Spiers on Sport: everyone can be sacked – even Ally McCoist

Graham Spiers

Tuesday 9 October 2012

For sentimental reasons, it is hard to envisage Rangers giving Ally McCoist the sack. Why this should be, I do not know, because it happens all the time in football.

Scores of ‘favourite sons’ have been binned down the years, from Billy McNeill at Celtic, to Willie Miller at Aberdeen, to Paul Sturrock at Dundee United. Even the god-like Jock Wallace was previously turfed out of Rangers.

In football, having a ‘legendary status’ brings lots of perks, but job-security cannot be quoted among them. McCoist is the ultimate Rangers legend. He is adored by the club’s support, is Rangers’ all-time leading goalscorer, and has been a sheet-anchor off the field in this summer of Ibrox upheaval. The question is, is he any good as a manager? Right now the brute facts cannot make that an affirmative, which is why there is fresh talk of the 50-year-old facing a possible dismissal. In the here and now, it wasn’t just Saturday’s excruciating 1-0 defeat to Stirling Albion in the Irn-Bru third division which triggered this McCoist debate. That setback was only the latest in a string of poor results, on top of a lot of lumpen, unconvincing football played by Rangers this season. It has led many Ibrox fans, notwithstanding their lifelong admiration for McCoist, to believe he may have to be removed. One thing is for certain: Charles Green’s unequivocal statement that there is “no chance” of McCoist being sacked is a piece of fiction. Every manager is disposable. And if there is one man in Scotland who appears to care not a whit for sentiment, that man is Green. The problem for the Rangers chief executive and would-be saviour is more complex. Green needs to work out to what degree he still needs McCoist, if he is to be successful in his plan to make money from his Rangers intervention. At one point in the summer, Green was facing a mass Rangers fans’ revolt before McCoist spoke up on his behalf. “Ally has spoken – now we can go and buy our season-tickets,” was the gist of the fans’ response to McCoist speaking in positive terms about Green’s presence at the club. It is impossible to overstate what McCoist did for Green that day in July. Green would currently be facing a financial shortfall without that key statement by McCoist – so the Rangers manager to a degree has already saved his skin. On the other hand, what Green and his gang of investors cannot tolerate is a floundering Rangers in the third division – and certainly not a club which, as hard as it might be to believe, might not even gain promotion come the end of the season. So Green’s attitude to McCoist contains both gratitude and judgment. The Yorkshireman, contrary to there being “no chance” of it, will certainly sack his manager if his business plan for Rangers is put in any peril on the park. But Green, if it did ever happen, would face a further problem – whom to line up as McCoist’s replacement? For me, this businessman still does not know Rangers and Scottish football well enough to make such a shrewd judgment. Many Rangers fans would be concerned, not just at losing the knowledge McCoist brings to Ibrox, but also by the fragile impasse in which the club would be left in Green’s hands. There is absurd talk among some supporters of a Walter Smith comeback – it would represent the 64 year old’s third tour of duty at Rangers. You never say never, but presumably a three-year challenge to restore Rangers, from the mire of the third division back to the SPL, is not one that would enamour Smith. For a man who has been there and seen it all, and with money to burn in his retirement, I can think of more enjoyable things to do with your life. McCoist needs to turn his fate around, and sharpish. If not, he will be sacked, with Charles Green not giving it a second thought.

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Spiers on Sport: everyone can be sacked – even Ally McCoist

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