IF THE Daily Ranger and The Scottish Hun haven't use their cracked Rangers graphic yet this week, (I didn't read either rag), it will certainly be deployed, should The King's XI fail to beat Aberdeen in Saturday's high noon Pittodrie shoot-out.
Back-to-back 0-4 thrashings, with Rangers, in Tommy Docherty's immortal phrase: “Lucky to get nothing” in both games, these are not the results which the Bears will accept.
But, that's the reality of where the club and Scottish football stand at the moment. Sure, the Celtic apologists, as ever, found something to cling onto from their 0-3 hammering at the hands of Real Madrid on Tuesday night. However, reality and the Celtic Family are seldom bedfellows after they get a gubbing.
So, one-sixth of the way through the Champions League group games and, already, it looks as if scraping into the Europa League in third place might be the best our big two can aspire to. And there is definitely, already, a scent of wishful thinking about that goal.
Here we are, in early September of a season which will run through to a final, in Istanbul, on 10 June, 2023 and already the best our best can realistically? hope for is to reach the Europa League final, which is contested by the 17th and 18th best teams in Europe.
The Old Firm used to be European giants, today, they are, at best feeder teams for English clubs they used to look down on.
Of course, the pair of them should have decamped to the Premier League in England at the earliest opportunity. I fear that door is now closed to them and like minor aristocrats, forced by death duties and financial reality, their lot is to lord it over their wee local area, while reminiscing about how much better things used to be.
I probably saw Wednesday night's Amsterdam Awakening coming – I've been saying for ages, there are a lot of players in this current Rangers first team squad who are simply NRC – Not Rangers Class.
It used to be that Ibrox was the destination of choice for most ambitious (Protestant) Scottish players. They either went there as stand-out schoolboys: [Willie Henderson, Jim Forrest and Alex Willoughby, John Greig, Derek Johnstone, Sandy Jardine], were plucked from good junior teams: [George Young, George Niven, Eric Caldow, Davie Wilson, Ron McKinnon, Bobby Russell] or, having won Scottish age group honours, or even full caps, from other Scottish clubs: [Bob McPhail, Sammy Cox, Willie Woodburn, Jim Baxter, Ian McMillan, Peter McCloy. Tam Forsyth].
Then, along came Graeme Souness and David Murray and the management model changed – Rangers became a buying club. But, this is a costly exercise and when they ran out of OPM – Other People's Money to spend, it all went tits-up.
I wrote at the time, when the club was relegated to League Two for season 2012-13, the way forward for the club would have been to have kept a handful of experienced players, the likes of Lee Wallace, Lee McCulloch, Neil Alexander and the young Barry McKay, then promote the best of their young guns. If these kids were “Rangers Class” then they ought to have had little difficulty in getting the club back to the Premiership, by which time, they would have 100 matches of experience and be ready for the top league.
But, in a textbook demonstration of how stupidity is the process of repeating past mistakes in the hope of a different outcome, the Rangers' management went down the road of importing third and fourth-rate non-Scots. This saw the return hit a bump in the road in the Championship, but, they did eventually get back, while going through several managers who were never Rangers' class.
As I said above, in the 36 years since Souness was appointed, the Rangers' youth development programme has been largely ignored by the first team coaching staff.
As an example of this, in the last decade, Rangers have had the following young players capped by Scotland at Under-21 level: L Burt (2017), R Hardie (2017), S Kelly (2020), Leon King (2022), B Kinnear (2021), Robbie McCrorie (2018), Ross McCrorie (2017), J McPake (2021), L Mayo (2021), Glenn Middleton (2018), Nathan Patterson (2021), B Williamson (2021), K Wright (2018).
Of these 13 players, only King featured on Wednesday night – off the bench, while Robbie McCrorie was an unused sub. Ross McCrorie, Middleton and Patterson have all left the club, and while Robbie McCrorie has been called-up to the full Scotland squad, but remains uncapped, only Patterson has gone on to win a full Scotland cap.
I logged onto the official UEFA Champions League website when writing this piece. The Ajax squad is 47 players long; of these, 31 are Dutch and 16 are other nationalities. They used 15 players against Rangers; these split 10 Dutchmen, 5 non-Dutchmen. Of the 10 Dutch players 7 were products of the Ajax Academy.
Rangers' squad, according to the Champions League website is 48 players strong; these split: 28 Scots, 20 non-Scots. Rangers, like Ajax, used 15 players. Jon McLaughlin and Scott Wright were the only Scotsmen to start, while Ryan Jack and Leon King were the only Scots to come off the bench. Of this quartet, the only four Scots to get on the park in European games this season, King is the only one to have come through the club's development system.
Ajax have a superior European record to Rangers. But, like Rangers they now operate as a mid-level European club, playing in one of the lesser leagues. They also know, bigger, richer clubs, who do not have their pedigree in Europe, are now able to cherry-pick their best players. Ajax have cut their cloth to their new reality – Rangers have not.
When Souness began his revolution, he was able to recruit top English players such as Terry Butcher and Chris Woods, since Rangers could offer the European football from which the English clubs were then banned.
David Murray, using Other People's Money, could recruit better-quality players: Paul Gascoigne, the de Boer Twins, Brian Laudrup, today, given the lowly status of the Scottish League and the lack of a mega-rich sugar daddy, absolute top-drawer talent can no longer be enticed to Rangers.
Given these drawbacks, I feel Rangers, by not going down the Ajax route, have missed a trick.
There have been, in 66 seasons of European football, involving 21 different clubs, over 1400 games. All these campaigns have yielded just four trophies: 1 European Cup, 2 European Cup-Winners Cups and 1 Super Cup. That is not a great record.
Let's just have a look at those winning squads, and yes, I know the European football landscape was completely different when these trophies were being won.
Celtic's Lisbon Lions: Ronnie Simpson (bought-in); Jim Craig, Tommy Gemmell, Bobby Murdoch, Billy McNeill, John Clark, Jimmy Johnstone (all home-grown), Willie Wallace (bought-in), Stevie Chalmers, Bertie Auld, Bobby Lennox (all home grown) (although Auld was allowed to leave then brought back.)
Rangers' Barcelona Bears: Peter McCloy (bought-in), Sandy Jardine, Willie Mathieson, John Greig, Derek Johnstone (all home-grown), Dave Smith, Tommy McLean (both bought-in), Alfie Conn (home-grown), Colin Stein, Alex Macdonald (both bought-in), Willie Johnston (home-grown).
Aberdeen's Gothenburg Greats: Jim Leighton, Doug Rougvie, John McMaster, Neale Cooper, Alex McLeish, Willie Miller, (all home-grown) Gordon Strachan (bought-in), Neil Simpson (home-grown), Mark McGhee (bought-in), Eric Black (home-grown), Peter Weir (bought-in).
Thirty-three SCOTTISH footballers. Nine of the Celtic XI came through the ranks at Celtic Park. Six of the Rangers XI were also home-grown and Eight of the Aberdeen XI were similarly home-grown. This means, 23 of the 33 players – more than two-thirds of the combined squads, were home-grown by the clubs.
I appreciate it would be difficult, in today's different football landscape, to replicate this level of home-grown success. However, we should never say it could not happen again. Buying inferior non-Scottish talent isn't working – a point further emphasised by Hearts' humbling at the hands of their Turkish visitors on Thursday night, so it's maybe time to go back to a model which did work, and actively recruit, coach and promote young Scottish talent.
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