One morning in February 1998 I woke up in my hotel room to receive an urgent message…I was to phone David Murray, then the chairman of Rangers, as soon as possible.

I duly put the call through. "Don't go to Holland yet," Murray urged me. "Leave Dick Advocaat alone for the moment."

"But I'm here already, David, I'm calling you from Eindhoven," I told him. "I'm meeting Dick at lunchtime today."

With Walter Smith leaving Rangers that summer, there was great excitement back then at the club attempting to lure the former manager of Holland to Ibrox. Excitement which I thought was perfectly justified.

Advocaat was dynamic, passionate and, early in his coaching career, had been personally chosen as his assistant by the great Rinus Michels, the Dutch national team manager.

Not only that, but between 1996 and 1998 he had wrested the power of Dutch club football away from Ajax - the 1996 European champions - back in favour of PSV, by winning the Dutch Cup in 1996 and then the Eredivisie title in 1997.

There was something compelling and engaging about Advocaat. In the infamous 'Do I Not Like That' Graham Taylor video farce of the 1990s, on that momentous night in Rotterdam when Taylor and England were put to the sword by Holland, it is Advocaat who is standing in the Dutch dugout, orchestrating his players. The Little General was a man of substance.

What a coup this would be for Rangers, I thought, as I made my way out to Eindhoven to see Advocaat. I'd arranged to meet him at the PSV training camp on the outskirts of the city, and he duly appeared, track-suited and with a ball under his arm, and gave me that soon-to-be-familiar stare.

"Can you wait a couple of hours? I've got a training session to do," he said.

"That's fine, Dick, I'll wait," I replied, and then spent the morning watching this little Mussolini figure barking at his players and putting them through various drills.

Having restored and glorified PSV in the mid-1990s, it was a bold move by Advocaat to come to Rangers. And for two-plus years it was memorable, with Rangers at times playing a brilliant brand of football under the Dutchman; arguably the best football seen at Ibrox in decades.

A treble came, then a double, and the night of September 20, 2000 in the Stade Louis II in Monte Carlo summed Advocaat up at that time. Monaco were the impressive French champions, with Marco Simone among others in their ranks.

But Advocaat plotted and plotted for that game, played Tugay as a sweeper, and won 1-0 over there. I remember him punching his fist at the travelling Rangers fans in delight as he bowed out of the arena.

On another occasion Advocaat took Rangers to face Bayern Munich, and three times smashed the Bayern woodwork, before the tragedy of Michael Mols' injury arrived and Advocaat's team went down 1-0.

Sir Alex Ferguson travelled to watch that game in November 1999 and later described it as one of the bravest performances he had ever seen by a British team in Germany. Ottmar Hitzfeld, then the Bayern coach, said his team had been "very lucky" to win and heaped praise on Advocaat and his players.

Before the rot set in, this was a thrilling period for Rangers. Advocaat was a thoughtful, disciplined, innovative coach who instilled belief and ideas in his players.

Of course, financial carnage would follow at Ibrox, and that cannot be divorced from this Advocaat/Murray period. But the intention here is to focus purely on Advocaat the coach.

My one reservation about him - and this may be relevant today to Sunderland - is that Advocaat didn't handle adversity very well. It proved his undoing.

In season 2000-01 his Rangers team beat Monaco away, and mauled Sturm Graz at Ibrox, to get off to a flier in that season's Champions League. It seemed inconceivable - next to impossible - that Rangers would not advance from their Group D to the knock-out phase.

But they did just that: after stumbles away to Graz, followed by a memorable, calamitous night in Istanbul against Galatasaray, Rangers somehow failed to advance. Angrily, Advocaat called his players "fat heads" - using the Dutch phrase for "big heads" and literally translating it into English - and the wheels duly came off.

He was finished at Rangers within a year. Martin O'Neill arrived at Celtic, the Glasgow power-base shifted, and Advocaat would take his Rangers leave. By the time he unveiled Alex McLeish as his successor in 2001 Advocaat said he felt burned-out after three intense years.

He always loved Rangers, and the Rangers support. It was something of a cruel irony, seven years later, that it would be Advocaat who would lead Zenit St Petersburg to Uefa Cup success over Rangers in Manchester in 2008.

I don't mean he would be in any way dismayed - it was another fine triumph for Advocaat. But that night, with a huge Rangers throng in the stadium, and a small section of Zenit fans in their midst, there was no doubting, had he been able to play God, which way Advocaat would have designed that night in his own ideal world.

He was and is a funny, quirky, pretty shy man behind the scenes. I noted a Dutch journalist said on Monday evening: "In private Dick is a very nice man with a very good sense of humour."

That is exactly how I found him. I used to laugh at his public, mad-martinet image, because the private Advocaat was nothing like that. He could be extremely likeable.

But now he is 67. His best years, surely, are behind him. He has done some remarkable tours: twice as PSV and Holland manager, and also with South Korea, Belgium, Russia and Serbia. It is long forgotten now, but Advocaat even did a short, ill-fated stint with United Arab Emirates. His CV is extraordinary.

"One day I will manage in English football," he told me in Germany in 2006. I must admit, I thought that chance had gone, until this week's amazing opportunity for Advocaat on Wearside.

Can he do it all again? Has he still got the fire? We'll soon see.