Rangers administration: Craig Levein steers a tight ship

CRAIG Levein has looked on from afar as the financial implosion at Rangers engulfed Scottish football and dominated the news agenda. The Scotland manager has been reluctant to speak on the subject in public, reasoning that he does not know enough about the complicated saga.

Levein can, however, reflect on his own experience of working at clubs in straitened circumstances. It was a hand-to-mouth existence at Cowdenbeath, where he started his managerial career in 1997, but then that is the way it had to be.

He was appointed by current Livingston owner Gordon McDougall, who deserves credit for not only setting a future Scotland manager on his way, but for also running a tight ship. The players were given only what the club could afford. If Levein wanted money to buy players, then he had to go out into the street and earn it via such mundane tasks as selling lottery tickets.

“To be fair to Gordon, he knows how to run a football club,” said Levein. “He is an example to a lot of people in that he won’t put himself in a position where he is busting the bank in the vain pursuit of something that is not achievable.

“He would say, ‘I don’t know how many people are going to be coming through the turnstile but I do know how much money I am getting from the SFL and SFA so just take that and divide it by how many players we have got, the numbers of weeks in the season and there you are – £15. That is what you get’.”

It is a world away from dealing with players who earn tens of thousands of pounds a week, as Levein does now. But Levein has long had an interest which extends beyond the coaching cones. At Dundee United, as chairman Eddie Thompson began to make preparations for after his death, Levein was named director of football and given remit to offer input on football finance.

Thompson even made a reference to Levein’s attractive ability to buy good players for “peanuts”. It was something he learned at Central Park, since there was no alternative.

“We got a couple of boys from the East of Scotland [league] for £500 or a set of strips,” he recalled. “The difficulty early on was getting good enough players. £15 a week is not life-changing stuff. We had a situation where Gordon said ‘that is all I can afford’. I said: ‘if I bring in some more [money] can I use it to improve the team?’. He said: ‘100 per cent yes’. So I went round selling shirt sponsor raffles and all that and got some better players. It teaches you… You can’t afford to make a mistake with your signings if the money is not there.”

Indeed, Levein has endured financial constraints throughout his managerial career, establishing himself as a stoic figure at both Hearts and Leicester City. At the latter club he was handed the task of making cut-backs almost as soon as he walked in the door, while at Tynecastle, on the day of his arrival, he said that he “understood the financial position here, and so you won’t see me at any point complaining about not having any money to buy players, or banging on the chief executive’s door”.

Even with Scotland, he has learned there are limits. “We wanted to play Poland in August but it was going to cost a hell of a lot of money,” he revealed. “There is always a balance between how much you spend and what value you are getting for that. That has been with me since I started at Cowdenbeath.”