Finishing the 2003/04 season trophyless put Alex McLeish, despite the domestic treble he had overseen the year before, under intense pressure at Rangers.
The discontent in the stands at Ibrox was considerable and there were calls from many disgruntled supporters, as there are once again at the moment after another frustrating and fruitless campaign, for the manager to be sacked.
Yet, Sir David Murray, the then majority shareholder, did not listen to those who demanded that he wield the axe.
The wealthy Edinburgh businessman suspected that it was the Glasgow club’s recruitment, not the coaching, tactics, team selections and man management of the individual in the dugout, which had been responsible for the annus horribilis.
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They had brought in a total of 11 new players across the two transfer windows. But only £1.1m had been spent strengthening the squad and overseas imports like Nuno Capucho, Paolo Vanoli, Emerson, Egil Ostenstad, Hamed Namouchi, Marc Kalenga and Bajram Fetai had all struggled to make the desired impact.
Sir David believed there needed to be a change of strategy off the park as much as an improvement in standards on it and he promptly set about ensuring the new recruits who came in that summer were capable of coping with the considerable demands of playing for Rangers.
“I thought I was going to get the sack before the 2004/05 season,” said McLeish yesterday as he was asked for his thoughts on Rangers’ failure to add any silverware to their trophy room this term.
“We had just had a barren season and I was feeling the heat. But David called me from his home in France one day and said, ‘‘We’re going again. But this time we’re going to get players who fit the jersey’. I think he recognised we had not recruited well enough.
“He got all of the agents he used onto it. I told him, ‘Whoever we identify, I’m going to go and watch them’. Alex Rae’s name came up so I went down to England to see him play for Wolves.
“I thought, ‘Okay, he’s getting older. But he’s extremely fit, he’s still got that fearsome look about him and he gets in about players. Plus, we’re getting him for nothing’. I phoned David straight after the match and said, ‘Alex Rae is a no brainer’.
“David was keen to bring in Scottish guys. Barry Ferguson came back from Blackburn in January. That was significant. We had just lost our centre-back to Newcastle United. Graeme Souness had bought Jean-Alain Boumsong for £8m.
“It is unbelievable to think that we lost Boumsong and still went on to win the league. But we had signed well. We got guys like big Marvin Andrews, Nacho Novo, Dado Prso, Alex Rae, Gregory Vignal in and they all did really well.”
Indeed they did. They beat Hibernian 1-0 at Easter Road in their last league match thanks to a second half Novo goal, leapfrogged their city rivals Celtic and clinched the Scottish title at the death. The dramatic climax has since become known as Helicopter Sunday.
Many Rangers fans have called for German head coach Danny Rohl to be axed following their late collapse in the William Hill Premiership – they lost four of their five post-split fixtures and finished in third place behind Celtic and Hearts.
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But the club owners are going to stand by the former Sheffield Wednesday manager and new chief executive Jim Gillespie this week admitted “the whole of Rangers must be designed and have the ambition to win on the pitch”.
The Ibrox club, who were taken over by 49ers Enterprises and American healthcare tycoon Andrew Cavenagh 12 months ago, spent in the region of £40m on the likes of Thelo Aasgaard, Oliver Antman, Youssef Chermiti, Tochi Chukwuani, Emmanuel Fernandez, Djeidi Gassama, Bojan Miovski, Ryan Naderi and Tuur Rommens this term.
A place in the second qualifying round of the Conference League is a poor return for such a considerable outlay – the most money that has ever been spent by a Scottish club during a single season - and for a lot of their followers Rohl should pay the price for the failure with his job.
McLeish has, having spent five rollercoaster years in the high-profile, high-pressure position himself, sympathy for the current incumbent of the Ibrox hotseat. But he is also unsure if the players who have donned light blue jerseys during the past eight-and-a-half months have had the mentality that is required.
“When you come to Rangers you have to, first and foremost, know what the details are,” he said. “You can’t say, ‘Oh, Rangers, they’re a good team’. There is so much more to it than that. There is a lot of psychology involved in playing at Ibrox.
“Arthur Numan once told me a story about being in the dressing room at Ibrox shortly after he had joined. The team had just drawn 0-0 and he was having a laugh with one of his team mates after he had come out of the shower.
“Arthur said that Ian Ferguson came storming over to him and said, ‘Do you know what it takes to play for Rangers?’ He was right up in his face, was being really aggressive. Arthur told him, ‘Ian, I do now’. That was when he knew Rangers weren’t a normal club. Foreign players need to understand that.
“I don’t think that in recent times we have really had that appreciation. You have to accentuate the culture, drive home to people what it means to play for Rangers. A player can’t just nonchalantly wander in from abroad and go through the motions. It is a totally different environment. You have got to win every week.
“If you look back to the 1980s and the 1990s you had Ian Durrant, Ally McCoist, John Brown, a lot of guys who really got Rangers and knew what it took to win. Do we have that there now? I am not sure we have.”
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He continued, “I watched Rangers win at Parkhead in January and I thought, ‘There is no way we won’t win the league now’. I thought their confidence would soar. I thought the players’ personal stature would grow. I said, ‘There will be no stopping them now. They’ll rise to another level’. It didn’t happen. That is down to a lack of character in the team.
“I couldn’t believe it when I saw all of these upset results after that, like the draw with Livingston. I thought, ‘Where did the confidence go?’ As I say, I think it is down to a lack of character in the team.
“Maybe there is a lack of confidence there as well. But you wouldn’t normally say that about a Scottish footballer. Normally they are gallus individuals. That is a Glasgow word that is associated with a lot of people in the city.
“It isn’t just about getting guys in from Glasgow, of course it isn’t. But that is a quality that is required. We got Kris Boyd in from Kilmarnock at the start of 2006 and he was the most confident big guy in the world, both on the pitch and in the dressing room. That is what you need.”
McLeish, who won the Premier League twice, the Scottish Cup twice and the League Cup three times during his time at Ibrox, feels there are players available who can give Rangers the edge which they have been missing.
“I can’t understand why they never went for Shankland [Hearts and Scotland striker Lawrence],” he said. “I told a pal of mine who is a big investor at the club that they should go for him a few years back.
“He told me, ‘They don’t want to sign players who are over 26’. They were bringing in young players with potential sell-on value from overseas and I can understand the logic behind that, but some of the boys who have come in have just not been at the right level.”
McLeish - who grew up supporting Rangers and whose boyhood idol was Bobby Shearer, a legendary captain who was renowned for his combative, tough-tackling style of play and complete commitment to the cause – had spent a lifetime in the Scottish game as a player and manager when he arrived at Ibrox.
But even he took time to adjust to his new surroundings and he constantly drew on some sage advice from his predecessor Walter Smith in order to deal with the demands which were on his shoulders every day.
“My wife Jill and I went out with Walter and his wife Ethel the week I joined Rangers,” he said. “I asked Walter if he had any words of wisdom for me when I first addressed the boys. He looked at me with a serious face and said, ‘Just f****** win!’ I said, ‘I get it’.
“That was the line that was in my head constantly throughout my time at Rangers. It should be the same for everyone who is there.”
