MARTYN RAMSAY counts himself as one of the lucky ones. He was there, he lived it. Now he has recalled it and written about the time of money and medals, of memories and Mo Jo.
Those JFK moments of Graeme Souness being presented as Rangers manager or Maurice Johnston as a player are naturally prominent in the mind. Yet it is the silverware, that sustained pursuit of goals and glories, that defined a childhood and an age. It was the Revolution.
By 1992, it was over. Rangers had transformed the landscape of Scottish football forever but the game around them had changed and the world had moved on. The sky was once the limit, but Sky soon provided the glass ceiling and the ultimate ambition of European achievement would elude Rangers.
Ramsay's previous book - 'The 50 Greatest Rangers Games' - saw matches from this era account for almost a third of the entries that were voted for by supporters. There was, as he puts it, a focus on the 'big bang' at the start under Souness and then the heroes who finished nine-in-a-row with Walter Smith, but the whys and hows of the Revolution require more analysis than merely a misty-eyed view of the most remarkable period in the history of the club.
This is not a work written solely through tinted spectacles. The passing of time and a life shaped by its own course offers Ramsay perspective on those who had such a profound impact on his early life. Like all fans, the origins are emotive.
"This is my time," Ramsay, author of Revolution: Rangers (1986-92), said. "My first memory of Rangers was Souness arriving and that's that, I literally I didn't know failure or embarrassment or whatever that came before.
"So it was literally his arrival. Which meant that I was 17-and-a-half before I knew what it was like to end the season without seeing Rangers lift a trophy. Now, that's quite an impressionable period of anyone's life.
"Football means everything. You've got no perspective. It's before kids and careers, mortgages and marriages, sex, drugs, rock and roll and any other high that you're going to get is in the future. You're just obsessed about Rangers and I am part of the luckiest generation that there's been."
Those children of the Revolution did not carry the emotional baggage of those who had lived through the first half of the decade. It was new, it was exciting, and the feelings of change were only heightened by seeing the impact that the signings and success had on figures such as Ramsay's father and others who yearned for Rangers to regain their place at the pinnacle of the game for the first time since 1978.
🗓 On This Day 1986 Graeme Souness was appointed Player-Manager of Rangers.#Magnificentpic.twitter.com/hspmbnedgr
— Rangers History (@RangersFACTS) April 8, 2020
That, of course, was done in quite some style. It is a time that Ramsay asserts is 'the greatest era, and there is no question about that' but one he acknowledges had its ups and downs as Scottish football and society came to terms with what was happening at Ibrox before broader changes that 'basically swallow Rangers up'.
The first factor of three key elements that Ramsay points to was the ban on English clubs from competing in Europe. Or, more specifically, the fact that the suspension was not finite, and that uncertainty was exploited as Chris Woods and Terry Butcher arrived at Ibrox to kick-start it all.
Those signings were only possible because of the figures at the top of the club, however. Under the ownership of Lawrence Malborough and guidance of David Holmes, Rangers were a dynamic, driven force to be reckoned with and had the wherewithal that their rivals simply didn't.
The appointment of a leader as bold and charismatic as Souness came after Liverpool had named Kenny Dalglish as player-manager. It was a move at Anfield, Ramsay believes, that struck a chord with Holmes and the rest, as they say, is history.
"All of these things needed to happen for 1986 to be what it was," Ramsay said. "But Rangers did exploit it and exploited it with ruthless aggression and ambition, and they didn't care who they annoyed, didn't care what difference it made to the other teams and other clubs.
"It was very opportunistic. We still had to do it, by the way, we still had to make that happen and it needed David Holmes and Graeme Souness and the right figures. It was the right guys and it was the right opportunity."
It was one which was seized upon by Rangers. The League Cup was the only trophy delivered in the second season under Souness but the bid for nine - not that Rangers knew it at the time - was soon started as David Murray took control at Ibrox.
A delve into the 'Follow Follow' fanzines of the time is intriguing for Ramsay. The new approach was welcomed by many thanks to the honours that it returned but there were wary, dissenting voices at the unashamed brashness and hubris of it all and what it would mean for the ordinary punter.
The concerns mirrored those in the nation. The demise of British industries are lamented by some, as Ramsay points out, that drive home in German cars to watch American sitcoms on Japanese televisions and the Rangers story holds a unique place in the modernisation of the country.
"It's very interesting," Ramsay said. "Because this revolution, this Souness revolution, Holmes revolution, call it what you like, is really a Thatcherite one.
"It's abrasive, it is ambitious, it is speculate to accumulate, use of debt to build it and they will come. It's ripping up traditions, it is ripping up wage caps, ripping up signing practises in order to get people through the door. It is building hospitality suites that you've never seen the likes of in 1986, it is maximising revenue and commercial deals.
Rare footage of Souness first League match as Manager of Rangers, on this day in 1986, @RangersFC v Falkirk pic.twitter.com/Oi7NoE7kUn
— The Rangers Archives (@OldRangersVideo) August 13, 2022
"It's probably one of the most successful Tory policies and here it is on Red Clydeside. Here it is where it shouldn't really be, in a city that that apparently hates all of this."
The signings of Woods and Butcher were the ignition for Rangers but it was Souness that was the spark. Ramsay describes it as reversing the 'traditional flow of labour' by signing English players so soon after predecessor Jock Wallace had identified three up-and-coming Scots - John Brown, Craig Levein and Gordon Durie - as his targets to improve an ailing, failing side.
It was the acquisition of another homegrown player that made history and that still resonates today, however. Some never returned, but the boycotts and action that would have followed such a move decades before never materialised as attendances, like Rangers, continued on an upward trajectory.
"The signing represents something else," Ramsay said as he takes a position that changes in Scottish society had preceded the arrival of Maurice Johnston at Ibrox rather than that deal being the the 'starting pistol' for it. "Maurice Johnston could have taken the easy option to go back to Celtic.
"He chose to endanger his own safety and that of his family for money and medals, that's ultra professionalism. Where am I going to earn the most and where am I going to win the most?"
Rangers could, Ramsay believes, have signed Roman Catholics before Johnston's arrival in July 1989 but the timing and the personnel were aligned at the right moment. Previous doubts over the welcome players would have received or whether they would have signed were dismissed in the case of Johnston and he was of his time in sporting and societal senses.
"And there is the perfect example," Ramsay said. "Maurice Johnston, in those two seasons anyway, the first two seasons, busting a gut for a club that in a book he wrote two years before he said that he hated.
"Because it was about money, medals and where’s the best option for being the professional? And then once he knew that Smith might go a separate way or there could be genuine competition for places he went somewhere else, because of course you did."
Money had been at the heart of so much of what Rangers set out to achieve and delivered. Like all good things, it must come to an end and that point acts as the lead into the next work from Ramsay that will look at the run to nine-in-a-row.
The revolution was over in 1992. Rangers were 'undisputed kings of Scotland' and there was no end in sight for their domestic dominance. On the continent, it was a very different story.
The move from UEFA to limit foreign players all-but ended Rangers' aspirations in Europe, even though they would come to close in 1992/93 as one of the founders of the Champions League. That competition, and the launch of the Premier League, created a wealth that Rangers could not compete with.
"So realistically one has been completed and one is realistically over," Ramsay said. "Also what had characterised that revolution? That drive forward and vision. But realistic ambition.
"Both Holmes and early David Murray, the things they said more often than not were rooted in reality. It was a genuine ambition to say we want to be champions in Europe because of the place that Rangers had in the late 80s.
"And it was about breaking new horizons. It was about breaking new barriers. After '92, that starts to change, Rangers in reality start to look backwards and inwards."
The mindset of speculate to accumulate was still there, but only in a Scottish sense. A reference to nine-in-a-row, found in 'Follow Follow' in the summer of 1992, is enlightening for Ramsay and he believes Rangers were 'diverted to that path'.
Long-term planning and infrastructure was overlooked, a season of transition that risked breaking the sequence simply never considered. It delivered Laudrup, Gascoigne and that night at Tannadice, of course, but Rangers were now shaped by the very circumstances they had created.
"There is a feeling that there's a bigger party going on elsewhere," Ramsay said. "We're not there. And also the seeds are sown in terms of the lack of corporate governance, the lack of joined up thinking from the very top that are going to cause problems in the 21st century.
"And that's why it's no longer driving forward, those bigger revolutions have taken place, as I said, that have swallowed us up and we become more inward looking and a wee bit more parochial."
It was over, it was done and dusted. It will always live on in the memories of the lucky ones.
