Practical reason behind sudden vote of confidence in manager

Published on Friday 9 December 2005 01:35

THE announcement from David Murray that Alex McLeish is to continue as manager of Rangers would have elicited from my late step-father the brilliantly concise phrase with which he would summarise situations of suspicious ambiguity: "mystery attached."

In the aftermath of the combination of results on Tuesday that took the team into the last 16 of the Champions League, the Ibrox chairman's decision to keep faith with McLeish for the foreseeable future seemed increasingly likely with the passing of each of the 48 hours the manager had said would elapse before a verdict would be reached.

The confirmation from Murray, however, served merely to strengthen the speculation that he had no alternative. It is difficult to escape the inference that the haunted McLeish is still in office because no successor was available.

Murray denied having offered the job to anyone, but that hardly counts as re-assurance to the incumbent. The chairman had, a few weeks earlier, said in the context of McLeish's future that there was a Plan B, that he could, in fact, be accused of negligence if he had not explored contingency arrangements.

This occurred at the time he made the "revisit the situation in early December" statement that amounted to a probationary period for McLeish. This would embrace five matches, three in the Premierleague and the last two in Europe, away to Porto and at home to Inter.

This was made public in the wake of the 2-0 defeat from Celtic in the CIS Insurance Cup, after a performance which Murray called "totally unacceptable" and which seemed to irritate him to the point of impulsive action.

At the time, it seemed to be no accident that "early December" would coincide with the match against the Italians, in the first week of the month. There was every reason to suppose that Europe, rather than Scotland, would be McLeish's main hope of salvation.

Since the three league matches yielded one point and amounted to persistent re-offending while on probation, that proposition has been vindicated.

The other inference to be drawn from Murray's postponement of a decision on the manager's standing, that he was playing for time in the hope of securing an acceptable replacement in the event of further catastrophic results, also now appears to hold up.

Amid the justified euphoria over reaching the knock-out stage of the Champions League, however, too much emphasis has been placed on the performance and the result against Inter. The scoreless draw between Artmedia and Porto meant Rangers could have lost 6-0 to the Italian side and still progressed.

On a quagmire of a pitch, Artmedia seemed to be denied the one goal they required to overhaul Rangers by a ball stopping in the mud and by the strange decision of the referee not to award a glaring penalty kick to the home side.

Pieces of good fortune are part of the fabric of the game and this highlighting of them should not be interpreted as a claim that Rangers did not deserve to advance. They are presented simply as an illustration of how the randomness of chance can have such an enormous influence on important issues.

Murray stressed again yesterday that the team's domestic form would have to improve, although there is a temptation to retort: "or else what?" He removed any deadline from McLeish's reprieve, a ready convenience since the two legs of the next Champions League tie are not due until February and March.

Only the hardest heart would deny that the manager's overall record at Ibrox warrants tolerance at least until the end of his first truly ignominious season. But, in the circumstances, it is difficult not to conclude that it has been extended in this instance for practical, rather than sympathetic, reasons.