The Rangers manager handles the press with a quiet certainty. He does not expect to be woken by a blaring, negative headline. The major topic of the day was the lack of money at the club. Smith, who has always accepted this reality, paused for a moment’s reflection before venturing that he would like to create the circumstances that would allow him a “wee bit of room for manoeuvre in the central defensive positions”.
Smith is almost naturally averse to speaking intemperately in public. For him, this was a dramatic statement. In tabloid speak, it translates as: Smith pleads for centre-half. He did not get one. The transfer window approaches. Smith will press his nose against it, salivate at the view and for the third time will not spend any money. There is, indeed, the possibility that he could lose Madjid Bougherra, the only viable centre-half he has. It is that bad at Rangers.
The pertinent question, particularly in the aftermath of the 4-1 defeat to Unirea Urziceni, is not whether Walter Smith will walk away from Rangers. It is this: why should he stay at Rangers?
Smith is an independently wealthy man with a family life that is stable and enjoyable. For someone at the leading age of football, he is mercifully free of ego. He does not need the Rangers job. Increasingly, it is beginning to hurt him.
He sat and fielded the inevitable questions about a devastating defeat in the soulless media room in the guts of Ibrox on Tuesday night. The hurt was visible. Smith admitted he would reflect on the rout to the Romanians. It was a painful prospect but Smith accepts that brutal introspection is part of the process after watching a side prepared by him slide to failure.
But his reflections are not going to be fruitful in the long run. Rangers are not good enough. Smith knows this. He has for some time. Rangers have to be rebuilt, but there is no money. The ghost of Everton sits on Smith’s shoulder. He kept the Merseyside team in the English Premier League as the fixtures and fittings were sold about him. The Ibrox story is carrying disturbing, Scouse echoes.
There is one oft-told story about Smith’s last days at Everton when players were being sold with an alacrity that suggested they were carrying a life-threatening virus. Walter returns home and is greeted by Ethel who says: “You did not tell me you were selling Duncan Ferguson.”
“That is because I did not know I was selling Duncan Ferguson,” replied the Everton manager.
The situation in Liverpool was a grave disappointment to him as he felt assurances were not honoured. Smith knew the lay of the land at Ibrox when he replaced Paul Le Guen but no one could have grasped the size of the financial problems that have paralysed Rangers in the transfer market.
Smith immediately took Rangers to the brink of a title and into the final of the UEFA Cup. Rangers won the Clydesdale Bank Premier League last season with the man at the helm being one of the most surprised men in Scotland at the ultimate destination of the title.
But these remarkable successes can not disguise a slide in standards. Rangers on Tuesday night played in a Champions League tie with a player in his 40th year and a reconstituted centre-forward at the heart of their defence. And what was the crisis that precipitated this state of affairs? Had the dressing-room been struck by the bubonic plague, forcing Smith to grasp at desperate options? No, Madjid Bougherra was injured.
The situation that was discussed on that sunny day at Murray Park duly came to pass on a chilly evening at Ibrox Park. Smith had no room for manoeuvre at centre-half. It was not pretty to watch. It was not just the performance that disturbed Smith but his inability to create the circumstances where it can be consigned to the past. He cannot buy his way out of the situation. He can not select his way out of it, either. David Weir must be dropped? Lee McCulloch must not play at centre-half? So who would you have? Danny Wilson? Kirk Broadfoot, when he finally comes back from injury?
There are also complaints about Smith’s insistence on playing with one forward in front of a five-man midfield. Respected voices, including Dan Petrescu, the coach of Unirea, expressed surprise at a Rangers line-up on Tuesday that had only Kenny Miller as a dedicated striker.
But would Rangers have prospered if they sacrificed a man in midfield to a competent Romanian side? The paucity of resources at Rangers’ disposal dictates that in European competition they seek to frustrate their opponents, grab a goal and hope a mixture of discipline, hard work and good fortune gives them victory.
One may scoff at this strategy but it is what confounded Fiorentina, Werder Bremen and Sporting Lisbon in the UEFA Cup campaign.
Smith cannot (his detractors will say, will not) embrace an attacking formation. But does anybody believe that Rangers would be sitting pretty in the group if Smith had picked, say, Kris Boyd on Tuesday night? If they do, they might reflect that a team they derided as too defensive lost four goals. Boyd may have many attributes, but helping out in defence is not one of them. Further, when Rangers adopted a 4-4-2 system, they lost three goals.
So if the situation is so bleak, why does Smith not walk? He has been tempted. But those who surround him at Ibrox have been supportive in times of crisis. They remind him that he is the best man for the job. They know that this is a coach who took a Rangers team that was losing three goals to Dunfermline under Le Guen and transformed it into a side that reached a European final.
Smith talked enthusiastically this week about how he enjoyed the European challenge. But nights like Tuesday devastate him. He is unlikely, however, to walk away now. He would view this as leaving Rangers in the lurch. This is not the result of an inflated view of his abilities, rather he grasps that the situation at Ibrox is not one where a new manager can prosper. Honestly, whether one is an advocate of Smith or a severe critic, can one imagine anyone else who would have led Rangers to the title last season?
If Smith decides to spend more time with his money, who would manage Rangers? The likeliest option is Alistair McCoist in conjunction with Kenny McDowell and Ian Durrant. Smith has stayed on at the club partly to groom McCoist as his successor. But, haunted by the Everton experience and infused with decades of knowledge of handling players, Smith knows that this is not the ideal time to be Rangers manager.
McCoist’s managerial career could be dead in the water if he takes over Rangers and oversees a decline in the face of financial constraints. Smith wants to avoid this eventuality for both Rangers and McCoist.
But, increasingly, it is becoming more difficult for him to remain in the post. His contract runs out imminently and the prospects for improvement in the playing squad are slim. Smith will soldier on, but his appetite for battle is not limitless.
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