McLeish on wrong side of the thin blue line

Published on Friday 17 December 2004 03:15

TWO weeks ago, Alex McLeish was posing for the photographers at Murray Park with the Bank of Scotland’s Manager of the Month award for November, savouring a period which had turned Rangers’ season around and seemed to have discarded any short-term uncertainty over his own position at the club.

As McLeish himself has regularly been moved to observe, however, there is the finest of lines between the twin imposters of triumph and disaster for an Old Firm manager.

At around the same time as he carries out his weekly round of media interviews at Murray Park this lunchtime, the UEFA Cup draw will be taking place in Nyon. It is Rangers’ absence from the pot at UEFA headquarters, rather than Sunday’s SPL fixture at Kilmarnock, which will be exercising the minds of McLeish’s inquisitors as the post-mortem into a dismal Wednesday evening at Ibrox continues.

If the 1-0 defeat to AZ Alkmaar in Holland two weeks earlier had been disappointing for Rangers, bringing to an end the 16-match unbeaten run which included two wins over Celtic and victories in both of their opening UEFA Cup Group F fixtures, it was also regarded with a certain degree of understanding.

Alkmaar, after all, had never lost a European tie on their own ground and were one of the continent’s form sides. Rangers, surely, had already laid the foundations for qualification from the section by defeating Amica Wronki 5-0 in Poland and seeing off Grazer AK 3-0 at Ibrox.

For the second successive season, McLeish approached a home fixture requiring only a point to book a place in the last 32 of the UEFA Cup. Twelve months ago, a disintegrating side who were also in the process of meekly surrendering the SPL title to Celtic, failed miserably, losing 3-1 to Panathinaikos in their final Champions League group fixture to concede the UEFA Cup slot to the Greek club.

McLeish, who outlined his conviction earlier this week that he was capable of making an impact in Europe with Rangers if provided "with the proper tools", believed his revamped team were ready to see the job through this time against an Auxerre side who had been convincingly beaten 2-0 by Alkmaar in their previous away game in the group.

The manner in which his hopes of enhancing his European record imploded so dramatically, Ivory Coast international striker Bonaventure Kalou punishing defensive naivete and tactical chaos in the Rangers ranks to plunder both goals in Auxerre’s ultimately comfortable 2-0 win, has instead renewed the vigour of McLeish’s critics and obliterated the feelgood factor which had surrounded the club in the wake of their double Old Firm triumph.

It was Rangers’ first home defeat of the season and it is the way McLeish utilised the tools at his disposal which was central to the ire of many of the supporters who trooped wearily into the cold Govan night on Wednesday.

The murmurings of surprise around Ibrox began before kick-off with the revelation that Alex Rae had been left on the substitutes’ bench and intensified when it became apparent Zurab Khizanishvili had been moved to a midfield holding role with specific instructions to man-mark Kalou. To accommodate his totally unexpected tactical reorganisation, McLeish switched Fernando Ricksen, his most effective midfield performer this season, to right-back.

On an evening when Rangers only needed a point to advance to the next phase of the tournament, it appeared a needlessly risky experiment and it could hardly have backfired more spectacularly. Khizanishvili dreamily allowed Kalou to escape his clutches to score the 10th minute opener, before sharing culpability for the striker’s killer second goal at the start of the second half.

"I was caught in too many minds," admitted Khizanishvili. "I had a really bad game but I have to learn from my mistakes. It was a really bad night for me."

If the Georgian international was confused by his new role, which McLeish said the player had performed effectively for his country in a match against Turkey earlier in the season, it was clear that the strategy also had a disorientating effect on the rest of the Rangers line-up.

Jean-Alain Boumsong chose the worst possible time and place to produce his least impressive 90 minutes in a Rangers jersey, appearing ill at ease and desperately off the pace against his former club at the conclusion of a day which had seen the speculation over his future at Ibrox reach an obviously unsettling fever pitch.

McLeish, who wore an understandably exasperated look afterwards, will take some time to come to terms with how Rangers contrived to finish fourth in one of the weakest of the eight UEFA Cup qualifying groups. If he was let down by some of his key players, notably the erratic Dado Prso who missed the simplest of chances to equalise before half-time, the manager will realise the bulk of responsibility for Rangers’ latest failure at this level lies at his door.

No matter how it is dressed up, McLeish’s record of just six wins in 20 European ties since he replaced Dick Advocaat three years ago is unacceptable. Of those victories, only the 2-1 defeat of FC Copenhagen in Denmark last season and the 1-0 win over Maritimo at Ibrox this year were significant in that they progressed Rangers to the next phase of a tournament.

McLeish, who has lost exactly half of his European fixtures as Rangers manager, must now train his focus on domestic matters in a bid to reinforce his credibility in the job and reclaim the trust of his club’s supporters. Results over the festive period, culminating in the Tennent’s Scottish Cup third round tie against Celtic at Parkhead on 9 January, could prove critical for McLeish in that regard as could any activity he is able to undertake during the transfer window.

As he walks that fine line which is the lot of the Old Firm manager, the safety net below McLeish is growing ever more threadbare.