Did Walter Smith underachieve at Ibrox first time around?

[917 191]

Seems an odd question, however comparing our team from the 90s dominance to Brenda Rogers team dominating today. We had the same financial advantage over the rest of the league that they do now, and we won the league in a canter every year as they are doing these days. And we got embarrassed in Europe every season except one, while Rogers hasn’t even had a good season in Europe yet.

 

But our record in the Cups from 94-98 was a real let down. After blowing the double treble against a Dundee Utd side who had been fighting relegation all season in 94, we then got knocked out of Cups by Falkirk, Hearts, Aberdeen, United again, Hearts again, and Celtic once. We never came close to going a season unbeaten. But more importantly, we never beat Celtic by more than 2 goals in a game. We let them off the hook repeatedly.

 

It wasn’t an uncommon opinion at the time either, than a team with Gazza & Laudrup should’ve been running up cricket scores against the likes of John Hughes and Paul Byrne. Did we let them off to prevent riots or something? Was our players’ booze culture to blame? Or was it just tougher in the days before fouling was banned? I just wish we had done to them what they are doing to us now. Any thoughts?

[the gunslinger 3,366]

Celtc could pick up internationals then for a million quid and less. Football was very different.

Aberdeen were spending a million on a player etc.


General standard was better.

[Unicorn 206]

The standard of Scottish football was much higher then.  You can’t compare between then and now.

 

 

[Gonzo79 13,589]

That's the most galling thing, for me, about recent derbies.  In the 90s, we rarely had easy games against that lot.  

 

If the opposition have better players, make yourselves hard to beat and fight for every single ball.  That's pretty basic stuff.

[917 191]

I know the league was better then, though I’m not convinced Lou Macari and Liam Brady’s teams were any better than us now. But we had a much better standard of players than Celtic have now. We were signing genuine top players from England, Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden. We outbid Chelsea for Gazza ffs! At the end of the day they have won 2 trebles with a squad of EPL rejects and some promising youngsters. Maybe that was the difference, we never played our youngsters. Though we had some, eg John Spencer who went on to star for Chelsea in the EPL.

[buster. 4,808]

Yes, I think he did underachieve.

 

I guess it depends on your priorities but I've always put doing well in European football at the top of my wishlist.

 

Whilst I can understand the practicalities and importance of winning domestic leagues, I think you come to a point where you have to look to kick-on and we never did. It seemed as although we signed players seemingly looking to step up levels, we nearly always came up short.

 

Over the decades (not just Walter Smith's time) I've found that we've very rarely been as good as we could have been and the levels of professionalism at a big club regards preperation aren't as good as they could have been.

 

On average it's been about one decent European season every decade,....not good enough IMO.

[compo 6,122]

Did Smith underachive, that's a hard one as the actress said to the bishop .

[Crimson Dynamo 128]

He certainly underachieved when it came to Europe.

 

Considering our spending power at that time far too many "in essence" smaller teams wiped the floor with us.

[Darthter 542]

I think it's difficult to say that WS under achieved...his team(s) still brought in a fair number of trophies.  Campare that to the likes or Arsene Wenger - there is a much better case for saying he under achieved...only won the league 3 times in 22 years.  True, they were up against some of the worlds best opponents, but they are were able to compete in the transfer market with all of them.

 

As others have said, back in WS's days, there was considerably less money flying around, so you'd get more "bang for yer buck" with players.  The thought if a £4m player in Scotland was blowing folks minds....players or £1-2m were common place & the quality was far better compared to recently.

 

Ultimately, WS did what he did...under/over achieved, it really makes no difference - he still put out a team that was more often than not, better than everyone else.

[DMAA 3,603]

I’ve had a quick look at the transfers of the main Scottish clubs over the last number of years compared to the 90s and it does appear clubs had far more to spend back then. In the last few years clubs have spent next to nothing and when they sell players only a % of it goes into their budget. In the cases of Hibs and Dundee United they’ve run huge surpluses over the years. 

 

In the late 80s and 90s it seems the enormous budget inequality we know today wasn’t there, everyone was spending quite a lot of money (even before inflation) and not many were making money out of the transfer market. 

 

On that basis it seems it was definitely a tougher league back then.