How many of Advocaat's signing were a complete success?

Their train of thought was that, excluding the Mowbray season, all our title wins have been won on the last day.
This tells me a slightly different story.
That Rangers beat decent scumtic teams to our championship wins whilst the scum beat weak Rangers teams.
 
Its not tripe though, we had two good years under Advoccat and then were financially stricken for about a decade thereafter. A club like ours needs a business plan, you buy young, develop them then sell for profit. Van Bronckhorst was a great example of this, that Tamudo who we missed out on would have been another example. Players like Konterman, Kanchelskis, Hendry, Flo and Ball were terrible for the fees and wages being paid too them. Prodan didn't even kick a ball.
We didn't have that plan under McLeish or Smith.
McLeish won five out of six trophies with, basically, Advocaat’s signings.
However, you’ve done well to move the goalposts and not answer my question though.
 
I have to say, it really does bug me that they've had a sustained period of dominance. I know most of it is down to circumstance over the last 7 years, but they've won 14 of the last 19 titles.
That needs to stop now.
With O'Neill's 3 you could counter with Advocaat's 2 before and McLeish's 2.
With Strachan's 3 you had Walter's 3. But tailing 8IAR onto them and them having 14 out of 19/21 sticks in my throat.
They need put back in their place pronto. I truly hope that SG is the man to do that, and do it this season.
You’ve shown why your own point is irrelevant right there.
 
We didn't have that plan under McLeish or Smith.
McLeish won five out of six trophies with, basically, Advocaat’s signings.
However, you’ve done well to move the goalposts and not answer my question though.

Ok dude I was exaggerating a bit, you don't have to make a profit on all players. The point I was trying to make was the likes of Numan and De Boer, fantastic players but the fact they got nothing back on them means they can't be considered complete successes. Not their fault obv but the business plan was horrendous.
 
Kanchelskis is often labelled a failure in his time at Rangers, mainly because folk expected him to be the same player as he was with Man U. However the reality was he was never going to have that freedom of role under Advocatt, who employed him in a rigid 4-4-2 system. Anytime he played he was an integral cog in the Dutchman's system.

I agree.

Still wasn't worth £5.5m. We should / could have got someone for half that money to do the same job.

I did a similar thing to the OP a few years back and I reckon that I thought about a 1/3rd of Advocaats signings were both good and value for money.

Kanchelskis isn't in that category. He only fits one of them.

Flo is similar in that sense. He wasn't a bad player at all. Just wasn't worth that fee.

One's like Myhre weren't a waste of a transfer fee but weren't good sigings either.

The likes of Christiansen were both a waste of money and rotten too.

Overall, Advocaat's signings were about a 4/10 and his tenure wasn't much better overall. For all the very high highs, he failed in really making us reach the next step in Europe (despite dragging us way up from where Smith had us in that field)

He spent £90m and about six players were both very good and worth their fee. That's a shit show overall to win the SPL twice.
 
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Ok dude I was exaggerating a bit, you don't have to make a profit on all players. The point I was trying to make was the likes of Numan and De Boer, fantastic players but the fact they got nothing back on them means they can't be considered complete successes. Not their fault obv but the business plan was horrendous.

We got nothing back for Laudrup either.

Does that make him a poor signing?
 
Reluctantly give him Moore? Really? He was absolutely immense for us.

The reluctance maybe comes form the fact Dick got rid of him and only ended up with him coming back as Palace couldn't come up with the rest of the money for him when they hit financial troubles.
 
I agree.

Still wasn't worth £5.5m. We should / could have got someone for half that money to do the same job.

I did a similar thing to the OP a few years back and I reckon that I thought about a 1/3rd of Advocaats signings were both good and value for money.

Kanchelskis isn't in that category. He only fits one of them.

Flo is similar in that sense. He wasn't a bad player at all. Just wasn't worth that fee.

One's like Myhre weren't a waste of a transfer fee but weren't good sigings either.

The likes of Christiansen were both a waste of money and rotten too.

Overall, Advocaat's signings were about a 4/10 and his tenure wasn't much better overall. For all the very high highs, he failed in really making us reach the next step in Europe (despite dragging us way up from where Smith had us in that field)

He spent £90 and about six players were both very good and worth their fee. That's a shit show overall to win the SPL twice.

I think it's fair to say the expense we made under Advocaat was intended to reap more than two third place CL group stage finishes.

We played some lovely football and for a brief period looked a match for almost anyone on the continent, but so much of that perception benefited from being contrasted with just how shocking we'd been under Smith.

In simple terms what we achieved under Advocaat was probably about what we should have been achieving under Walter.

For the money he spent Wee Dick really should have taken us to a level above that.
 
The reluctance maybe comes form the fact Dick got rid of him and only ended up with him coming back as Palace couldn't come up with the rest of the money for him when they hit financial troubles.

Moore wanted to go for first team football and because Venables who was his manager at International level was involved with Palace.

Advocaat wanted to keep him.
 
Moore wanted to go for first team football and because Venables who was his manager at International level was involved with Palace.

Advocaat wanted to keep him.

Really? That's news to me. I'd totally forgotten it if it's the case.

Must be subbing him after 20 minutes in a game that had me thinking that he wasn't a fan of him.

Still, he wasn't a wee Dick signing as such. He was someone landed on him for particular reasons. He'd probably have far rather spend £4m on another Konterman than have someone like Moore!
 
Ok dude I was exaggerating a bit, you don't have to make a profit on all players. The point I was trying to make was the likes of Numan and De Boer, fantastic players but the fact they got nothing back on them means they can't be considered complete successes. Not their fault obv but the business plan was horrendous.
I cannot agree that sell on profit can be a deciding point on a player’s success, or otherwise.
Unless that’s what they were signed for, like Boumsong was.
Did we get money for Paul Ritchie?
For example, Gough and Hateley were players we didn’t make a profit on.
To me, if you’re sold on without a medal to your name, you haven’t been a success.
Medals first.
 
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Really? That's news to me. I'd totally forgotten it if it's the case.

Must be subbing him after 20 minutes in a game that had me thinking that he wasn't a fan of him.

Still, he wasn't a wee Dick signing as such. He was someone landed on him for particular reasons. He'd probably have far rather spend £4m on another Konterman than have someone like Moore!

He never ever subbed him after 20 minutes. He subbed him right after he made a mistake for Killie's equaliser midway through the second half.

Was the opening day of the 99/00 season. We scored seconds after the substitution as well
 
He played roughly the same average number of games per season over his time at Rangers as Davie Robertson who is considered a success.
True but we're comparing Advocaat signings rather than left backs.

Without Numan and Robertson's injuries we wouldn't have had Vidmars Parma goal or Clelands header v that Mob so swings and roundabouts.
 
Did people enjoy Lovenkrands? I thought he was horseshit and drove me mad when he used to play for us. He only had pace and poor at everything else imo. He wouldn't be remembered if it wasn't for the cup game Imo.

I'd say that's an impressive amount of successful signings to me.
 
He never ever subbed him after 20 minutes. He subbed him right after he made a mistake for Killie's equaliser midway through the second half.

Was the opening day of the 99/00 season. We scored seconds after the substitution as well

Had more been subbed on in that game and was only playing for 20 minutes or was that someone else who he put on in a match and then took off?

I'm not arguing it wasn't the right thing to do with Moore either but there's players he wouldn't have dared done it with. Don't remember him subbing Bert off after a mistake and he had more than one chance to do that.
 
Klos is a good shout too and a fantastic Advocaat signing. He is certainly up there with our other great goalkeepers that I can recall, Billy Ritchie, Peter McCloy, Chris Woods, Andy Goram, Alan McGregor etc. I think Klos cost £700.000 but he apparently contributed to his transfer fee out of his own pocket from Borussia Dortmund. His contract at Rangers made him one of the highest paid players in Europe at the time. He played about 300 times for us and saved us more times than I can remember like those goalies mentioned.

I only put Rod Wallace ahead of him (and some other great Advocatt signings) in financial outlay terms. Wallace was a Bosman signing so he was a free. I don't think his salary would have been OTT. At the time he wasn't one of our 'box office signings' and some supporters were taken aback when he first signed and saw him as a squad player. However, he was no squad player and played 122 games and scored 56 goals in a couple of seasons for us. His winning goal (the only goal of the game) against Celtic in the 1999 SFA Cup final was sublime and it gave us the 'Treble'. Wallace was our top scorer that season with 27 goals. I think he was also our top scorer the following season too.
Excellent post mate, for me Klos is synonymous with this era and is the first name that comes to mind. But as I say I was 6 when he signed. It's strange that the goalie is who sticks with me... must have had a poster or something!

Also 6/7 year old me also flirted with Killie for a small time, Ally McCoist related and did not last long.
 
True but we're comparing Advocaat signings rather than left backs.

Without Numan and Robertson's injuries we wouldn't have had Vidmars Parma goal or Clelands header v that Mob so swings and roundabouts.

Yeah, I know. It's just that Numan's injuries are always held up against him in a way that other players who had similarly "poor" appearance records aren't that gets to me.

He was fine with the exception of period season where he had a really bad spell of being out for 9 months that really dragged his average down.

It's not like he was some kind of Webster sick note. He averaged 30 games a season for us despite that long lay off.
 
Had more been subbed on in that game and was only playing for 20 minutes or was that someone else who he put on in a match and then took off?

I'm not arguing it wasn't the right thing to do with Moore either but there's players he wouldn't have dared done it with. Don't remember him subbing Bert off after a mistake and he had more than one chance to do that.

He subbed Kanchelskis after about 25 minutes of one game I'm sure. Then there was Ricksen at the Piggery and also Johansson at Fir Park.

Regards Moore, he was his first choice centre half that season. Had he not been injured back end of the previous season when he returned from Palace he'd have displaced Hendry then.
 
Complete successes from that list ?
Numan, Van Bronkhorst, Wallace, McCann, Klos, Mols, Lovenkrands, Ricksen (maybe swayed by recent events)
A lot more were decent signings but either consistency or fee paid to return on the pitch wasn't quite there for me - De Boer, Flo, Kanchelskis, Reyna, Tugay, Moore

I have to disagree with Reyna and De Boer
 
This tells me a slightly different story.
That Rangers beat decent scumtic teams to our championship wins whilst the scum beat weak Rangers teams.
A fair point.

The overall point was that Celtic have remained pretty consistent since 2000, excluding the Mowbray year.

Even pre-2012, that was far from the case for us.
 
Did people enjoy Lovenkrands? I thought he was horseshit and drove me mad when he used to play for us. He only had pace and poor at everything else imo. He wouldn't be remembered if it wasn't for the cup game Imo.

I'd say that's an impressive amount of successful signings to me.
I think the fact that McLeish kept playing him out wide when he was always better through the middle is also a factor. Personally I loved him, one of my favourite players along with big Amo growing up.
 
Advocaat underachieved overall and looking at it in list format doesn't really describe the chaotic feel of it, eg despite paying a fortune for tugay, he was never his first choice, he wanted to sell him from almost the minute he came in. The Christiansen signing was very weird, he had never seen him play, but forked out millions rather than bringing in smarter short term cover. Amato got 5 mins then the boot. Kanchelskis was finished and was a very bad use of the money.
For a Dutch manager he wasn't in to youth development; the signing and improvement of McCann is the one example of what I expected him to do, which was to get some Scottish players and make them better. He definitely also did this with Ferguson but that has to be balanced against the unforgivable sale of gattuso, who everyone in Scotland could see was the perfect DM to build the whole team around.
But we then have the heartbreak of mols, who was the missing link, the top striker we needed to get to the next level in Europe, and had he remained fit, we could have been talking about a very different legacy. But overall, advocaat wasted great swathes of money and holds a large stake in our subsequent downfall IMO.
 
Getting Klos for under £1m is a ridiculous bit of business.

Mad seeing us signing players from top clubs - pipe dream these days.

FWIW I think Flo gets a hard time of it across the board. I know he cost £12m, but his goal return was actually pretty good and didn't we sell him for £8/9m?

Was it O'Neill who paid £5m for Scheidt?
It was reported we received £6.5m for Flo. He wasn’t deemed good enough to play against Celtic. For the money paid he must be considered a dud.
 
Did people enjoy Lovenkrands? I thought he was horseshit and drove me mad when he used to play for us. He only had pace and poor at everything else imo. He wouldn't be remembered if it wasn't for the cup game Imo.

I'd say that's an impressive amount of successful signings to me.
Lovenkrands had a good scoring record against Celtic and turned in some excellent performances on European nights.

Scored a last min Cup Final winner.

Scored the goal that took us out of CL group stages for the only time.

Not sure what you’re not liking
 
Lovenkrands had a good scoring record against Celtic and turned in some excellent performances on European nights.

Scored a last min Cup Final winner.

Scored the goal that took us out of CL group stages for the only time.

Not sure what you’re not liking
Man he used to drive me mental with his awful touch and dribbling and don't start me on his passing lol
 
I think the fact that McLeish kept playing him out wide when he was always better through the middle is also a factor. Personally I loved him, one of my favourite players along with big Amo growing up.
He started out wide. I think he was so bad at most things he needed to be up front or he'd just be a hindrance to the team.
 
For a player to be a complete success then he has to do well then sell him on for profit. Only Van Bronckhorst and Reyna spring to mind.

Don't agree with this at all tbh.

Plenty of players across world football have done amazing for one club then left for nothing or for less than what they paid. Means nothing really.
 
Advocaat underachieved overall and looking at it in list format doesn't really describe the chaotic feel of it, eg despite paying a fortune for tugay, he was never his first choice, he wanted to sell him from almost the minute he came in. The Christiansen signing was very weird, he had never seen him play, but forked out millions rather than bringing in smarter short term cover. Amato got 5 mins then the boot. Kanchelskis was finished and was a very bad use of the money.
For a Dutch manager he wasn't in to youth development; the signing and improvement of McCann is the one example of what I expected him to do, which was to get some Scottish players and make them better. He definitely also did this with Ferguson but that has to be balanced against the unforgivable sale of gattuso, who everyone in Scotland could see was the perfect DM to build the whole team around.
But we then have the heartbreak of mols, who was the missing link, the top striker we needed to get to the next level in Europe, and had he remained fit, we could have been talking about a very different legacy. But overall, advocaat wasted great swathes of money and holds a large stake in our subsequent downfall IMO.

If it wasn’t for DA we’d still be training on public parks and driving multi million pound players round Glasgow in a minibus.

The players he bought largely won McLeish’s treble in 2003.

For sure, we overspent under DA but any manager will keep spending if the board allow it.

SDM’s mantra was clearly he who spends more wins regardless of value for money or quality.

At the time, we would have been needing to go deep in the CL every season to break even financially and that was never going to happen. It’s down to the board to set and implement budgets for the club.
 
Really good thread, this. Some very interesting discussions.

All I will say is that I can't agree that Numan was anything other than a complete success for us, and a fabulous servant of the club then and since.

I absolutely love that guy :D
 
If a was to rate all Advocaat signings out of ten against the outlay for them it would be

Numan 7-big transfer fee, high wages but good player
Amato 5- Garbage, got most of our money back
Van Bronckhorst 10-outstanding
Kanchelskis 3- 2 decent seasons for £5.5m and 35 grand a week
charbonnier 3- Never played much
Wallace 9- Bargain
Prodan 0- Never played once
Hendry 3- Past it
Guivarc'h 5- dud
McCann 7- decent
Klos 7- great but was being paid more than Beckham
Feeney 0- who?
Moore 7- decent
Reyna 8- good, made profit
Mols 6- brilliant but got injured, never same player after
Dodds 6-ok
Tugay 6- was better at blackburn
Johnston 4-poor
Ritchie 3-never played, made small profit
Lovenkrands 7- pretty garbage, didn't cost a lot though
Miller 6- alright
Reid 1- who?
Konterman 2- bombscare
Ricksen 7- decent
De Boer 7- brilliant but had dodgy knee, high fee and wages
Christiansen 2- dud
Flo 5- decent but poor scoring record in big games. £6m loss
Kaupilla 1- hardly played
Gayle 1- useless
Fernandes 4- one wonder goal against motherwell
Nerlinger 3- decent pedigree but past it, done nothing
Caniggia 8- good
Ball 3- serious injury and garbage
Arveladze 7- decent
 
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Reyna was sold for considerably more than we paid for him. Moore was sold to Palace but returned when they couldn’t keep up the payments.

Aside from any financial implications both players were excellent for us although personally I wouldn’t have let Moore back through the marble halls when he jibbed off our biggest game of the season for the Olympics.

For me a significant factor in our dramatic decline in 00/01 was Moore’s season-long absence obvs combined with persisting with Big Bert at CH
Reyna was only here 2 years and never a player I seen on the team sheet and got excited, Moore similarly never got me excited when named in the starting line up
 
We've had some class players who have done well for us bu we've hardly made money/made decent sales. Ferguson, Jelavic...
 
Ok dude I was exaggerating a bit, you don't have to make a profit on all players. The point I was trying to make was the likes of Numan and De Boer, fantastic players but the fact they got nothing back on them means they can't be considered complete successes. Not their fault obv but the business plan was horrendous.
I think you're mixing up a player success v a club success
We may have different takes on the definition of the word complete.

And yours is wrong.
We obviously do, did he pump your Mrs or something ?
 
There was a near ruinous waste of money under Advocaat, but few complete failures.

I'd really only say Ball, Guivarc'h, Konterman and Prodan could be viewed as such - £15m for very little in return.

I think it's also fair to say the likes of Hendry, Amato and Flo didn't really deliver value for money, maybe Kanchelskis too to some extent, but they all played more of a part so it's difficult to be as critical of them.

What's undeniable is that for the money we spent we really should have fared better in Europe.

At the time we were more accepting of it because our performances felt like a huge step up from the pitiful attempts of Smith's latter continental forays, but in hindsight two CL group stage qualifications in three seasons was scant return for the huge outlay we made on that squad.
A lot of people call flo a big flop but did he no actually score 25 goals in his first season with us? I agree with you that he wasn't as good as the fee we paid for him though
 
Kanchelskis was just too much money for what we got. He was good.
Ditto Colin Hendry. We got a good season out of him. Too expensive.
Fernandes was worth it for his first second goal at Motherwell alone.
Marcus Gayle we got our money back on.
Latapy wasn't terrible for a free.
Some horrible misses in there.

marcus gayle interview as he signed 'put me in the box and i will win every header' Advocaat plays him on the left on his debut.
 
Lovenkrands had a good scoring record against Celtic and turned in some excellent performances on European nights.

Scored a last min Cup Final winner.

Scored the goal that took us out of CL group stages for the only time.

Not sure what you’re not liking

I thought that was McCormack, scored against porto? Have i got my players/games confused?
 
A lot of people call flo a big flop but did he no actually score 25 goals in his first season with us? I agree with you that he wasn't as good as the fee we paid for him though

I think we initially offered something like £7m for Flo, which felt about right to me.

Bates saw Murray coming though and taunted him that he couldn’t afford the player causing Flim Flam to bust the bank to show him a thing or two.

Flo was decent, but even for £7m I’d still have expected more.

We got £6.75m back for him, so we made a loss of £5.25m which, Ball aside, I think makes him the single biggest loss we’ve ever made on any player.

We were looking for a top drawer striker to be the final piece in the jigsaw, but no matter what the price was, I don’t think Flo was that guy.
 
It’s a strange thought and hindsight is a wonderful thing, but imagine Hartson and Mols in that 4-4-2 shape we deployed.

McCann wide left, Reyna tight on the right.

Can’t help but think it might have been the missing piece.
 
I don't know about "complete" successes but I'm shocked at folk saying Lovenkrands was garbage! Tugay as well. I thought he was a fantastic player for us. My memory must be shot.

Lovenkrands has that touch of Lafferty.

We all remember the big goals in big games, yet forget, 80% of the time, his fault or otherwise, he was poor.
 
A ‘complete’ success would include anyone who performed to an acceptable standard for a number of years, or played a major role in us winning silverware. Transfer fee definitely plays a part.

Numan and Lovenkrands are both absolutely included.

Tugay wasn’t with us for long enough.
 
Can't disagree much with the OPs assessment of the signings but I would point out not all of them were players Advocaat personally wanted or identified.

As a more general point about signings in that era, and the 9IAR before it, we largely got terrible value for money and underperformed chronically in Europe. Multiply each fee by between between 4 to 8 and you are getting the modern day equivalent of the money we spent under Smith and Advocaat.
 
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