Rangers players didn’t get poor Paul Le Guen the boot with an underhand revolt…

[ian1964 10,416]

...he did it to himself.

 

KRIS BOYD

 

The signing of the former Gers boss was seen as a massive coup at the time.

 

TO this day it makes my blood boil.

 

Even after ten years, the idea that an underhand player revolt within the Rangers dressing room, some sort of mutiny, led to the demise of poor Paul Le Guen still gets to me.

 

What nonsense, what utter garbage.

 

It’s exactly a decade on from the Frenchman’s Ibrox exit, but it could have been yesterday, my memory of what went on is so clear.

 

The only person Paul Le Guen can blame for failing at Ibrox is Paul Le Guen.

 

His arrival was welcomed by everyone at the club. From players to staff, I recall the genuine feeling of excitement when he turned up.

 

This was a guy with a huge reputation. It was regarded as a huge coup for David Murray to lure him to Scotland.

 

But what a let-down he turned out to be. What a massive anti-climax it was. He had nothing to back it up.

 

He didn’t have the winning mentality or man-management skills needed to manage the biggest club in Scotland.

 

The first time alarm bells started ringing was when he sent Fernando Ricksen straight home from South Africa for being drunk on the plane journey.

 

I can’t defend Fernando because his conduct was unacceptable.

 

But Le Guen just shunted him onto the first plane back to the UK and it very quickly became headline news.

 

Someone like Walter Smith would have disciplined Fernando without hanging him out to dry.

 

But that was Le Guen. He felt he had to take on the big personalities in the team.

 

I don’t include myself in that, by the way. I’d only been at the club six months and wasn’t a particularly loud voice in the dressing room.

 

But it was soon clear to everyone at the club that the job was too big for Le Guen.

 

He virtually shrugged when we dropped points at home to Dundee United and then Kilmarnock and away to Dunfermline.

 

“We need to stick together,” he’d tell us, which were almost the only words he could say in English.

 

That was another issue. He had known for months he was coming to Scotland but didn’t bother to learn the language.

 

As players, we knew early results weren’t good enough, but Le Guen just didn’t understand that.

 

“We need to stick together,” he kept muttering. Training was another issue.

 

Le Guen wanted us doing double sessions which was fine in theory, but in reality it didn’t work.

 

We’d train from 10am until midday and then again at 4pm, but in the four hours in between all we’d do was sit around.

 

I’ve played abroad and enjoyed that routine, but you need sleeping facilities to rest properly, which Murray Park doesn’t have.

 

Le Guen also demanded everyone take part, regardless of how anyone was feeling.

 

Dado Prso was arguably our best player, but his knees were gone.

 

Le Guen’s rules were if you didn’t train you didn’t play, so it was horrendous, seeing this international-class player literally hobbling around the training pitch.

 

Other players felt aches and muscle pains too, but when we mentioned it to Doc McGuinness, Le Guen would give him a hard time for listening to us.

 

Le Guen’s ideas on fitness and nutrition were completely different too, and not in a good way.

 

Look at the pictures. I was probably in the best physical shape of my career back then, lighter and leaner than I’d ever been in my life. The problem was I felt weak.

 

Put it this way, when Walter Smith took over from him the first thing he said to me was ‘I don’t know what you’ve been doing, son, but you better get back to eating hamburgers’.

 

Le Guen was huge on players having what he perceived as the right diet, but most of the boys didn’t have enough energy.

 

It’s not like everyone ate cakes every day under Dick Advocaat and Alex McLeish, but they weren’t banned and those managers did alright.

 

In fact, when Walter came in after Le Guen the cakes returned and he was also pretty successful.

 

It was all so unnecessary, but with results still poor, something had to give.

 

We then lost in the league to Dundee United before being knocked out the League Cup by St Johnstone.

 

But the manager still didn’t seem that bothered. “We need to stick together,” he’d keep saying.

 

It soon became obvious Le Guen was out of his depth, that Scottish football and the environment didn’t suit him.

 

This was a guy in his first managerial job, remember, where he was responsible for signing players without the help of a Director of Football, like he had at Lyon.

 

He thought he was ready for our game, but he wasn’t prepared to adapt.

 

Brahim Hemdani turned out to be a good midfielder for Rangers, but Le Guen played him at centre-half, where he toiled physically.

 

As players we tried to raise our game, demanding more of each other on a daily basis.

 

But, incredibly, one morning Phil Bardsley was sent off the training pitch for tackling someone too hard!

 

Then came Le Guen’s bust-up with Barry Ferguson.

 

This is what angers me most about the whole episode, the perception that Fergie had it in for Le Guen and wasn’t prepared to work under him.

 

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

 

The fact is only one of them had the best interests of Rangers at heart and it wasn’t the manager.

 

It all came to a head after we lost away to Caley Thistle in late December and Le Guen said, for the umpteenth time, how we ‘had to stick together’.

 

“That’s fine,” said Fergie. “But we need to start getting f****** results.”

 

It was meant as a rallying call, the precise thing the captain of Rangers should be hammering home.

 

Le Guen wasn’t having it.To this day I believe he already knew he wanted a way out and saw Fergie as his way to get it.

 

Within days our captain was shown the door and banished from the club, handed a black bin-bag and told to clear his locker.

 

I’ll never forget seeing him walk out of Murray Park, one of the club’s best players whose only crime was wanting the best for the club he loved.The next game was against Motherwell.

 

Gavin Rae was brought into the side from the fringes and handed the captain’s armband, with Le Guen using a good guy to make a point.

 

I’ve honestly never seen anyone under so much strain as Gav was that day at Fir Park. Of course, I scored and we won 1-0 and I celebrated by holding up six fingers in support of Fergie.

 

It was an instinctive thing to do and I don’t regret it to this day as everyone at Rangers knew Fergie had been treated abysmally by the manager.

 

By the next day Le Guen was gone, the Frenchman shown the door, and there could be no other outcome.

 

Will he regret his time at Rangers? Only he can answer that.

 

I for one have no regrets whatsoever.

 

And I don’t think any other player at the club during that time will have either.

 

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/sport/football/381642/rangers-players-didnt-get-poor-paul-le-guen-the-boot-with-an-underhand-revolt-he-did-it-to-himself/

Edited January 4, 2017 by ian1964

[pete 2,499]

Boyd trying to redeem himself in poor fashion.

 

I suppose it was Le Guen that told Ferguson to stick 2 fingers up at the press. I also suppose it was Le Guen that told Ferguson not to pass to team-mates. Every club now has special diets it is up to the players to change to the managers rules not the other way about. Boyd is blaming Le Guen for the players not accepting his rules. Kris you were not a fat lazy Bassa for nothing for most of your career.

This piece just shows exactly the opposite of what Boyd was hoping for. It just shows you how much of his Brain is not thinking about Killie pies.

Edited January 4, 2017 by pete

[the gunslinger 3,366]

Boyd trying to redeem himself in poor fashion.

 

I suppose it was Le Guen that told Ferguson to stick 2 fingers up at the press. I also suppose it was Le Guen that told Ferguson not to pass to team-mates. Every club now has special diets it is up to the players to change to the managers rules not the other way about. Boyd is blaming Le Guen for the players not accepting his rules. Kris you were not a fat lazy Bassa for nothing for most of your career.

This piece just shows exactly the opposite of what Boyd was hoping for. It just shows you how much of his Brain is not thinking about Killie pies.

Smith was the manager then.

 

 

[the gunslinger 3,366]

Le guen did no.prep for coming to scotland he knew he was coming for 6 months and didnt scout or prepare one bit.

 

You have to laugh at pwople on here dismissing rodgers as having been lucky with the teams he inherited then biging up le guen.

 

Piss poor manager that did well once when he inherited a magnificent team.

 

 

[JohnMc 2,473]

At the time I was quite angry about Le Guen and felt he hadn't been supported by SDM and the players. However, Le Guen has done very little of note since leaving Rangers and, with hindsight, I now think he simply wasn't up to the job.

[Norris Cole 0]

Sure enough, the first reply shows the way of every Boyd thread that ever existed.

 

127 goals for the Glasgow Rangers.

 

All I know about Le Guen since leaving Rangers is that he is still alive, I think.

[Bluedell 5,330]

Murray says that Le Guen was refusing to sign anyone in the Jan transfer window. PLG was happy with the squad we had, which patently wasn't good enough.

 

He basically talked his way out of the job.

 

It seems to back up the attitude that Boyd is referring to and therefore has the ring of truth about it.

 

That's not to say some of the players couldn't have handled themselves better around that period but it doesn't take away from Le Guen's short-comings and it was an experiment that looked great on paper but just didn't work out.

[calscot 0]

People might not like Boyd and Le Guen still has a mystifying support, but a lot of this rings true and could help explain our very poor results that were completely transformed in a couple of weeks by Smith.

 

I've read a ton of stuff on exercise and nutrition and Le Guen's regime smacks of over-training and under-nourishing as well as immensely naive on the psychological side of things.

 

A lot of people think that the more you train, the fitter you will be and the better you will play but it really doesn't work like that. And it's obvious that if you hate the training you won't be motivated for the game.

 

Even now people think that what Warburton is doing is revolutionary compared to past managers, but then you have to wonder how our previous sides were so successful, including now and again in Europe. The fact is most managers in the last few decades employ fitness experts, nutritionists and sports psychologists - and listen to them - after they have listened to the players.

 

It sounds like Le Guen was a bit cloth eared.

 

Everyone is different and you need to tailor things to individual players - and how they are feeling is massively important feedback.

[the gunslinger 3,366]

At the time I was quite angry about Le Guen and felt he hadn't been supported by SDM and the players. However, Le Guen has done very little of note since leaving Rangers and, with hindsight, I now think he simply wasn't up to the job.

Totaly agree. For me its clear he isnt a good manager.

 

We were lucky he left for free and we got walter.

 

 

[rbr 1,247]

I was best mates with Ian mcguiness the doc at the time , he was warning after a week that le guen and his staff were going to be a disaster , he was proved right , but as per usual with rangers fans it's easier to blame the players