Rangers Are Still Haunted By The Ghosts Of Past Glory

[ian1964 10,429]

By Alasdair McKillop

 

Rangers’ against-the-odds victory against Celtic in the Scottish Cup semi-final transported fans back to better times and followed a period of reflection on the fluctuations in the club’s fortunes.

 

It was 30 years ago this month that Rangers appointed Graeme Souness as the first player-manager in the club’s history. The decade had been unkind to the club and it finished the 1985/86 season in fifth place. Until recently, it was common to find that season cited as the club’s nadir and the revival effected by Souness was all the more enjoyable as a result.

 

When I was born in June 1987, Rangers were the champions of Scotland. This would be a recurring outcome during my formative years supporting Rangers and Souness was responsible for initiating the most significant period of domestic dominance in the club’s history.

 

When my first child was born, Rangers were playing in League One of the reorganised Scottish Professional Football League. For clarity, it should be noted this is the second bottom tier of the professional league structure. When my second child was born, Rangers were playing a second season in the Scottish Championship. The previous season had ended with the club failing to secure promotion back to the top flight, preferring instead to capitulate 6-1 over two legs against Motherwell after a dispiriting campaign.

 

A fortnight ago, Rangers secured the points needed to win the Championship and guarantee promotion back to the top flight of Scottish football after a four-year absence. The challenge for Rangers fans is to reconcile this period of exile with even previous low points in the club’s history, let alone high points like the title triumph at Pittodrie in May 1987. How does a club that has held its domestic dominance as insurance against its dwindling international stature come to terms with the past four years?

 

Perhaps the first and only course of action is to place them in some sort of context. To achieve that it is necessary to return to the arrival of Souness and the changes he effected at Rangers. He redefined what it meant to be ambitious in Scottish football and knocked Rangers into shape in the years before the Champions League and Sky Sports era. Specifically, and of more direct significance to later events, it was Souness who brought David Murray to Ibrox. Rangers initially seemed well equipped to stake a place in this new world order and the club competed strongly in the first year of the Champions League. Yet changes in European football, driven by factors such as the increasingly large sums of money available from international media rights deals, would prove to be more radical than most anticipated

 

In his book, 'The Game of Our Lives', David Goldblatt catalogued the financial disasters that have befallen numerous English clubs as they attempted to adjust to the dynamics of the new football. Benevolent and relatively wealthy local elites have given way to ambitious new or no money types with sad consequences for clubs with decent histories. Some have found their way into fan ownership but it’s unlikely they will be able to compete with the most successful teams which are moving into the hands of the global mega rich.

 

When wages are a key marker of success and when they are claiming an ever increasing share of turnover, it is only those with deep reserves who can afford to pay the prices required. There is little money to be made from owning a football club unless you are willing to be genuinely rapacious. But if you’re willing to stump up they can be used to polish the prestige of big companies and transcontinental egos.

 

Rangers and Celtic benefited on a smaller scale from some of these wider changes, certainly enough to solidify their dominance in Scottish football from the late 1980s onwards. They had large numbers of supporters and large stadiums, entry to which could be made ever more expensive.

 

The same supporters could be encouraged to buy new strips, sometimes as many as three a season, and new club merchandise from new club shops. The clubs could sign partnership or sponsorship deals and benefit from regular involvement in European football, even if only for short periods. But it was less well understood that the changes allowing the Old Firm to move out of reach of the rest of Scottish football were, at the same time, leaving them an even greater distance behind the big European clubs.

 

The illusion was maintained by the presence of a handful of exceptional players at Ibrox and Celtic Park in the early years of the new millennium, but by then it was clear that an insurmountable gulf was opening. The Rangers teams of Dick Advocaat were capable of outstanding football but, a few memorable results aside, hardly dented European football. In terms of financial clout, Rangers and Celtic are now closer to Dundee and Dundee United than Chelsea and Manchester United. It easier to imagine Hearts winning the Scottish Premiership than it is to imagine either of the Old Firm clubs winning the European Cup.

 

The 1960s and 1970s arguably distorted the ambitions of Rangers and Celtic fans just as thoroughly as the vast sums of money in elite European football have put meaningful competitiveness out of the reach of all but a small number of clubs. In those two decades, the Old Firm could reasonably have claimed to be among the most significant in Europe, with trophies and final appearances to bolster their well-earned sense of achievement. When it comes to football, however, history bears heavily on evaluations of the present and ambitions for the future. Rangers under David Murray were competing with the ghosts of past teams as much as they were competing with Celtic or the European teams who would visit Ibrox.

 

It is often asserted that Rangers and Celtic are ‘big’ clubs, a claim that is rarely subject to interrogation, possibly because it can stand so little of it. The only contemporary evidence that could be presented in support would be the size of their fan bases but the financial significance of this is decreasing all the time as other revenue streams increase. They have won a majority of Scottish titles between them but to proclaim these successes too loudly is to invite charges of parochialism when the stature of Scottish football is diminishing every year.

 

Rangers were not the first club to get into difficulties after failing to come to terms with the new financial realities. Painful though the past four years have been, they have not been without their positives and some of the mind-set changes were frankly overdue. Generally, supporters have adopted a longer-term perspective, a more realistic attitude towards financial matters and their relationship with the club has been invigorated. These are solid foundations for success at some point in the future and the supporters continue to be a considerable resource, at least when it comes to competing in Scottish football.

 

The current team plays good football but is not without its weaknesses and for this reason many fans have modest ambitions for next season. There is an expectation that some new players will be recruited in the summer but only after due diligence and on condition that deals represent good value for money. Any future success in European competition is likely to be achieved through a combination of long-term diligence in player recruitment and development, sensible management, innovation, and quite a bit of luck. It is also likely to be the exception, not the rule.

 

II

How will the past four years be remembered? The popular narrative, at least as told by Rangers fans, was established before we enter the realm of memory. In the main, it is a story of loyalty in the face of incompetence, yet more mismanagement and hostility from some parts of Scottish football. It is a story of redemption, determination and even love. It will be hard to convey a sense of these times to future generations of fans and followers of the club during its fall from grace might become the equivalent of those who have lived through great wars only to bore those who haven’t.

 

Quite apart from the risk of becoming boring, the future telling of the past four years will succumb to the same problems that afflict any type of collective memory. It will be partial, non-linear and episodic, with moments of personal significance intercutting the collective story. It will be about new friends made and certain games or goals. In short, it will be told in the same way, with many of the same beats as any other football story. Connections will be made and they won’t always be obvious so the listener will have to pay attention.

 

Here is an example of a story I might tell my son if he were to ask me about what it was like to be a Rangers fan in the years from 2012 to 2016. It might not enlighten him on the intricacies of EBTs but hopefully it would offer a sense of history and proportion. I would show him one of my favourite pictures of the past four years. It was taken at Cappielow, home of Greenock Morton, the day before he was born. Rangers won the match 4-0, with Martyn Waghorn scoring a hat-trick. In the picture, the match is underway, with Morton in white and blue horizontal stripes and Rangers in their red and black away kit. There are massed ranks of Rangers fans watching the action, as was always the case when the club was making its way through the lower leagues.

 

Towering above everything, however, is the giant titan crane that stands just a little further along East Hamilton Street. The crane, and the others like it further back up the Clyde, are among the few physical reminders of the shipbuilding in which Scotland took such pride. Past generations of Rangers fans had been closely associated with the industry. Chances are some of the fans sitting in the Broomloan Stand on any given match day are the children and grandchildren of shipyard workers who stood and watched Rangers from the old sweeping terraces. The match was only made possible by Rangers’ failure to win promotion from the Championship at the first time of asking, while Morton were promoted from League One. Without this combination of circumstances, Morton would have been one of the small number of clubs Rangers didn’t meet on league duty outside the top flight.

 

A couple of years earlier, I had travelled to Greenock with some family members to collect my granda and take him to a Rangers game. A robust man for most of his life – the working portion of which had been spent in the shipyards of the Clyde – he was then in very poor health but he insisted on making the trip to Ibrox. There are pictures of him from that day, including one taken on the marble staircase inside the stadium. They would be the last ever taken of him: he died two days later.

 

My final memories of him are bound up with a Rangers game. It was a game in the bottom league but that didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, personal and sporting. It was Rangers and it was us and that’s what mattered. My son will never know his Great-Granda but maybe they will follow the same football club and that will be one of their connections.

 

http://www.scottishreview.net/AlasdairMcKillop32a.html

[RANGERRAB 3,270]

A good read but Rangers problems were caused by Craig Whyte. No one else. Had he not got Rangers we would not have gone thro' what we endured.

Sure LBG had the shackles on SDM but other than the EBT's we were not in imminent danger

[Bearman 9]

I grew up supporting Rangers in an era when C*ltic were better than us, me and my mates growing up used to joke before a match about hooped arms going up as it was the norm in a match against them...it really was like that, sure enough it would happen again and again each time we attended home or away.

 

This was the late sixties and it continued with a 0-4 drubbing in a cup final, we left at half-time, after our '71 League Cup win things couldn't be better but C*ltic continued on winning league titles and the drain went on.

 

The CWC was a real GIRUY as far as we were concerned, followed by 'Jaws' winner in the '73 final against them, but still they always won the league, we couldn't do that, not ever.

 

When Colin Stein clinched 'my' first league title in '75 in outshone everything before I kid you not, thereafter we continued with trebles in '76 and '78 and we were back no doubt.

 

The 'drought' in the Eighties was more to do with Aberdeen and Dundee Utd....but I always felt at the time Rangers were a sleeping giant and with patience would get back to former glories...and so it would prove.

 

The last 4 years is a completely different kettle of fish, Rangers the club who I've followed from a very young age were being run by 'businessmen' who couldn't give a sh*t about the fans and what it means to us all, an unbelievable development nothing to do with football whatsoever.

 

I have a deja vu feeling of returning to the glory days of past and confirming once again The Rangers will never die, whether it be by a really good hoops side an Aberdeen or Dundee Utd or by crooked 'businessmen'

 

WATP of that there is no doubt.

[trublusince1982 243]

In no way was the last four years wanted or without its tribulations but I cant help but look back on it as concreting our dominance over Scottish football. A meandering stroll through the badlands to remind them who we are and what we are. Every professional league,every club,every support has failed to match us. We have been champions,are champions and will be champions. The final step will be sitting once again where we have always sat , at the top looking down upon all the rest.

[aweebluesoandso 290]

What doesn't kill you make you stronger, those words are playing out at Rangers.. No one is saying we are out the woods yet, but there is some serious logging going on by everyone who proclaims to be a bluenose, the support are turning up in our droves and the board are doing a tremendous job. The shadows are lifting and the sun is coming out. Enjoy our day people, i'm away to Ibrox the now.

[Germinal 27]

If it said 'driven by the ghosts of past glories' I'd agree.