Where do Ugo when the money runs out?

“we go where Ugo” … “Everywhere Ugo …”, “Ugo your way, I’ll go mine” … “Ugo on top, I’ll just lie here” - HEY - we could do the puns all nite,as long as it’s noh the big man’s Surname we’re using. Ehiogu, I’ll admit, is a bit beyond even a genius wordsmith like myself - well, when I’m writing in English anyway.

So, until I have that bolt-of-lighting conversion enjoyed by Beckett, as he realised French was the language to be using - even for his plays which featured no dialogue - I’ll just stick to the native tongue and say, “Hoh! BIg MAN! Gonnae sign for us til the end oh the season. Gonnae. Please.”.

It is of course a many-sided, multi-headed indictment of several key facets of contemporary Beardom, modern Rangers-supporting, Tedness in our time, to be thinking “Aye - he’ll do a job” of a 34 year-old centre hawf who couldnae get a game for Leeds United. That’s the Leeds United who’ll be playing in next season’s Coca Cola League One - not the Leeds United who won two Fairs Cups and lost one Fairs Cup final, lost one European Cup-Winners’ Cup final and one European Champions cup final as well as winning the FA cup and League Cup once each and finishing champions of England twice, all in an eight year period between 1967 and 1975. No, this is more like the Leeds United who were relegated from the English top flight in 1982 and didnae get back up for another seven years.

This is NOT like the Leeds United who won the last pre-Premiership English title in 1992 or the Leeds United which reached the Champions League semis in 2001. No, we’re currently completing the signing of Ugo Ehiogu, given a free transfer by Middlesborough, after completing a six-game, one-goal loan stint at the Leeds United which has seen its crowds more than half and its spending power vanish and its managers and chairmans change and its players get alarmingly older or younger until it is both DOOMED TO SPEND A FEW YEARS IN THE FOOTBALLING HINTERLANDS (take note) and FINACIALLY SOLVENT (take an even better note - an NB note - this is what we wanted was it not??!!).

When Leeds were coming out of the old second Divsion in the late eighties and heading towards a championship under Howard Wilkinson, with his McAllister-Strachan axis, they didn’t QUITE have the spending power of a certain club North of the Border.

In the winter of 1992, Leeds were unfortunate enough to draw Rangers, champions of Scotland, in the last qualifying round for the first ever offical Uefa Champions League Groups stages. Leeds also had Eric Cantona in their team back then - but they lost at Ibrox and they lost at Elland Road in the return leg. Because Rangers had Andy Goram, Mark Hateley, Richard Gough, Ally McCoist, Ian Durrant, Trevor Steven and any other number of players who’ll be turning out in John Lambie’s testimonial at Firhill tonight). In short, in 1992/93, Rangers, managed by Walter Smith, had the kind of team even the champions of England couldn’t afford … and couldn’t compete with.

When Walter Smith first arrived at Rangers, as Sooooonesss’ assistant, he was involved in bringing the likes of Terry Buitcher, Chris Woods and Graham Roberts to the club. In modern, contemporaneous-ish terms, this would be like us signing John Terry, Petr Cech and - mmm - maybe Jamie Carragher. By the time Smith was gaffer we had a squad which did indeed get as close to the Champions League final as Jose Mourinho or Claudio Ranieri ever managed with the Stamford Bridge billions of Abramovich.

But the English teams had already been allowed back into Europe by 1992 - Man U had won the Cup Winners’-Cup in 1991 and the Sky-bankrolled Premiership had begun. The reversal of the trend we so historically set had begun. There would be a long, long way to go before anyone at Ibrox had to worry about such realities. The whole English top flight had Rupert Murdoch’s Sky, Germany’s Bundesliga had Leo Kirch’s Premiere, Serie A had Raiuno, France’s Ligue 1 had Canal+, and Spain - well, Spain probably had some other big mogul with an all-conquering satellite TV station at his disposal - but we, at Ibrox, had David Murray … all to ourselves. We continued to throw money at it when Walter left. In fact we got rid of Walter so we could throw MORE money at it, with the Champions League TV rights some sort of passing idea of funding the spree from any source other than Murray International Metals’ owner’s pockets.

It was brilliant, it was exciting -

It’s over.

The team which finishes bottom of the English Premiership next season will receive 30M just for having been there and then another 14M as a parachute payment to ease their transition back to life in the world’s fifth richest league, the Coca Cola Championship. In Scotland, all the SPL clubs will have 55M or thereabouts, to SHARE between ALL OF US over the next FOUR YEARS! Murray spent a lot, was hassled a lot, paid off a lot and has now had his lot - he’s offski. English clubs are not only very much “back” in European football but they’re dominating it with their Spansih cohorts. Last season both European finals were Anglo-Spanish affairs - this season, three English teams have qualified from the group stages of the UEFA cup and FOUR from the Champions League groups.

Considering the size of our nation, to have one Scottish team reamaining at the same stage of each of these competitions this season is highly commendable. And we should hope Celtic’s greater spending power as a result of their repeating our watershed UCL moment of last season does not lead to ST-ST-STrachan doing a ST-ST-STein - ie wins Nine-in-a-row and lifts European Cup in the second of these title-winning seasons. But, miracles and nightmares aside, the finacially phenomenal phase of Scottish Football ,as led by Rangers in 1986, has come to a long windy end.

We made one last VERY BRILLIANT attempt to address this problem when we signed Paul le Guen. If you have to make a silk purse oot a pig’s ear then ye get in an autocratic genius and advocate of “the unit” . We did. Le Guen was the very best available. We had him. We lost him. We probably blew it and the manner of his going means Le Guen will be the last true Guru to come to Ibrox in the forseeable. This means we’ve closed the last remaining door to the dream of domestic dominance AND regular European glory. Now - BANG! - we’re facing the reality of life trying to get back into the Champions League qualifiers simply by battering our way through the SPL.

Walter Smith is heavily criticised by some Everton fans and, though you’d struggle to hear any of them admit it now, a lot of Rangers fans sitting damnably close to me during the Nine-In-A-Row Years for simply being a cheque book manager and not a very good one at that. We bought a lot - we bought too much - we didnae make an impact in Europe more than once. This is the accusation (for an example see http://everton.rivals.net/default.asp?sID=887&stID=8135852&p=2 ) * which he began refuting and disproving during his short spell as Scotland manager. Now, more than ever, he has a chance to show that he can take the coaching skills he developed so well at Dundee United a quarter of a century ago and combine them with his knowledge of how the transfer market works as well as his scouting instinct and start making Rangers, if not a silk purse, a kind of waterproof Adidas holdall: A respected brand, in a format able to do the basic job.

Rumours that Walter was last seen being huckled away by polis from a beach in Devon are unfounded. The stricken tanker may be called the Napoli but there was as much chance of Rangers spiralling as financially out of control as once-great, spendaholics like Leeds or Napoli as there was of finding a few of Diego Armando’s illegitimate midfield geniuses playing keepie-uppy amid the floatsom and jetsom on the Jurassic coast. Nevertheless, the Murray Park belt is so tight that just remaining second in the SPL this season will require some kind of scaveging act by Waldo. Affording the kind of side which can knock Celtic off the top AND thrive in Europe will require managerial skill sets which involve a getaway car, a driver who can work radio and a scanner and obtaining a set of architectural plans which allow you to trip off the alarm the night before you walk in the front door wearing a balaclava and touting a sub-machine gun.

We used to but current England captains. Now we buy guys who won 4 caps for Blighty back in the day. Ugo Ehiogu was sold from Aston Villa to Middlesborough for 8m in the year 2000. We’re currently hoping we can maybe grab one quarter of that for the sale of Jeremy Clement back to Lyon or Paris Saint Germain. 8M seems like a fortune now - but, one year after Ehiogu’s move to Boro, we paid 12Million to Chelsea for Tore Andre Flo.

Flo scored on his Gers debut, against a Celtic side which had Alan Thompson sent off. Guess who Flo AND Thompson both scored for on Saturday, both on their competitive debut …

Give you a clue - they play at Elland Road.
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*if you’ve started surfing anyway, you could do worse than sticking this in your browser and smoking it;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHV5-Advmf0

absolutely hilarious: Irish footie casuals - Bohemians and Shamrock Rovers - go at it and, not that I’m one to condone stereotyping, especially of our Erin friends, the fact two Irish crews are chucking GUINNES KEGS at each other is as charming as it is side-splitting. Damned good scrap actually. Cheers to BlueBhoy for the recommendation (he’s the one in the cream sweater repeatedly chucking that keg at the bloke by the pub door, by the way!:-))

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Published:
01.23.07 / 10pm
Category:
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