Best Rangers European Manager in My Lifetime?

bilkobear

bilkobear

Well-Known Member
Probably.
However, Stevie why don't we use our bench better?
Is it because Stevie doesn't have faith in those on the bench?
Ojo was what must be termed an empty calorie fix near the end of tonight's match and I struggle to understand why.

That said, I would have taken the draw before a ball was kicked, notwithstanding that I don't rate Young Boys anywhere near that Porto team we defeated.

Did it feel like a defeat tonight?
If it did, it is because Steven Gerrard has set such high standards so quickly and that itself is a testament to huge achievement.
Well done Stevie, you are amazing.
 
Nowhere near the best European manager. Which in the happiness of tonight I can understand why you would post.

I am guessing you will now produce some % of wins stat. That given the length of time for the likes of Waddel and Smith and amount of games they played would ultimately be a very unfair stat to compare
 
Jonathan E said:
Has to be Willie Waddell.

(An opinion supported by a big fact.)
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Gerrard is dealing with a changed European landscape.
Until you factor in those changes and how it impacts teams from countries like Scotland, then you cannot make an accurate judgement.

In my opinion, given what was available to Scot Symon in that era, he underachieved massively.
Willie Waddell probably gets pass marks as Rangers should have been winning a CWC at least in his era.
After that, I feel that managers mostly underachieved.

Gerrard given the task and circumstances he inherited against the backdrop of European football as it is today, is in my opinion, probably overachieving.
 
Hurleyreyes said:
Nowhere near the best European manager. Which in the happiness of tonight I can understand why you would post.

I am guessing you will now produce some % of wins stat. That given the length of time for the likes of Waddel and Smith and amount of games they played would ultimately be a very unfair stat to compare
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No, the stats wouldn't tell the story mate.
What tells the story is the current position of the club and the overall strength of the country in relation to the bigger picture of European competition as it is today.
That is where my conclusions are made.
 
Sandbear said:
So much better than Walters first spell except one season in fact even the second spell if you take out that one outlier season.
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Fair enough, just really making the point that we did reach a final under him, albeit with probably a stronger squad.
Just playing devils advocate I suppose.
 
bilkobear said:
Gerrard is dealing with a changed European landscape.
Until you factor in those changes and how it impacts teams from countries like Scotland, then you cannot make an accurate judgement.

In my opinion, given what was available to Scot Symon in that era, he underachieved massively.
Willie Waddell probably gets pass marks as Rangers should have been winning a CWC at least in his era.
After that, I feel that managers mostly underachieved.

Gerrard given the task and circumstances he inherited against the backdrop of European football as it is today, is in my opinion, probably overachieving.
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Each generation can only take on the challenges that they face. Comparing the challenges is like comparing the different fitness levels, playing surfaces, tactics and so on.

Waddell won the trophy. I'd argue that his achievement against top teams from France, Portugal, Italy, West Germany and Russia was superior to the mentally challengeds European Cup win.

But that's just another pub/forum debate.
 
I love him but he's still learning especially with regard to substitutions. It's still very early in his managerial career and he is learning all the time. His European record is excellent though!
 
Spudgun said:
Fair enough, just really making the point that we did reach a final under him, albeit with probably a stronger squad.
Just playing devils advocate I suppose.
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Where I would agree is that he maybe isn’t the best in my lifetime , I’m old, considering what hehas available money wise and the huge improvement in teams across Europe he has done remarkably well. Whereas with Smith it was mostly awful except a couple of seasons, Kaunas, Gothenburg etc
Shouldn’t think about those sort of games it’s a good night to be a Rangers fan , there have been fewer of those in the last 7 years than any of us would have wanted.
 
Not going to compare or rank them!! Different times, circumstances etc, etc!! But the fact there is even debate/discussion on it tells it's own story and shows just how far SG has taken us already and that he has definitely given us OUR Rangers back and restored pride and prestige!! Surely that can't be up for debate!!
 
Jonathan E said:
Each generation can only take on the challenges that they face. Comparing the challenges is like comparing the different fitness levels, playing surfaces, tactics and so on.

Waddell won the trophy. I'd argue that his achievement against top teams from France, Portugal, Italy, West Germany and Russia was superior to the mentally challengeds European Cup win.

But that's just another pub/forum debate.
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No, it isn't a comparison similar to the one you state.

Rangers didn't compete in the sixties with a lighter ball than other teams or with a better playing surface, instead, they competed as a representative of one of the four or five most powerful football nations in Europe.
Our club teams were feared and had strength in depth and Rangers were a leading part of that strength.

Today, Rangers aren't competing with a heavier ball or an inferior playing surface, however, we are no longer a top-five country, instead, we are very much a lower-tier nation and there is no strength in depth of Scottish league sides, and mostly teams from Scotland are not feared at all but are seen as mere cannon fodder.

Against this backdrop, Steven Gerrard has taken our club from European obscurity and re-established us as a club that is certainly not cannon fodder but is now seen as an opponent worthy of respect.

Everything is relative and from this perspective, Gerrard has achieved much more, from virtually a standing start, faster than those who went before.
 
bilkobear said:
Probably.
However, Stevie why don't we use our bench better?
Is it because Stevie doesn't have faith in those on the bench?
Ojo was what must be termed an empty calorie fix near the end of tonight's match and I struggle to understand why.

That said, I would have taken the draw before a ball was kicked, notwithstanding that I don't rate Young Boys anywhere near that Porto team we defeated.

Did it feel like a defeat tonight?
If it did, it is because Steven Gerrard has set such high standards so quickly and that itself is a testament to huge achievement.
Well done Stevie, you are amazing.
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Not sure if he is the best yet but what he has brought to us in a short time is amazing especially some of the best football seen in awhile, if we continue on this upward curve and I think we will he is building something special imo! Tonight belongs to everyone at the club and our fans far and wide! Very proud of our team what an achievement and potential improvement!
 
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bilkobear said:
Probably.
However, Stevie why don't we use our bench better?
Is it because Stevie doesn't have faith in those on the bench?
Ojo was what must be termed an empty calorie fix near the end of tonight's match and I struggle to understand why.

That said, I would have taken the draw before a ball was kicked, notwithstanding that I don't rate Young Boys anywhere near that Porto team we defeated.

Did it feel like a defeat tonight?
If it did, it is because Steven Gerrard has set such high standards so quickly and that itself is a testament to huge achievement.
Well done Stevie, you are amazing.
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It did kinda feel like a defeat in the immediate aftermath tonight. We were very poor in the last 40mins.
Our bench was weak tonight and the manager didn't trust them. His change was completely ineffectual,replacing one empty jersey with another.
 
All I know is the football I watched in the first half tonight was up there with the best I've ever seen in my 60 years.
I thought they were that good.

Bayern away probably topped it, but we were sensational in the first half.
 
The football we are playing under Stevie G is certainly the best in my lifetime. Time will tell overall, but Walter is pretty much untouchable to me.
 
On substitutions , who could he have brought on? We still have a thin squad in terms of players outside of say the top 13 who can come in and have the impact on the game we needed tonight. Particularly in midfield and upfront. That sort of player costs money we don’t have.
 
A wee hawf volley said:
The football we are playing under Stevie G is certainly the best in my lifetime. Time will tell overall, but Walter is pretty much untouchable to me.
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I love Walter but European record despite highs wasn’t the greatest .
Especially in the 90’s we had one of the highest wage budgets and 92 apart didn’t do much .
 
Shengus Malengus said:
All I know is the football I watched in the first half tonight was up there with the best I've ever seen in my 60 years.
I thought they were that good.

Bayern away probably topped it, but we were sensational in the first half.
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Totally agree some of it was breathtaking but they can be forgiving for the second half given what they have put in the last 1 and a half games and got the job done! That first half performance was simply sensational!
 
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I've certainly not watched a Rangers team that is this consistently comfortable on the ball against European opposition. We have dominated for large parts in every game in the group stages.
I'm proud as f.uck tonight
 
bilkobear said:
No, it isn't a comparison similar to the one you state.

Rangers didn't compete in the sixties with a lighter ball than other teams or with a better playing surface, instead, they competed as a representative of one of the four or five most powerful football nations in Europe.
Our club teams were feared and had strength in depth and Rangers were a leading part of that strength.

Today, Rangers aren't competing with a heavier ball or an inferior playing surface, however, we are no longer a top-five country, instead, we are very much a lower-tier nation and there is no strength in depth of Scottish league sides, and mostly teams from Scotland are not feared at all but are seen as mere cannon fodder.

Against this backdrop, Steven Gerrard has taken our club from European obscurity and re-established us as a club that is certainly not cannon fodder but is now seen as an opponent worthy of respect.

Everything is relative and from this perspective, Gerrard has achieved much more, from virtually a standing start, faster than those who went before.
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I'm sorry m8. I love your posts. You are probably one of the most sensible people on this forum and your opinion is ALWAYS worth noting, but in this thread I can't agree with you.

Under Wattie and Waddell we faced far stronger teams than we've faced under Gerrard. Gerrard has done fantastically well, only an idiot or a hater could disagree with that, but best ever..? Not yet. But hopefully...
 
I think he didn't want to bring on players who weren't up to speed with the match due to the way it was being played out. We needed everyone chasing and digging it. We couldn't afford a player needing 2 or 3 minutes to get use to the game.
 
Neilstonger said:
On substitutions , who could he have brought on? We still have a thin squad in terms of players outside of say the top 13 who can come in and have the impact on the game we needed tonight. Particularly in midfield and upfront. That sort of player costs money we don’t have.
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With only five minutes to go you bring on a sub and run down time also stop their momentum, then you get the last sub on and do the same again. Had we done that we could have topped the group. Instead we done nothing and waited for to score and they did. Even when Jack was sent off your thinking get a sub on kill the game.
 
GovanFront4 said:
I think he didn't want to bring on players who weren't up to speed with the match due to the way it was being played out. We needed everyone chasing and digging it. We couldn't afford a player needing 2 or 3 minutes to get use to the game.
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The manager has been on record making this point a number of times this season. We have to trust him because he obviously knows what he's doing.

I'm not sure who else we'd bring on either. Our midfield was clearly knackered but the options on the bench were limited, I'd rather carry on with a tired Kamara than bring on a rusty Halliday for example.
 
Brian Leslie said:
With only five minutes to go you bring on a sub and run down time also stop their momentum, then you get the last sub on and do the same again. Had we done that we could have topped the group. Instead we done nothing and waited for to score and they did. Even when Jack was sent off your thinking get a sub on kill the game.
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Fair point. I was thinking more in terms of a sub at an earlier point in the game to try and get us back the control we had in the first half. But what you say is very valid.
 
Spin City said:
I'm sorry m8. I love your posts. You are probably one of the most sensible people on this forum and your opinion is ALWAYS worth noting, but in this thread I can't agree with you.

Under Wattie and Waddell we faced far stronger teams than we've faced under Gerrard. Gerrard has done fantastically well, only an idiot or a hater could disagree with that, but best ever..? Not yet. But hopefully...
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smith also had more than his fair share of shockers .

he had 2 incredible seasons 92/93 when I honestly believed we had a real chance of landing the big one but fcuked it a bit away to Brugge and of course Manchester

But looking at our last 2 years qualifying I don’t think smith would’ve got through them and into the group stages
 
Calvinist said:
smith also had more than his fair share of shockers .

he had 2 incredible seasons 92/93 when I honestly believed we had a real chance of landing the big one but fcuked it a bit away to Brugge and of course Manchester

But looking at our last 2 years qualifying I don’t think smith would’ve got through them and into the group stages
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Yes, he did, but 10 games unbeaten in the Champions League speaks for itself and he got us to Manchester with a team that should have got nowhere near there.
 
Spin City said:
Yes, he did, but 10 games unbeaten in the Champions League speaks for itself and he got us to Manchester with a team that should have got nowhere near there.
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overcoming Teams like Legia , Maribor and fc midtylland ?

I’m not so sure tbh
 
Sandbear said:
So much better than Walters first spell except one season in fact even the second spell if you take out that one outlier season.
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Yeah, I love Walter but in 11 years, he had two (very) good seasons and one that was nearly passable (in 10-11 when we got to the last 16 of the Europa and PSV put us out)

It's not that the others were just a disappointment mike 10-11 where we maybe could have gone further, it's that there are a blight on our history and a disgrace given the spending power we had, the players available and the sheer levels of shite that we lost to.

A 25% ratio of acceptability isn't anywhere near enough to be credible.
 
I've never in all my years seen a Rangers team take the game to European opponents the way we do under Gerrard

I've been conditioned to believe that because our opponent is foreign, i must accept they'll have more skill and more possession.

Under Gerrard its not the case, but he's a proven European winner so can install that mentality into his team.

It's truly a joy to watch.
 
Spin City said:
I'm sorry m8. I love your posts. You are probably one of the most sensible people on this forum and your opinion is ALWAYS worth noting, but in this thread I can't agree with you.

Under Wattie and Waddell we faced far stronger teams than we've faced under Gerrard. Gerrard has done fantastically well, only an idiot or a hater could disagree with that, but best ever..? Not yet. But hopefully...
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Yes, you are 100 per cent right.
Symon, Waddell, and Wattie all faced the very best teams in Europe.

My point is, that these managers were coming from a place where Rangers were approaching these sides as an equal, more or less on equal terms, although you could probably make a case for this situation diminishing over the years in Wattie's time after television money began to have an impact.
However, there is little doubt in Wattie's first period he was able to compete to sign top players.

Scotland in the sixties was a nation with a league that was amongst the strongest in European terms, weaker than England's, Spain's and Italy's but on par even with Germany's.
The Scotland national team rarely played a match they did not believe that they might win.
The rest of Europe would catch up of course, and slowly we would fall, perhaps one might argue, into our more natural place in the world.

However, unlike his predecessors who went into European football from a financially more powerful platform and from within a country with a healthier co-efficient, Gerrard has inherited a much-impoverished starting point. Literally he inherited a European ground zero.
From this scene of devastation, Gerrard has rebuilt a European level football club and in a mere two seasons has given our fan base its European respectability back.

One other aspect of Gerrard in Europe, he really looks like he understands the demands of these games and is able to evaluate every challenge comfortably.
We might lose matches, but I don't believe for one second there will be any unexpected hidings or defeats from opposition we might have underrated or failed to plan properly for.

Had we had Gerrard in previous decades when we had so many advantages as a club that his predecessors enjoyed, I am quite positive in my mind we wouldn't be sitting on just one European trophy.

But that is just my opinion and it is a subject full of debating points.
 
I totally get where the op is coming from and I'm 59 so have seen a few managers come and go.

OK he hasn't got us to a final or won anything 'yet' but during the first 60 minutes last night I turned to my son and said, "Remember the European games we have have been at over the years and we have turned to each other and said ffs the other team looks as thought they have 3 more players than us"

That to me was how Rangers looked in the first 60 mins last night. Stevie IMHO has us playing like a real successful European team.
This I would suggest is where the op is coming from.

Trust in Mr Gerrard :))
 
Spudgun said:
Better than Walter Smith?

I don't think he's quite there yet.

Assuming you're older than 11? :)
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If achievements are how we define our best manager in Europe then Willie Waddell must be top of the tree given he's the only one who's actually won anything.

Walter did take us to a European final (Scott Symon took us to two) as well as third place in the inaugural Champions League, but almost all of the other seasons we played continental football under him were dreadful.

And we never played with the sort of confidence and assurance that Gerrard has this side doing.

Our record under him has been nothing short of magnificent and I wholeheartedly agree with Bilko - he's shaping up to be the best European manager in my lifetime (I'm 50), if he isn't already.
 
bilkobear said:
In my opinion, given what was available to Scot Symon in that era, he underachieved massively.
Willie Waddell probably gets pass marks as Rangers should have been winning a CWC at least in his era.
After that, I feel that managers mostly underachieved.
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Scot Symon took us to 2 European Finals in 7 years, the first British team to achieve this.
In 3 of the 4 seasons between that, we went out to the eventual winners
(Tottenham, Real Madrid and Inter Milan).
We defeated the World Club Champions at Ibrox (without Baxter).
He also took us to the Semi Finals of the European Cup.
Not sure how you can see that as 'Massively Underachieving', as the European Cup was dominated totally by the latins in those first 11 years, with no British team getting to a final.

Waddell gave us our greatest triumph ever (against some serious competition), but not sure how
'we should have been winning a CWC at least in his era'.
His era where we never actually won the Scottish Cup, or came remotely close to challenging for the League in our own country, finishing 12, 15 and 16 points behind Celtic (2 points for a win back then),
and below St Fuckin Johnstone in one of those seasons!
 
MO_TxTruBlu said:
Scot Symon took us to 2 European Finals in 7 years, the first British team to achieve this.
In 3 of the 4 seasons between that, we went out to the eventual winners
(Tottenham, Real Madrid and Inter Milan).
We defeated the World Club Champions at Ibrox (without Baxter).
He also took us to Semi Finals of the European Cup.
Not sure how you can see that as 'Massively Underachieving', as the European Cup was dominated totally by the latins in those first 11 years, with no British team getting to a final.

Waddell gave us our greatest triumph ever (against some serious competition), but not sure how
'we should have been winning a CWC at least in his era'.
His era where we never actually won the Scottish Cup, or came remotely close to challenging for the League in our own country, finishing 12, 15 and 16 points behind Celtic (2 points for a win back then),
and below St Johnstone in one of those seasons!
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I love you posts Mo and your points are all creditable and the management achievements you mention are worthy.
But, my point is that none of the achievements you mention in terms relative to expectations were themselves over-achievements.
Indeed, given the huge size of Rangers in relative terms back then, we were as a club, actually underachieving in Europe.
I have long said, that in European competition we have never had a manager who made the most of the club itself in its vast potential.
In the fifties and sixties, Rangers had the financial and cultural reach of any other club in the world.

The seventies and eighties saw us able to select from a vast array of homegrown players that were capable of winning European trophies on their own.
The nineties and into this century saw us with financial clout that enabled us to compete for top talents from home and abroad.

The managers you cite came from a position that was so much more able to compete than Gerrard finds himself in today.
That is why in my opinion they got less from more, whilst Gerrard is getting more from less.
 
bilkobear said:
I love you posts Mo and your points are all creditable and the management achievements you mention are worthy.
But, my point is that none of the achievements you mention in terms relative to expectations were themselves over-achievements.
Indeed, given the huge size of Rangers in relative terms back then, we were as a club, actually underachieving in Europe.
I have long said, that in European competition we have never had a manager who made the most of the club itself in its vast potential.
In the fifties and sixties, Rangers had the financial and cultural reach of any other club in the world.

The seventies and eighties saw us able to select from a vast array of homegrown players that were capable of winning European trophies on their own.
The nineties and into this century saw us with financial clout that enabled us to compete for top talents from home and abroad.

The managers you cite came from a position that was so much more able to compete than Gerrard finds himself in today.
That is why in my opinion they got less from more, whilst Gerrard is getting more from less.
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I Love You too sweetheart ;)

I do 100% agree with you that Gerrard is definitely getting more from less.

I still think that this belief that we underachieved in the 50'and 60's is a myth.
During Symon's tenure there was 27 European trophies (3 competitions) up for grabs, and although a few Scottish teams (Dundee, Kilmarnock, Dunfermline, Dundee Utd) recorded some memorable results in the 3 competitions, they were completely dominated by the latins.
Us getting to 2 Finals and a Semi Final is an achievement.
Spain had 13 successes (Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Valencia, Real Zaragoza )
Italy had 6 successes (Inter Milan, AC Milan, Fiorentina, Roma)
Portugal 3 successes (Benfica, Sporting Lisbon)
That's 22 of the 27 available that were won by these 3 nations.
There was 2 English winners in there, Tottenham who were a great side for a couple of years, and West Ham (by fluke, though they did have 3 players who would win the World Cup 1 year later),
but it was not until after Symon's tenure, that non latin countries started to gain some serious success in these European competitions.
 
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