no reasonable case that can be constructed which would explain why McLeish deserves time that Advocaat didn't get.
Under McLeish, there is no sense that the team is going forward. McLeish inherited a team that had qualified for the latter stages of European football and led them to European wilderness against Viktoria Zizhkov just six months later. European results have not picked up since then and indeed some of the results have been quite distressing.
If McLeish was going to be a good European manager for Rangers we would have seen evidence of it by now. By any measure, we are going backwards in Europe.
It's true that McLeish has been successful domestically to a degree but this needs closer analysis. Both Championships won were won by the tightest of margins and after having blown significant points advantages. In 2003, Celtic had just reached a UEFA Cup final narrowly losing out to Porto in the final, they accepted the title loss and proclaimed themselves as the best team in Scotland on the back of the season they had. It hurt them to lose the title but make no mistake the achievement of reaching a UEFA cup final was remarkable and showed that this is what we should aspire to aswell. But all to often Rangers fans are willing to accept 4 victories over Celtic and a League title when its quite simply short sightedness on our part.
This season saw Celtic suffer the worst defeat of any Scottish side in the history of European football yet Rangers now trail them by six points and are nine points behind a Hearts team that have added a couple of players and a new manager - these changes being sufficient, apparently, to send them over the horizon from McLeish's Rangers.
I'm not even convinced that McLeish is honourable enough to do the decent thing should, as seems likely, Rangers enter December 2005 with only the Scottish Cup to play for. Insomuch as he publicly recognised 2003-04 as the worst season, both in performance and silverware, for 20 years, it would only be to draw a favourable comparison with 2004-05 and the 'improvement' that he had brought about. His stated goal for 2004-05, as Rangers sat in second place, was not the title but to 'put in a challenge against Celtic'. If 2005-06 goes belly-up then I expect some other dishonourable defence to be put up. But McLeish has run out of spurious excuses, in my view.
ANDY FROM
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