Barry’s perfect fit for Pedro but he’s nobody’s yes man
RANGERS FERGIE IN THE FRAME MacLeod: Bazza not enough to stop 10
BARRY FERGUSON won’t be content to just act as a buffer between Pedro Caixinha and the Rangers players if he lands a role on the new Ibrox boss’s coaching staff, according to Bob Malcolm.
In fact the former Light Blues centreback reckons if his old team-mate and close friend makes an emotional return to Ibrox as the Portuguese’s No. 3 he will already have one eye on his dream managerial job.
Malcolm served as Ferguson’s assistant at Blackpool and Clyde and sees the former Rangers skipper as the perfect fit for Caixinha and the club.
He believes Ferguson would put his heart and soul into the post in the hope he would be in the frame for the top job further down the line – just don’t expect him to be a silent partner.
Malcolm said: “Barry is very driven and focused. He is also young and hungry. He knows what Rangers are all about, after all he captained them for several years and won lots of trophies.
“It would be the perfect fit for him at the moment as he is not in a job. This is the club he wants to be at and whether this would be a stepping stone for him who knows.
“If the Rangers manager’s job came up in the next couple of years he could be in the frame for it.
“If Barry is coaching at Ibrox I would certainly like to think he would have a major input into the team.
“He is determined and is a born winner. Second best is not good enough for him and that is in everything he does, not just football.
“His coaching and training sessions are good. The new manager might want to do his own training sessions and stuff but Barry can handle that side of things.
“He won’t want to just be a buffer between Pedro and the players, he will want a major say and input into what is going on. He has been the caretaker boss at Blackpool and manager of Clyde so if he goes to Rangers he’ll want to have a voice and put his point across. He will see a return to Ibrox as a step in the right direction. “He possibly jumped into management at the deep end but also probably did the best thing joining a smaller club. “Clyde recruited players who were arguably better than the league they were in and that was because Barry was a big name. He would be able to bring a certain calibre of player to the club as they would want to play for him. That is something Rangers might want to consider and is possibly a reason they might want to bring him back in.
“Rangers need someone like Barry to occupy this role. They need someone with Rangers at heart and with him being a fan it is the perfect fit.”
Malcolm hopes Rangers foreigner managerial experiment under Caixinha is more successful than Frenchman Paul Le Guen’s disastrous reign at Ibrox which lasted less than a year back in 2006.
That’s why the former Rangers and Motherwell defender would love to see Caixinha lean on someone such as Ferguson and tap into his knowledge and expertise on the Scottish game.
Malcolm revealed Le Guen wrongly assumed he could bring his French philosophy and football style to Govan but paid the ultimate price by losing his job within 10 months.
Malcolm said: “The club needs someone like Barry, especially as the new boss is a foreigner. They don’t want to go back to the Le Guen days. He didn’t have a clue what it was going to be like at Ibrox.
“He thought he could bring his style of football to the Scottish game which didn’t work. Le Guen had cruised the leagues for three or four years in France and thought he could do the same in Glasgow which is totally different.
“If Barry came in it would be someone for Caixinha to lean on and I think it is something that could work.” MURDO MacLEOD believes the appointment of a Scot such as Barry Ferguson as Rangers No.3 coach will not be enough for the Light Blues to prevent Celtic from clinching 10 in a row.
MacLeod was part of the Hoops management team alongside Dutchman Wim Jansen who halted Rangers’ bid to win 10 consecutive top-flight titles in season 1997-98.
New Ibrox boss Pedro Caixinha is looking to recruit a Scottish coach who knows the club inside out and Ferguson clearly fits the bill.
However former Record Sport columnist MacLeod admits bringing in Ferguson would be all well and good but Rangers will somehow need to spend big just as Jansen’s side did in 1997 if they are to go toe to toe with the Hoops for the title.
Back then the Hoops brought in Henrik Larsson from Feyenoord, Champions League winner Paul Lambert, Craig Burley from Chelsea and Marc Rieper from West Ham.
And MacLeod said: “Wim brought in Henrik then Lambert from Borussia Dortmund, Burley and Rieper.
“They were all quality players and had played at a very high level.
“It is not quite as simple as Ferguson going in and stopping Celtic from doing 10 in a row.
“Look at Celtic right now – Moussa Dembele, Scott Sinclair, Scott Brown, Stuart Armstrong and Kieran Tierney are all being mentioned as Player of the Year candidates. Not one player is getting a mention at Rangers.
“Rangers will need to recruit six or seven Player of the Year contenders.
“Any new Rangers players coming into the club next season will have to be players who are being talked about by everybody in Scottish football.”