McCall may still return to Scots’ third-man role
STUART McCALL is taking nothing for granted regarding his future at Rangers — and that’s why he admits he could find himself back in a Scotland tracksuit this summer. McCall gave up his ‘third-man’ role in the national team set-up when he accepted the post of interim boss at Ibrox and was grafting away on the club’s promotion bid while Gordon Strachan and Mark McGhee presided over the Scots’ Euro 2016 qualifying victory over Gibraltar last month.
Ideally, McCall would like to be making plans for pre-season and recruiting players for a promoted Rangers’ return to the top flight this June, but the thought of being involved when Scotland travel to Dublin to face the Republic of Ireland on the 13th of that month is also a tantalising prospect.
Might he combine the Rangers job with a return to national service?
‘I would have to discuss that but it certainly wouldn’t clash with any fixtures,’ said McCall. ‘If I wasn’t going to be Rangers manager, then I would like to think I would be there.’
McCall took up his part-time role with Scotland while in charge at Motherwell and has evidently enjoyed being involved with the national team.
In Strachan, he also has a confidante who understands what it’s like to manage in the intense environment of the Old Firm.
It’s doubtful that Strachan himself would recommend a job share while McCall is in situ at Ibrox, but he does have plenty of insight into how to handle the peculiar pressures of being in charge of one of Scotland’s big two.
‘Gordon was brilliant when I first went onto him about the job,’ added McCall. ‘He said I had to go for it and give it my best shot.
‘I went to see him when Scotland were last training at Mar Hall. Then he texted me after our game against Cowdenbeath, saying: “You left that late”. His advice has been the same as Walter Smith’s: ‘Just win’.
‘I don’t think there would be a problem giving Gordon a call, especially with him, and Walter, being former Old Firm managers and knowing the intensity of that.’
McCall is a pragmatist and has known all along that guiding Rangers to the Premiership and thus maximising his chances of a permanent appointment represented a significant challenge of his managerial facets.
Three consecutive victories had certainly not fooled the former Motherwell boss into believing he had fixed the problems that saw the team well beaten to automatic promotion by Hearts.
Thursday’s 3-0 defeat at Queen of the South, therefore, was not as surprising as it might have been.
Today, Rangers have a chance to put their bid to claim second place back on track with the visit of Raith Rovers. Beating Hibs to the runners-up spot is a priority, no less so for the fact that Queens and their plastic pitch could form one of the hurdles in the play-offs. If nudged into third place, Rangers will need to complete six additional fixtures to make it up, so it’s no great surprise that McCall has given little thought to what will happen in the close season.
‘It has been a whirlwind since I got the job but I’m enjoying it,’ he said. ‘I know people find this hard to believe, but I have had no thoughts about July or August.
‘I’m just focused on our game with Raith Rovers and then the next game and so on.’
McCall was in the BBC studios doing some analysis work when Raith last visited Ibrox in January and left with a Scottish Cup victory that stands as one of the low points of Rangers’ season.
‘The size of the crowd, around 11,000, the manner of the defeat — it was all just so flat,’ he recalled.
‘We want to ensure we don’t put in a performance like that again.’
With Ally McCoist on gardening leave and departed caretaker Kenny McDowall adamant he didn’t want the job, each media appearance brought questions of whether McCall saw himself as a potential candidate.
Only with the arrival of the new regime of Dave King, Paul Murray and John Gilligan did the offer materialise but McCall insists he was not hovering, waiting for the call to come.
‘Before I came here, I had probably five opportunities to go back into football north and south of the border,’ he revealed. ‘Having the Scotland thing, I decided to leave it. I hadn’t one iota thinking this would come about.
‘I thought I would wait until the summer and then try to get in somewhere, have pre-season and get in my own players.
‘Now, I’ll probably still be doing that in the summer. There’s a chance I won’t be here.’
McCall’s aversion to complacency might just be one of Rangers’ greatest assets as the promotion endgame draws closer.