Smoking gun? Gers will need battery of cannons’ worth of evidence to recruit rival clubs in battle with SPFL
Ibrox chiefs face a fight to be taken seriously at top again
Lennart Johansson was the UEFA president at the time.
But the Champions League, as we know it, was the brainchild of a Rangers director.
It was Campbell Ogilvie who came up with the idea – along with Anderlecht’s Roger Van Den Stock – of turning the old European Cup into a group format.
Despite reservations from Johansson and his general secretary Gerhard Aigner it was pushed through.
And the rest is history. It’s UEFA’s prized asset and it’s now hard to imagine the tournament in any other guise.
Ogilvie’s influence on it was huge. But that’s when Rangers, as a club, had influence.
The fact one of their board members was so highly thought of by European football’s governing body is proof of that.
Not to mention the clout they had within our own domestic game.
They were Scotland’s No.1 club, at the peak of their powers under the stewardship of David Murray off the pitch and legendary boss Walter Smith on it.
Of course, they almost made the final of that inaugural Champions League competition.
For Rangers supporters, all of it must seem like a lifetime ago.
The f inancial implosion, charlatan owners, liquidation, a rebirth in Scotland’s bottom tier, ‘the journey’ back and now, finally, a semblance of normality.
It’s no wonder, having gone through a decade of turmoil, that they lost any kind of authority.
Dur ing it , they’ve lacked leader ship and , in turn, leverage.
Their reputat ion suf fered massively and their voice at the top table of Scottish or European football was lost.
Now, almost 30 years later, the Ibrox club are trying to clear their throats again.
Never mind the challenges Steven Gerrard and his team face on the park.
This one, to win friends and influence people again, is one of the toughest they’ll ever face off it.
In the next week, Rangers’ evidence – which they believe calls the SPFL’s competence and integrity into question – will be circulated around the other 41 clubs in the country.
For most of this debacle over the
league’ s resolution vote, they’ve been lone crusaders.
To most folk on the outside, they’ve been fobbed of f as rabble rousers.
And make no mistake, if what they produce isn’t damning in its detai l , they’ ll quick ly f ind themselves trying to rake water up a hill again.
They’ll be laughed out of town and – just like for the previous 10 years – won’t be taken seriously for the foreseeable future.
It has to be enough to sink Neil Doncaster, Rod McKenzie and Murdoch MacLennan or it won’t even get to the stage where clubs vot e for an independent investigation into their conduct.
For chairman or chief execs at the likes of Motherwell, Hamilton and St Mirren – who have already nailed their colours to a mast – it has to make them think again. For the f irst time since 2012, Rangers needd to garner support from outside Ibrox.
But that won’t be easy, given what happened back then.
The club’s demise, their use of EBTs and subs equent attempts to be reinstated in the top flight prompted a level of hatred rarely seen in our game before or after.
After years of dominance, trophy success and prominence within our game – this was them finally getting their comeuppance.
There’s no point sugar coating it. They were detested – and still are by many. I’ve spoken to supporters from other clubs in the league and it still lingers now.
Remember, punters at certain clubs were threatening to boycott their own team’s games if Rangers were given any help. That’s what will make this week such a st rug g le for
Rangers . Fans aren’t a just hoping for a smoking gun gu – they want a full row of cannons. ca
Somehow, Douglas Park and Stewart St Robertson have to get those th at rival clubs on side.
They T have to gain the appreciation app of people such as Dave Cormack Cor at Aberdeen, Ron Gordon at HHibs, Ann Budge at Hearts and oth others. Without them, they won’t ach achieve anything.
T They will quickly become that soli solitary voice at the back of a room aga again with nobody taking notice.
Th The way their own resolution was trea treated with disdain a few weeks ago and so dismissively kicked out by tthe SPFL is proof of that.
Th There’s no doubt in my mind that Doncaster, MacLennan and McKenzie should be held to account for the botched vote and circumstances surrounding it.
I’ve said it before, the whole thing stinks.
Doncaster’s failure to explain why the advance payments to clubs back in 2017 couldn’t have been replicated now is probably worthy of an inquiry on its own.
But for Rangers, there’s a bigger picture here. Of course they want Doncaster and Co out.
They don’t trust MacLennan and want an overhaul of the SPFL’s hierarchy. And of course they don’t want Celtic to be handed a title while there’s a shred of hope that the 2019/20 season can be played out.
But what happens in the next week should be about more than that for the Ibrox club.
It should be about getting their respect back. They’ve already done that on the playing side since the arrival of Gerrard.
And if this evidence is water-tight, they’ll also get it back at boardroom level. Maybe not at the same level as when Ogilvie was muscling in on European football ’s biggest decisions. But it would be a start. If it’s not, and the majority of clubs just shrug their shoulders in indifference – they’ll be raking at the bottom of that hill again.