I was away in South America when my team : Rangers were pushed to the bottom of the Scottish football league system, 2 years ago. It was hard to disagree with the punishment at the time, not after the almost comical mismanagement of the club by assorted crooks and cretins. But after the shock and bewilderment had passed I had fair degree of enthusiasm for my club.
On paper I thought the best course of action would be to build up the team with a strong core of Scottish youth players.Rangers certainly have the facilities with Murray Park (Rangers training facilities) envied by many team in Europe. Also I thought they could have instilled some sort of new and attractive playing philosophy : adopt the the tiki-taki Barcelona system or the fluidity of Arsenal? I’m sure this would have been difficult to achieve but by starting from scratch the club had the ideal opportunity. A quick flight to Holland to look at the youth systems of Ajax or PSV would have provided an ideal template.
The 4th tier off the Scottish League is by no means top level football. All of the teams are part time and they rarely attract crowds more than a couple of hundred souls. Most of the players are Postmen, Mechanics etc and will probably manage a couple of nights training a week so a well drilled team of talented youngsters would have probably had no problem in winning the 3rd Division.
In the end Rangers did “triumph”, by a hefty points margin but not without a couple of embarrassing slips and by way of some, at times, dreadful football. Added to this Ally McCoist (team manager and club legend) assembled a mish mash of 5th rate European journeymen together with some overpaid Scottish Premiership achievers. There were some young Scots but their appearances were sporadic and underwhelming.
Since then we have learned that the annual player wage bill was an eye watering £7 million pounds.
For a 4th tier club???
Although this isn’t a huge amount by EPL or Champions League team standards it is a staggering amount for a recently bankrupted club working in the the Scottish 3rd Division. This drain in finances in conjunction with similarly astounding management and hierarchy wages and bonuses has left Rangers on the brink of administration again.
It seems that Rangers re-emergence as Scottish giant is a long way off and their participation in Europe even further off.
Fairly Dreadful 