McLeish could help rudderless Rangers put a foot on the ball
THERE will always, no matter how football evolves, be so much more to managing Rangers than mere formations and philosophies. The unfolding chaos in the wake of the failed experiment with Mark Warburton is proof. Whatever the ins and outs behind his unholy mess of a departure, it was a split that had become inevitable with an inexperienced man incapable of adapting to — or even understanding — the often unrelenting glare of the spotlight in Scotland.
Getting results on the park is just the start of it. The level of scrutiny is such that one requires the hide of a rhino to prosper.
Warburton’s, perhaps predictably so given his background at Brentford, was about as resilient as rice paper.
There’s also a need to be politically aware and capable of forging alliances within the boardroom and media. You need a strong yet positive public persona, coupled with an innate sense of the winning mentality that needs to be reinstilled in a footballing department that had settled for slugging it out for second place with Aberdeen and Hearts.
What the Ibrox board do in the longer-term to rebuild a weak and irretrievably fractured internal framework requires time and thought.
If ever a club needed to stop, put its foot on the ball and consider its options, it’s Rangers.
If he is up for it, there seems no better man to offer them the breathing space they so desperately require — the interim solution mentioned by chairman Dave King — than Alex McLeish.
McLeish, who will be at the ground working for Sky Sports today, has seen the good and the bad at Ibrox.
He won two leagues and five cups in what we can now pinpoint as the early stages of financial meltdown, but wore a haunted look in his final campaign, in which he still reached the last 16 of the Champions League, until it was confirmed Paul le Guen would be taking over in the summer.
Were he interested, McLeish could provide so much of the nous and gravitas Warburton did not.
Just days before Warburton started his reign with a home friendly against Burnley in July 2015, McLeish spoke with me about lessons learned during his darker days and advice useful to the new man. In hindsight, his words detailed the curve of Warburton’s rise and demise impeccably.
‘There are two kinds of pressure at Rangers,’ he explained. ‘If Mark gets off to a good start, he will find that it turns from being absolutely vice-like to something you are happier dealing with.
‘If you are winning, you have to keep winning every single week and that is the mentality you have to drill into the players every day.
‘When it is not going so well, it can really drain the life out of you. I was certainly a little bit drained at the end of my time.
‘We had a decent end to that season and maybe that is because I had already agreed with (then chairman) David Murray that I’d be leaving, but the pressure up to then was like being trapped in a vice.
‘You need big cojones and your mentality needs to be right. You cannot be stubborn. You can’t see everything in that job and, sometimes, you really can’t see the wood for the trees.
‘It is why the influence of very close assistants can help so much.’
Warburton never appreciated the need to win at all costs, believing that 12 victories out of 24 league games this term was no real issue.
His stubbornness, particularly in terms of altering the shape of the team, became a problem.
The advice and support he received from David Weir, a rather puzzling assistant now being re-evaluated by the fanbase, is open to question.
They were failures in the end. There is, of course, a clamour in some quarters to make a permanent appointment right now, but it seems premature.
Contrary to King’s pronouncements, Rangers do not have a solid strategy to present to him.
They lost the plot in the transfer market last summer and now possess a squad high on wages and low on re-sale value.
Why appoint a full-time manager now when there is time to weigh up the bigger picture? A modern, progressive coach may well be the way forward again long-term, but he will require a greater support network than that enjoyed by Warburton.
Whatever his failings, having an absentee chairman did not work. King is hardly ready to relocate, so the idea of a technical director responsible for footballing matters along with a Head of Recruitment to build a scouting network beyond the United Kingdom is worth exploring — with Ross Wilson, formerly of Falkirk and now at Southampton, a name already being mentioned.
They surely need to follow Celtic’s lead in buying low, elevating the talent and selling at a profit.
They also need to be sure the next man understands what he is getting into. Whether a short-term option or not, McLeish’s thoughts would be well worth ascertaining over a soupcon of red this afternoon.