The Gers Forum

When Walter Smith arrived at Ibrox as assistant manager to Graeme Souness in 1986, he was shocked. ‘To be absolutely honest, the club was a shambles. A ghost club which seemed to be rudderless and drifting into a couldn’t-care-less state that would have shocked the supporters.’

These words seem prophetic as Rangers lurch into a new decade still afflicted by the problems that came to define the previous one. It is to the eternal credit of the management team and the players that the team continues to challenge for domestic honours, and strive to reach the group stages of the Champions’ League, despite the malaise inflicting the club.

Without delving too deeply into number crunching for the moment (that is for another time), the current situation can be linked partly to the Kaunas result. Failure to reach the group stages meant that the club missed out on revenue believed to be close to £20 million.

It is difficult to categorise Sir David Murray’s next decision – to spend £11 million on new players. In isolation, it is a shockingly bad financial decision. However, the purchases of Steven Davis, Pedro Mendes, Maurice Edu, Madjid Bougherra and Kyle Lafferty helped the club to their first title win for three years, securing Champions’ League participation for this current season.

The sale of Mendes aside, these players are currently part of a squad that is sitting ten points clear at the top of the Scottish Premier League and could also net the two domestic trebles. A successful title defence will also mean vital Champions’ League income.

It is even more difficult to make any proper judgements regarding the current state of Rangers in the boardroom.

Sir David Murray stepped down as Rangers Chairman on August 26, 2009. Donald Wilson, the man behind Rangers’ acquisition of the Murray Park site, also stepped down from the board. In October, Mike McGill, and Donald Muir were elected to the Ibrox board.

Mike McGill is the finance director of Murray International Holdings (MIH) and has been involved with Murray for quite some time. Muir, known as a “turnaround specialist” has been a far more interesting appointment for Rangers fans.

There is some confusion as to who Muir works for – indeed, he is employed by MIH, but was he employed by Sir David to try and wrestle with the £759.3 million or was he placed there by a bank concerned about the likelihood they will ever see that money back?

It is interesting to note that Muir is on the ‘panel’ of Lloyds Banking Group’s auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Rumours abound about Muir’s current influence at Ibrox. Did he block Walter Smith’s attempts to bring in at least one loan signing following the sale of Pedro Mendes? Has he advised Lloyds to reject a consortium bid in order to asset-strip the club for every penny it owes, and secure himself a nice bonus in the process?

Journalist James Traynor, apparently a close confidant to Walter Smith, did intimate in a recent article that Muir looked at letting go some of the ground staff at Ibrox, only for Smith to argue successfully that they were all vitally important at Ibrox.

The Times’ Graham Spiers recently wrote out in defence of Muir. According to Spiers, Muir is a Rangers supporter who want to see the club flourish, but feels that the club will only be on stable footing again once the club is profitable again, presumably without Champions’ League income.

It is easy to see why the banks are so concerned with the situation at Ibrox.

The club made a loss of £145m over the past decade. Granted a lot of this came from expenditure during the Advocaat era, but even still, the club remains financially unsound. The club cannot continue to rack up huge debts whenever it fails to reach the Champions’ League group stages. Maybe the club needs to take a step back, to take two steps forward?

The fans are rightly frustrated and worried about the short and long-term prospects of Rangers, but with so little actual answers coming out of Ibrox, it’s difficult to tell whether Muir is the “enemy within” or whether he is simply beginning the long and messy clear-up of years of financial mismanagement.

Rangers, quite simply, need to become profitable again. When the last financial results were posted for both Old Firm teams, it showed that Celtic spent £8 million more on wages than Rangers, but that Rangers wage bill was at a worrying 77 per cent of total income, compared to Celtic’s healthy 53 per cent.

Our neighbours will also soon be tightening their belts – they missed out on Champions’ League income while investing in a new management team and a huge turnover of players.

They have shown in recent times, however, that if we can reach the Champions’ League group stages successively, while also trying to pursue higher income from corporate sponsorship, merchandising and overseas ventures, that we can become a stable club again.

The club can only continue in the current vein for so long before the situation begins to seriously hamper the team’s ability to compete at the top of Scottish football. At present, a financial chasm separates the two clubs that means they can seriously outspend us when it comes to transfer fees and wages.

The timing is perfect for positive change at Ibrox. We have a management team who specialise in the kind of dogged consistency the club has required, and lacked, for years, and if we can qualify for the Champions’ League group stages consecutively for the first time in a decade, it would be a huge financial boost for everyone at Ibrox.

A new owner with his own ideas and a willingness to seek out new revenue streams is required. This isn’t just blind hope. Look across the city where, at last count, their annual turnover was nearly double ours. It can be done, and if Rangers harbour the ambition to continue to challenge for honours, it needs to be done.

There is much confusion and anger about the current situation, but what isn’t in doubt, is that Rangers need a new thrust, a spark, that Sir David Murray injected on his arrival at Ibrox over two decades ago, and has been missing for far too long.

Goals from Steven Davis and Lee McCulloch secured Rangers’ passage to the final of the Co-operative Insurance Cup for the third consecutive year.

A snowglobe Hampden Park saw Walter Smith hand rare starts to Steven Smith and Neil Alexander, while young John Fleck was also given another chance to continue his recent run of impressive form.

The opening flourishes of this encounter were befitting of the Arctic conditions, as St Johnstone – operating with on-loan Celtic youngster Cillian Sheridan deployed as a lone striker – sought to stifle Rangers and this tactic appeared, at least initially, to be moderately successful as the Light Blues attacks were repelled with the Saints even creating a decent chance of their own, which Murray Davidson headed over Alexander’s goal.

But there is a grim determination about this current Rangers crop which is at times reminiscent of their more illustrious predecessors of the original Smith era. This Rangers side can’t rely on a Gascoigne, Laudrup or Albertz to single-handedly shatter a stalemate with a moment of individual brilliance; but what they do have instilled in them is the ethic to work for each other and a belief that victory is their benchmark. This paradigm has served Walter Smith’s team undeniably well on the domestic front over the course of this past year and more. Indeed, it is only in the European theatre that any flaws have been brutally exploited but that is a matter to be discussed on another day.

Rangers have been criticised in some quarters for being far too reliant on goals from their strikers – particularly Kris Boyd and Kenny Miller – while other areas of the attack haven’t always contributed as expected. It was therefore pleasing to see Steve Davis – a man who has been in sparkling form of recent weeks – and the ever maligned but equally reliable Lee McCulloch step-up and shoulder some of that burden in the absence of the first choice pairing.

Nacho Novo had already seen a goalbound effort swept off the line by a last-ditch Dave Mackay clearance when Davis first threatened. The Northern Irishman exchanged one-touch passes with John fleck, unlocking the Saints defence in the process. Davis’ touch was slightly heavy however, taking him wide of goal and the danger was temporarily cleared by Gary Irvine.

Davis was not to remain thwarted for long and Rangers took the lead on the twenty-five minute mark when Novo’s cross spun into the air via Chris Millar. The bounce fell kindly for Davis, who lashed the ball ferociously into the net from point-blank range while the St Johnstone defence were guilty of ball-watching.

Just over fifteen minutes later the tie was effectively dead as a contest when Rangers doubled their advantage, this time with a well worked goal. Kyle Lafferty and Steven Whittaker, two players who have been on the receiving end of much rancour from the Rangers support during their turbulent Ibrox careers combined to set up Lee McCulloch, who rifled a powerful drive into the net beyond an apparently unsighted Graeme Smith.

Rangers went in at the break two goals to the good and in truth; much of the second half was played in the vein of a bounce match for the Gers. Steven Naismith replaced Novo just after the hour and for the final third of the game, Naismith, Fleck, Davis and Little (who replaced Novo on sixty-two minutes) combined to repeatedly carve St Johnstone apart with wave after wave of attractive counter-attacking football, as St Johnstone left gaping spaces to exploit at the back.

Steven Naismith spurned a gilt-edged chance to make it three with just over twenty minutes remaining after Gary Irvine’s challenge was adjudged to be illegal by referee Dougie MacDonald. Naismith’s tame spot-kick was easily saved by keeper Smith, which was a real shame for the Rangers man who had looked bright since his introduction.

Rangers continued to menace St Johnstone for the remainder of the match, creating and wasting chances with Naismith and Fleck again coming close. Walter Smith must surely have been impressed by the display of Fleck in particular whose progress in the first team seems to have undergone a rapid germination in recent weeks. One worry for Smith (not that he has his worries to seek these days) might be that his attack still lacks the callousness in front of goal provided by Kris Boyd; but overall, there were numerous reasons to be cheerful – at least on the pitch – in the wake of Wednesday’s game, which kept intact Smith’s incredible record of qualifying for the final of every domestic cup competition so far since taking charge of team affairs from Ian Durrant in January 2007.

Rangers: Alexander, Whittaker, Weir, Wilson, S. Smith, McCulloch, Novo (Naismith, 62) Thomson, Davis, Lafferty (Little, 60) Fleck

St Johnstone: G. Smith, Irvine, Mackay, Gartland, Grainger, Miller, Morris, Davidson, Morais (Milne, 46) Sheridan (MacDonald, 67) Craig (Moon, 75)

Referee - Dougie MacDonald