WHILE legendary former Rangers manager Jock Wallace was in charge of Leicester City, he once pinned Gary Lineker to the wall at half-time in a reserve game, despite his side being two goals up. Both of the goals, incidentally, were scored by Lineker.
Such was the fear that Wallace struck into his players, that Lineker once played a match despite feeling ill because he was too scared to tell his manager that he didn’t feel up to playing. He was later diagnosed with acute tonsillitis.
Wallace, though, was very much of his time. The way that he ensured both respect and obedience from his players would not be tolerated in today’s society, never mind in modern football.
But can you imagine a Rangers player publicly rebuking a manager such as him, who delivered two trebles to Ibrox, in front of the other players in the dressing room after a defeat? Their rear-end would have cleared Edmiston Drive beforeit touched the pavement.
Graeme Souness, Walter Smith and Dick Advocaat were less extreme, but cut from a similar cloth in terms of players knowing exactly where they stood with them.
It was their way, or the high way. But why should the likes of, Paul Le Guen, Pedro Caixinha or Graeme Murty be treated any differently? Simply, it is because they were all easy targets.
True, respect must be earned, but shouldn’t the very office of Rangers manager automatically demand respect from footballers? It often surprises me how players seem so certain that they know better than their manager, and how some fans readily accept the wisdom of that assertion.
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For some, Murty is far too inexperienced to know what he is doing – despite a lengthy playing career – due to the fact he has only been a youth coach, while Kenny Miller is qualified to offer his opinion on what his boss should be doing simply by having had, well, a lengthy playing career.
There is a huge difference between having an opinion and disrespecting the man in charge, and if events played out in the Rangers dressing room at Hampden on Sunday are as have been reported, then I fail to see what choice the club had but to deal with those responsible in the strictest of fashion.
I have heard a defence of Miller and Lee Wallace offered that their alleged outburst at their manager came from a place of genuine hurt and from simply wanting what is best for the club. That may be true. But if, as a source from within the club revealed to Herald Sport in yesterday’s paper suggested, the incident on Sunday was the final straw in a pattern of disruptive behaviour from the pair, then it brings into question their motives.
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Murty, of course, should never have been in this situation, and the Rangers board must shoulder the full responsibility for failing to get a proper manager in place when they dispensed with Caixinha. But who benefits from any whispering campaign against the manager from senior players which slowly undermines his authority from within?
Such a cancer certainly doesn’t help the club, and it most definitely doesn’t help to build a team unit that will fight tooth and nail for the cause. Rather, it fosters the sort of gutless performance that the Rangers players delivered on Sunday. So, is it the players who are to blame for that, or the man in the dugout?
Of course, both should shoulder the responsibility, but amid all the talk about player power, perhaps there should be some more emphasis placed on player responsibility. They might not have been playing for Murty, but it seems as though the vast majority of them forgot they were playing for Rangers.
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The Rangers fans unfurled a banner over the gates of the Auchenhowie training centre on Monday that read ‘We Deserve Better’.
No group of fans deserve success, no matter how many turn up week-in, week-out, but what they do deserve is whole-hearted commitment from each player who pulls on the jersey and picks up a wage that the majority of supporters can only fantasise about.
How many Rangers players who took part in the farcical display against Celtic could have faced themselves in the mirror on Monday morning and said that they gave of their best?
For too many, it seems, their dislike of Murty and his methods trumped their professional obligation to the club and its supporters.
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