The Diary of a bored Rangers fan.

What a difference a year makes eh? Instead of having Rangers being the subject of intense speculation regarding the quality of their manager, it is now Celtic who suffer this fate. Rangers are instead the subjects of intense adulation. You are now more likely to read an article praising the Walter Smith era or an interview with a Rangers player about how happy they are with the Smith induced tide change, than you are to find the evenings TV schedule. Any dissention is immediately dispelled by the fact that Rangers are winning so there should be no cause to complain.

There is a cause to complain, there are many causes to complain. There is a whiff of a vague comparison to Nazi Germany about Rangers at the moment. Yes, roads are being built and employment is at a high but is that all that matters? Is this employment sustainable, or is propaganda about the present sacrificing the possibility to build for the future? If people want to complain they have every right.

Instead of Jews, it is the overpaid foreigner who is blamed for all the ills. Much like immigration is used by politicians as an acceptable code word to exert a dollop of racism, Paul Le Guen’s name is used to give credence to what is a blatant prejudice within Ibrox regarding foreign influence and building to the future.

Players fall into Smith’s hands. His buying policy is too transparent. Every signing stinks of being an old pals act, where Smith is calling in a favour rather than following a coherent plan. Whether to players he knows from his past who can come in and act as proverbial beer mats under the creaky chair of the Rangers team, or to players recommended by the agent who should be blacklisted-Willy Mackay.

Occasionally he hits the ball out of the park. Davis fell into Smith’s lap as an egg laid by the Daniel Cousin transfer saga (to give it it’s trademarked name) and Cuellar is clearly the shining star of the new Rangers era. But all too often, with players like David Weir, he acts like a man driving an old car which is flashing empty on petrol but he refuses to stop for petrol, get a new card or at least by a bus pass. David Weir increasingly looks like an accident waiting to happen. He has done a good job at Rangers, but it is the manager’s fault for not implementing a crutch for Weir’s age, a young backup who could learn from Weir’s experience and also deputise for him. Cuellar is being run dry also, although at a slower pace. The main worry is how Cuellar will play if his confidence goes, will he remain formidable? Smith is playing roulette with Cuellar’s confidence the longer he waits to implement a contingency plan for the Rangers defence.

This is indicative of how Smith ignores problems until they happen. He has passed up opportunity after opportunity to blood youngsters into the team such as Furman, Lennon, Gow and Naismith. A rotation policy is not always admirable, but to turn a nose up at the idea in the manner with which Smith has is inexplicable.

He has built the team around grafters, and try hards. Lee McCulloch, Kirk Broadfoot and Nacho Novo are barely real footballers. Steven Davis should be a constant smack in the face to Smith that for a player to “put in a shift” that does not mean that he can’t also be a talented footballer, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

The style of play is horrible. Watching a Rangers game brings out the same feelings in me as being in class at school. I feel like I have to be watching rather than want to be watching. It’s all well and good having tactics that get you through games. Rangers fans deserve to be watching a team that wins and that brings out enjoyment but it takes the fun out of following a team if they play with zero flair and zero entertainment. It’s like being in Chemistry and being made to learn the periodic table off by heart but you never get to blow anything up.

A 4-5-1 formation does not have to be so inherently negative. It has gradually got worse. Rangers now play with 4 centre backs. Papac does a job but he is useless in attack and would have been better employed as the man to provide relief to Weir and Cuellar. Broadfoot is only seen as being good because the expectation of him is so low. With Hutton going, wing back is just one more area where Rangers have no attacking option what so ever. Although Broadfoot creates an illusion of being an attacking force by forever ensuring that he is the first player to hug the goal scorer after every Rangers goal. In reality he runs like somebody who has just undergone spinal surgery so his attacking prowess is minimal.

When Beasley got injured, a massive hole was left (ironic considering his diminutive stature, haw hee haw) For the 4-5-1 formation to work in terms of both winning matches, and by not being the impetus for a boredom induced mass suicide within Ibrox, they need wingers with pace to support the striker. Beasley had pace in abundance. Now on the wings, Rangers often play Steve Davis, which completely neuters the influence he has in the middle of the park, and Lee McCulloch, who was most likely originally moved to left wing so he could just get out of the way and do less damage. McCulloch is as useful an option in attack as Cuellar and Weir are. Yes he provides a bit of an aerial threat, but does that make up for the rest of his useless output? It’s hard to even accept Burke as an attractive alternative, as every time he comes on he only acts as a flirtatious cock tease, constantly promising to produce but it never goes anywhere.

Another myth that needs to be dispelled is the fact that the Arian Barry Ferguson is in actual fact Steven Gerrard,. Ferguson is not a dynamic attacking midfielder, it’s a mirage, he has dyed his hair and he’s wearing coloured contact lenses. He fills the same role as Hemdani and Daily do in midfield but for some reason is glorified to god like status while the other two are viewed as being necessary evils. Barry Ferguson is the necessary evil. Too much of a stink is kicked up is he is dropped, but to view him as anything more than an accomplished holding midfielder is delusional. This then cuts the chord of the formation, as the striker is not being supported from the middle or the wings. This helps explain why a) Kris Boyd cannot play, as the lone striker role as a thankless task for Rangers and b) Cousin and JC Darcheville have essentially amounted to filling the role of one full player as neither of them can take the physical strain of the position. Cousin can’t do it mentally and Darcheville can’t do it physically.

Barry Ferguson eerily claimed he had made plans to be buried in his Rangers strip wearing his captain’s armband. Well at the moment he might as well be making arrangements to have “Ferguson was not his usual imposing/influential self” engraved on his grave stone, as that is how he has been described in almost every match report for the past year. It is getting to a point where Ferguson cannot rely on his skinny past glories. Ferguson actually being imposing/influential has become the aberration.

Part 1 a) of this myth is that Smith always played a team of grafters. Perhaps he did, but Smith also had access to a Brian Laudrup, or a Paul Gascoigne or even a Trevor Steven. Somebody who could provide some flair and creative spark. Ferguson is methodical and for Rangers to advance, they need to find somebody who can be creative. Perhaps Thomson can grow into that type of player but he is not quite there yet. This is part of the reason why the treatment of Thomas Buffell is hurtful. Of course he might not be the answer, but the fact that the Rangers fans are being denied the right to have a look to see whether he could inject the much needed flair is frustrating.

Being a Rangers fan now is like making a deal with the devil. Ten years ago Rangers turned their nose up at Walter Smith because his era was standing still, and they turned would turn their nose up at players of the ilk of David Weir, Lee McCulloch and Christian Daily. It’s nice to have a team that are winning but it feels like Rangers are an under 13 boys team, where Smith is secretly fielding a bunch of 14 year olds. There is something cheap and tasteless about the way Rangers are winning now. They remind me of the Boston Celtics in the NBA. Like a team tired of losing so they are going for broke. But instead of going for broke with creative, exciting players and dazzling their opponents into submission, they are going for broke by putting teams into a chokehold that lasts 90 minutes.

Smith may now be buying Scottish, But buying Scottish does not mean that he cannot buy ambitious. Mcfadden could have been the answer. A Scottish name with a foreign style would be the perfect medicine for Rangers ills. He could have been the player who provided the link between midfield and attack.

Rangers were just as bad with Le Guen. All about building to tomorrow without a thought for today. But there has to be a middle ground. As ridiculous as this is, what would work perfectly for Rangers is somebody like Le Guen as a general manager and Smith as manager. When Rangers made the Paul Le Guen era a dirty word, they threw the baby out with the bathwater. Rangers are presently run by a gang of old pals. Just as it doesn’t work when the coaching staff is at loggerheads with each other, it doesn’t work when there appears to be no external influences being taken into account. Just as Manchester United have the cosmopolitan knowledge of Quieroz to balance out Ferguson’s style, and Chelsea have kept Steve Clarke to maintain the grit perhaps lost by a foreign coach. Rangers need the same. Walter Smith clearly has his plus points, he installs discipline, he gets the best out of average players and he is good for motivation and team spirit, but he needs a yang to his ying. Rangers need some balance. Smith has built a fully functional engine but he needs help with the design of the exterior. (Thanks to Jeremy Clarkson for helping out with the closing line)