Glenn Gibbons: Rangers hark back to ‘halcyon days’

VIEWED in the appropriate context, Rangers’ frequently embarrassing performances among the lower orders this season are no more discreditable than those of their predecessors during the so-called halcyon days of the nine-in-a-row 1990s.

Then, as now, it was a matter of fashioning a team to accomplish a specific mission. And, despite the nostalgia-tinged reminiscences which continue to convince mature Rangers fans that the last decade of the 20th century brought an irrecoverable golden age, it is also an unarguable truth that deep disappointments, accompanied by tempestuous rages in the stands, were as common as they are today.

The most obvious difference between the club’s present objective and that of 15-20 years ago, of course, is that the players engaged for the latter were charged not only with competing credibly in the Champions League, but actually winning the most prestigious – and coveted – title in the game.

But, if there is a mountain-to-molehill element about the heights to be scaled in the different eras, it should be recognised that there is a commensurate disparity in the general standard of personnel recruited for the respective tasks. It is, for example, certainly more by design than by accident that, in recent months, a raft of highly-paid internationals has been encouraged to drift off, to be replaced by more affordable, but palpably less formidable deputies. These are obviously considered capable of moving off the bottom rung of the ladder.

Given the opportunity to select two players who would personify Rangers’ lofty ambition in the Nineties, few people would look beyond Paul Gascoigne and Brian Laudrup. Unquestionably extraordinary, the English midfielder and the Danish winger, it is surely reasonable to suggest, are held by the majority of Rangers fans to be the two most gifted foreign players ever to have invaded Scottish football.

Gascoigne and Laudrup were, equally without question, expensively acquired for the sharply-defined purpose of bringing success in Europe. They would certainly not be required to maintain domestic dominion at a time when resistance was low, their principal rivals, Celtic, lurching 
towards, and eventually away from, bankruptcy.

Yet an examination of their ‘contribution’ in the area for which they were hired shows figures that are almost breathtakingly unimpressive. During Laudrup’s four years from 1994, Rangers twice failed even to reach the group stage of the Champions League, losing home and away to AEK Athens in his first season and on a 4-1 aggregate to Gothenburg (0-3 and 1-1) in his last.

On each of the two occasions on which they qualified, they finished bottom of their section, with one victory and five defeats in 96-97 and no wins and three draws the year before. Between the unsuccessful Gothenburg and AEK qualifiers and the group campaigns, the 16 matches yielded one win, four draws and 11 defeats.

Ironically, neither Laudrup nor Gascoigne played in the solitary, 2-1 home win over Grasshoppers of Zurich. Gascoigne, who joined a year after Laudrup, missed the two defeats by AEK, but was around during the other 14 games, although there were several in which he, like the Dane, took no part.

The European adventures misfired so badly that they brought about the removal of manager Walter Smith, whose impending departure was made public early in the 97-98 season, following the latest elimination from the qualifiers by Gothenburg. By then, Smith had few champions left among the supporters; it will be something of a concern to Ally McCoist in the present climate that his previous, seemingly immovable backing, appears to be wobbling dangerously close to collapse.