A slight Rangers related retraction.
So Rangers won in Sporting Lisbon! Two fingers to the cynics! Who can doubt Rangers now, through to the semi finals of the Uefa cup, player of the year in Carlos Cuellar and manager of the year in Walter Smith? Forget two fingers, cynics have an extra finger for good measure; have a head butt as well.
The Rangers team at the moment is divisive. The more Rangers win, the more divided the fans become. The ‘Haters’ feel they need to defend their stance while the defenders of the Smith regime feel more and more vindicated. What is probably the case is that the two sides have to come closer together. The cynics, myself included have to accept that Smith has done a fantastic job; the lack of building to the future probably isn’t as grim as you think and any manager who can bring any measure of European success to Ibrox deserves applause.
Meanwhile, the defence of Smith must accept that the team is not impervious to collapse; the way the team is built means this success will not last forever without some serious investment. They must accept that beating a terrible Sporting Lisbon side is not a definitive moment. The gulf between the footballing power of Portugal and Scotland is not so great that a win against a Portugese team (an awful Portugese team at that who are 20 points behind the pace of the Portuguese league) is considered an end to any doubts, the UEFA cup is also not the holy grail of football.
The defenders of Rangers must also accept the more they watch Barry Ferguson that his dominance in the Rangers landscape is not so great. He is no doubt untouchable in the wage structure, untouchable in the first team and untouchable in backstage politics. His performance on the pitch is often stellar, but Brahim Hemdani, Christian Daily, Steven Davis and Kevin Thomson are often stellar as well. The reward does not gulf the cost of having a Barry Ferguson in your team.
Meanwhile, the cynics who think that Rangers don’t build to the future should now accept, that a player like Kevin Thomson was not just bought because he fitted into the buying structure of Rangers where they just eat up all the young Scots on the market. Accidentally or not, Kevin Thomson now appears to be somebody worth building the team around. He doesn’t disappear in big games, his touch is outstanding and he has a good attitude. If Rangers can sign Davis as well, they may have found a central midfield partnership that has been lacking for Rangers in recent years due to the dominance of Barry Ferguson.
Defenders of the regime must point to Carlos Cuellar. Signing Carlos Cuellar for £2.3 million is one of the shrewdest pieces of business in recent years. He may not walk into any team in Europe, but he would certainly not look out of place. Rangers still need to watch out for the demon of age. Broadfoot is not a viable replacement for Weir, no matter how hard he tries. As cheap as words can often be, if Cuellar is even entertaining the idea of being a Ranger for life, then Rangers need to find another Cuellar. As one more quality central defender to replace Weir would provide Rangers with a backbone to build upon.
The most difficult choice Smith will have to make in the summer is Cousin or Darcheville. He can’t afford to keep both, their impact is fantastic but Darcheville has the risk of becoming Dado Prso, a novelty attraction with no legs if they overuse him and Cousin has the risk of becoming a moody distraction in times of trouble. I find it hard to imagine that they can both be kept sweet in rougher times than this.
Rangers have appeased the fans who appreciate a player who can “put in a shift” and “bleeds for the shirt”, but this summer, an olive branch needs to be put to fans who appreciate a bit of creativity and don’t completely buy into the home-grown try hard over anything else policy. Rangers need that grit and determination, but they must remember that’s not all they need.
If Rangers advance past Florientina and get into the UEFA Cup final then a poignant story arrives with either competitor. Zenit St. Petersburg would be led by the manager that Rangers initially replaced Walter Smith with in an attempt to bring European glory to Ibrox – Dick Advocaat. While Bayern Munich are the team who arguably damaged the Advocaat era beyond repair. Michael Mols was never the same after the injury suffered in the Bayern Munich match, if Dick Advocaat had Michael Mols at his best, the same Michael Mols who first appeared for Rangers, then Advocaat would not have been so eager to cripple the finances of the team in an attempt to find a striker to respond to the onslaught of Henrik Larson at Celtic. Rangers were trying to build a team who played comparatively attractive football and could compete in Europe back then. They needed a player like Mols could do that. It’s funny the difference one player can make when they are so important to an ideology of a new regime, imagine if Cuellar got injured in December.
Or imagine if Cuellar suffered a suspension in April? Or imagine if Cuellar’s safety blanket increasingly started to look more and more like the world’s slowest man, or what if his temperament went a little mental. What if? Well it happened, the main criticism about Rangers is that they have the stench of an escaped convict running away from the police, they are getting away with it thus far, but if they keep running it’s only going to get worse. The Celtic game could have been a town too far.
Are the happenings of the Celtic game a blessing in disguise? Will Cuellar and Weir now get the rest they probably needed? Daily isn’t a huge drop off from Weir and the move of Broadfoot or Papac to the centre will provide a welcome run out for Smith and Whittaker. Or does it mean that the impenetrable foundation that Rangers is built upon now looks somewhat penetrable. Rangers’ fans can look at how many games would be different without Cuellar and Weir, but imagine how different the season would be without the heroics of Alan McGregor. I’m no Alexander expert but I imagine he will not be able to touch the influence of McGregor. If McGregor is out for any length of time, it could amount to being the end of Rangers jenga like season.
