McLeish on edge of abyss

Published on Sunday 30 October 2005 00:22

ALEX McLEISH simply cannot go on like this. Failure to overcome Inverness Caledonian Thistle can only but have edged the Rangers manager closer to the Ibrox exit door. Now even victory away to Artmedia Bratislava in the Champions League in two days' time might only delay what appears to be increasingly inevitable.

There was a palpable sense that the tipping point for McLeish had arrived when the final whistle sounded on an encounter which, with their second half onslaught, Rangers ought to have won. Yet, with a goal from Steven Thompson their only reward after the interval, all they succeeded in doing was claiming a point after a first-half strike from Craig Dargo had raised the possibility of Rangers following up a draw away to Livingston with a home defeat by Inverness.

The Ibrox men have now dropped 17 points in winning only six of their first 13 league games. They conceded only 21 across last season's triumphant Premierleague campaign. And, with only two wins in their past nine encounters, they having fallen six points behind third-placed Hibernian. If Celtic win away to Dundee United today, they will be 10 points behind their Old Firm rivals. But McLeish maintained he "certainly expected" to be in charge on Tuesday and insisted that chairman David Murray has "never said anything" about his position being assessed on a game-to-game basis.

"It was a barrage in the second half and Lady Luck just isn't smiling on us at the minute," McLeish said. "But the players gave everything in the second half and it would be different if that wasn't the case. We face a massive game on Tuesday evening and the aim is to be smiling on Wednesday morning. With injuries and selection problems, anyone in my position would have found it difficult, but I don't think I've got anything wrong. Rangers fans are hurting because their team's not winning. But I won't go down without fighting."

Exactly why McLeish finds himself in a position where few would give tuppence for his long-term employment prospects isn't just to be found in the current Premierleague rankings. Every table from the corresponding weekend for each of the past 11 years damns his side's current efforts. Not since Celtic in 1994 has an Old Firm side been as lowly as fourth heading into the first week of November.

How Rangers could be transformed from a capable team into one that seems to be finding every challenge, however inconsiderable they might ordinarily appear, seem insurmountable is a problem that Murray may be unable to look past McLeish in attempting to solve. And though in the lead-up to Inverness's visit the Rangers manager was defiant, his team too often now seem incapable of anything similar on the park.

After squandering a 2-0 lead with an inexplicable collapse at Livingston in midweek, and with their manager's future on the line, McLeish was entitled to think his players would be stoked up to produce a time-buying, winning performance. Instead, it was Craig Brewster's side who had fire in their bellies.

McLeish could only have had a numbing sensation as he watched Dargo first-time a thunderous effort beyond Ronald Waterreus from fully 25 yards out. A 26th-minute body blow for a team looking to build confidence rather than have it further eroded, Rangers once more contributed to their own downfall. Although the Inverness forward's effort was glorious, a goal kick from Mark Brown should have been prevented reaching him by Marvin Andrews or Bob Malcolm.

The pair forming Rangers central defensive partnership tells its own story about McLeish's misfortunes beyond his control. With injury denying him Soto Kyrgiakos, Julien Rodgriguez, Thomas Buffel, Nacho Novo, Francis Jeffers, Federico Neito and Jean Pierre-Fanfan, he is hardly playing with a full deck. Few of the aforementioned, however, have ever looked like aces. Inverness seemed to hold all these in being largely untroubled before taking the lead. But, waking up to the gravity of their situation, Rangers began to show some urgency with Fernando Ricksen rattling the crossbar with a header.

In the second period, McLeish's men found a genuine appetite for the fray against opponents who simply refused to roll over. A match-winning fightback that was imperative appeared firmly set in motion when Brown made a hash of cutting out a curling cross from Alan Hutton, allowed Thompson to hook the ball in.

It was the one thing that went right for McLeish in a second half that brought chance after chance for Rangers. They faced 10 men for the final eight minutes after Graham Bayne was dismissed for a second bookable offence. Rangers fans were looking at McLeish and wondering if they, too, could soon be a man down.