Leggat - ADVOCAAT AND THE RANGERS CRISIS

[ian1964 10,870]

DAVID MURRAY may be at the crux of all Rangers current problems, but there are others who share responsibility. One of them is Dick Advocaat.

 

Though the man from Holland is unlikely to ever admit to sharing any responsibility. The Dutch are like that.

 

Now I am well aware there are many Rangers supporters who still revere Advocaat and who claim the team he built played the best football of any Ibrox side they have ever watched.

 

Such a stance is only open to debate if it is taken by those who were not around to be thrilled, delighted and regally entertained by the sixties team put together by Scot Symon. The outfit orchestrated by Jim Baxter, which contained Ian McMillan, Willie Henderson, Millar, Brand and Wilson, plus John Greig.

 

But there was another Rangers team which dazzled, if not quite to the standard of the Baxter team, then at least with as much glitter as anything wee Dicky Dutchy ever put together.

 

That was the Walter Smith side during the nine-in-a-row era which included Gazza and Brian Laudrup, along with Ally McCoist, Mark Hateley and Stuart McCall.

 

It was also, a team â?? or a series of teams â?? put together by Smith which dominated for a long, long time domestically and went within a whisker of reaching the final of the Champions League.

 

When the golden age ended with Smithâ??s departure in the summer of 1998, Rangers were in financial clover, boasting a bank balance which was an astonishing £21M in the BLACK.

 

Did I say astonishing? Nine in a row, all those Scottish and League Cups, plus the brink of a Champions League Final AND twenty one million quid in the bank. Astonishing and astounding.

 

But that was pre Advocaat.

 

He arrived in the summer of 1998 with the sort of reckless spend-spend-spend policy of a demented lottery winner who would soon end up broke. Only it wasnâ??t wee Dicky Dutchy who was left on his uppers. It was Rangers.

 

In three years he had turned that £21Million in the black into Rangers being in hock to the bank� almost £22Million in the RED!

 

And what did Advocaat's Rangers achieve? A treble in Advocaatâ??s first season, similar to the one Smith hoisted, and a title and Scottish Cup Double, again the same as Smith managed Rangers to. His third season ended trophyless, as Smithâ??s last campaign had, and halfway through his fourth, with it increasingly obvious he could not cope with Martin Oâ??Neillâ??s Celtic, Advocaat ran up the white flag and surrendered control of the team to Alex McLeish.

 

Students of Hollandâ??s history in the 20th Century were not surprised. Advocaat was behaving in national character.

 

Of course, through all of wee Dicky Dutchyâ??s spend-spend-spend years, David Murray remained at the crux of creating the current crisis for Rangers by allowing the manager free access to the cheque book.

 

Murray made the mistake of chosing the wrong man to chase his dream of making Rangers regular qualifiers for the knock out stages of the Champions League, with a view to the last eight being a realistic target.

 

Advocaat however, despite all his drunken sailor style spending, never achieved that. It was left to Alex McLeish to become the first manager to take a Scottish team to the knock out stages of the Champions League. And he did it, comparatively, on three half crowns.

 

Perhaps the danger signals about Advocaat should have started flashing within weeks of his arrival at Ibrox when he declared that he had inherited a mess and promptly cleared out Andy Goram, Ian Durrant, Stewart McCall and Ally McCoist.

 

Yet Goram was far from finished as his subsequent spell at Motherwell showed. He was good for another couple of seasons. Durrant went to Kilmarnock, won plaudits and actually played more games for Scotland than he had as a Rangers player. McCall went on to play in the English Premiership, while McCoist showed enough at Kilmarnock to suggest he could still have made a contribution to Rangers, albeit as a bit-part player.

 

Advocaatâ??s arrogance, a Dutch trait for which I can find little basis, would not allow him to do anything other than fill the Ibrox dressing room with his own players, gambling the clubâ??s long term future on success in Europe.

 

But the success in Europe, which such as Artur Numan(£5M), Ronald de Boer(£4.5M), Gio Van Bronckhorst(£5M), Stephane Guivarcâ??h(£3.75M) and Bert Konterman(£4M) had been bought to achieve, remained as elusive as it had under Smith.

 

There was also the strange case of the £4.2M Rangers spent on centre half Colin Hendry, at the time Scotlandâ??s skipper and a man who oozed the qualities Ibrox fans demand of a Rangers captain.

 

Yet Advocaat insisted on making the erratic Lorenzo Amoruso his captain, while showing a marked reluctance to even play Hendry. This led to speculation that Hendry was Murrayâ??s man and that Advocaat had not sanctioned the deal, something denied by both chairman and manager.

 

But it was and remains a curious episode. Especially when Advocaat had cause to regret his obstinacy when, in a rare admission of his wrong headedness, he stripped the captainâ??s armband from the irate Italian.

 

Of course Advocaat signed some superb players. He could hardly fail to, given the fees and English Premiership style wages Rangers were stumping up.

 

De Boer was outstanding. When fit. He did spend long spells out injured and probably had his best sustained spell in 2002-03, not under Advocaat, but when Alex McLeish conjured a Treble against the Celtic of Oâ??Neill, Larsson, Sutton, Hartson and Thompson, a long way from the Dr Jo Venglos Celtic, Advocaat won his Treble against.

 

Numan was another who was skilful and silky, but all too often out for long spells with a succession of injuries.

 

Against that there were those who stayed fit, but were far from the standard expected. Bert Konterman falls in that category.

 

Not to mention the £12M desperation signing from Chelsea of Tore Andre Flo. Ouch! Advocaat could have got Sutton from the same club for half of that. Ouch again!

 

And, going back to his first months in charge and putting them under the microscope, there was the strange case of Goram out and Lionel Charbonnier in. The Frenchman flattered to deceive and was soon replaced by possibly the only good German ever, in Advocaatâ??s eyes, Stefan Klos.

 

Which leads us on nicely to Advocaatâ??s treatment of another son of the Fatherland, Jorge Albertz, a languid skill with a special left foot, a fansâ?? favourite and also a Smith signing. Perhaps it was that last aspect which caused Advocaat to have such a down on him.

 

Then there was another Smith signing who Advocaat couldnâ??t wait to get out of the door. And we all know what Rino Gattuso went on to as a World Cup and Champions League winner.

 

During all of this I often watched and listened as Advocaat laid flattery on with a trowel, lavishing praise on Murray. In fact, it was wee Dicky Dutchy who was behind the Rangers training complex being named Murray Park.

 

No wonder Murray, a man with more than just a guid conceit of himself, a man with a towering ego, allowed Advocaat, another man whose ego soared, what amounted to his rubber stamped signature on the Rangers cheque book.

 

All of Advocaatâ??s spending would have been fine had the players he bought taken Rangers on to a higher level. Had they ensured that Rangers became regulars in the last sixteen of the Champions League and even gatecrashed the quarter finals, then, the income generated would have more than offset such spending.

 

But it didnâ??t. Advocaat â?? with five trophies and no Euro advancement in three and a half years, against McLeishâ??s seven trophies and the last sixteen of the Champions League in four and a half years â?? failed in his mission.

 

He was responsible for an over £40MILLION DOWNTURN in Rangers fortunes in a short time. And the man who picked him, backed him and gave him carte blanche is even more culpable.

 

David Murray was taken for a ride and Rangers were taken to the cleaners. The bill for the pairâ??s folly is the debt which Rangers are saddled with today.

 

��AND�..

 

THERE are others whose actions and motives remain to be questioned in their dealings with Rangers.

 

Are they guilty too?

 

I will name names again.

 

HERE!

 

TOMORROW!

 

http://leggoland2.blogspot.com/

[Bluedell 6,089]

What a lot of crap. Advocaat was responsible for the team on the park and had NOTHING to do with the club's finances. He didn't authorise any payments. He didn't set any budgets. He didn't sign any cheques.

[Guest Dutchy]

100% BD.

 

Everyone knows Advocaat overspent and had very little success for for his investment, but reading that somewhat jingoistic piece of tripe tells me that leggo was and is indeed nothing more than a sensationalist journo prick.

 

Where does anything he's said in that article get us to move forward, it's just blame, blame and more blame.

[Gingerger 0]

Leggo really lets himself down with this one. As others say above he merely used the budget given to him, sometimes poorly but also sometimes well.

 

What Leggo also fails to mention though is the monumental injury crisis the club faced during the middle of O'Neil's first season at the stydome. At one point Rangers had twenty first team players missing and had to take a loan player from down south to field a full eleven at a game away to Motherwell. That injury crisis massively helped Celtic towards their title that year, everybody knew it including them, hence the "no excuses" t-shirts I'm sure we all remember. The problems from that season actually carried forward to the next year culminating in Advocatt standing down under pressure. The following season all the big players were fit again and Alex McCleish profited from that big style as he romped to a treble with Advocatt's team.

 

Unfortunately the season after that commenced the financial downturn which we've been suffering ever since.

[Danny 0]

A frankly racist/xenophobic comment:

 

Though the man from Holland is unlikely to ever admit to sharing any responsibility. The Dutch are like that.

 

What an abysmal comment to make - not only is this blog a piece of shit, but he's smearing an entire nation in the process.

 

Leggo is nothing but a gutter failed hack and it saddens me that he gets any attention at all.

[GovanAllan 0]

This what happens when you put two ego maniacs in the same room as each other and give one a blank cheque book.