Glenn Gibbons: Bougherra's mysterious tale doesn't ring true

Published on Friday 23 October 2009 23:15

WALTER Smith's sequence of waking nightmares – culminating in the meeting with Unirea that would equate to an encounter with Norman Bates – would begin when he awoke last weekend to the headlines that proclaimed the latest questionable behaviour by Madjid Bougherra.

The Rangers manager would not be shocked by the reporting of the Algerian defender's excessively late return from international duty – he already knew about that – but he would be jolted to the point of slipping a disc by the accompanying claim that, although his first instinct would be to punish the player by leaving him out of the looming Champions League tie, he simply could not afford to take the risk.

This is not the kind of detail the manager of a big club wishes to see in print. Any failure to discipline Bougherra betrays not only his own powerlessness through a lack of resources, but, much worse, offers a licence to any Rangers first-team regular with a taste for violating curfews.

As if on cue and to the astonishment of no-one who had spotted the potential danger for Smith, the very next day's papers were full of tales of Bougherra's travails on his way home from a match against Rwanda and of his innocence of any charge of defying Smith's orders.

He was given a resounding not guilty verdict by the manager on the back of a narrative of which the Nazis' master propagandist, old Joe Goebbels himself, would have been proud. Not persuasive, mind you, but certainly proud.

To summarise, Bougherra claimed to have been mobbed by adoring Algerian fans as he walked through Paris and, in the course of this demonstration of affection, he was relieved of a bag containing every essential, including passport and mobile phone. This, apparently, necessitated a trip to the Algerian embassy, there to be issued with emergency documentation that would allow him to cross borders.

The first question to arise concerns the loss of his phone. As Jane Austen herself might have observed, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a professional footballer does not keep his mobile in a bag, but in his ear.

But the most puzzling aspect of this marvellous tale of mystery and imagination is that Bougherra somehow managed to contact his agent, who passed on a rough outline of his client's misfortune to Ally McCoist, but was unable actually to reach the club himself. Not even from the Algerian embassy, which will almost certainly boast at least one phone. There was also the curious contradiction of Bougherra's agent claiming that he was robbed on Monday night, but the player himself insisting it happened on Thursday. But that's obviously mere detail.

Smith's readiness to acquit Bougherra and play him against the Romanian champions carried undertones of his actions at the end of last season, when Kyle Lafferty was embarrassingly inept at the play-acting which resulted in the ordering-off of the Aberdeen full-back, Charlie Mulgrew.

The Ibrox manager made a deliberate statement of condemnation of Lafferty's scandalous conduct, for which his "integrity" was highly praised in some quarters of the media. His disapproval, however, did not extend to suspending the player for the last match of the season, against Dundee United at Tannadice. There was, after all, a league title at stake.

This lack of disciplinary action compared unfavourably with that of his great rival, Gordon Strachan, last season. The Celtic manager's two-week suspension of Aiden McGeady included an Old Firm match at Ibrox that was considered at the time to be utterly crucial to the outcome of the championship.

Even at the possible expense of a defeat, Smith, in these trying circumstances, would take fewer liberties with his self-respect were he to follow the example of his old friend, Sir Alex Ferguson. The Manchester United manager is as renowned for clamping down on errant "superstars" – remember David Beckham, Jaap Stam, Ruud van Nistelrooy, and many others? – as he is for winning trophies.

The Bougherra episode and its potential for embarrassing Smith, of course, were submerged in the horror of Unirea, the defender, ironically, having missed the bloodbath because of injury. For both men, watching it was probably punishment enough.