David White - where did it go wrong?

Like baw face White was one of the first "Tracksuit" managers in scottish football. A complete opposite to Scot Symon who was treated appallingly by the board when he was sacked and informed by a third party. White was actually a very good coach who was unfortunate to come up against baw face who was a master of the darker aspects of management. His lack of experience was a factor in his downfall, stories at the time of lack of respect from some senior players, and a hostile campaign by Waddell who was a journalist with the daily express. The debacle that was the 69 SCF finished White and he was a dead man walking after that.
 
Without his leadership in the days and weeks after the 2nd of January the club would have been floundering and that and the stadium is his greatest achievement.
You don't know if the club would have floundered without his leadership. Maybe it would have, but they certainly floundered in the league under his leadership.

As for the stadium? Nah, I'm not having that.

Waddell as a player played at Ibrox regularly in front on 50/60/70/80/90 and even 100,000 fans.

In all truth being the driving force behind an all seated Ibrox with only 45,000 fans has left us chasing shadows. Some vision that.

And it will now in the present day be too cost prohibitive to get Ibrox back to what it always was and what it should be. The greatest stadium in the country with the biggest capacity to cater for the biggest support.
 
Following White's departure, in his biography of Jock Stein, Archie Macpherson suggests that that Rangers director David Hope sounded out Jock Stein to see if he was interested in 'coming home".
Stein by that time had moved well past his staunch Rangers background and had jumped the dyke with a great deal of bitterness towards his boyhood heroes, Rangers.
Why was Stein bitter towards Rangers, what harm had the club ever offered to him?
I always thought Stein a good manager but a bit of a cvunt, I would suggest his bitterness was borne from his own flawed personality.
He was just a cvunt, bitter or otherwise.
 
Why was Stein bitter towards Rangers, what harm had the club ever offered to him?
I always thought Stein a good manager but a bit of a cvunt, I would suggest his bitterness was borne from his own flawed personality.
He was just a cvunt, bitter or otherwise.
He came from a staunch Rangers background, his family and friends never forgave him for signing for them. It caused him a great deal of personal pain and he was bitter about it.
He was a bastard as manager but lots of great managers are or have to be!
Stein took games and issues about Rangers very personally.
 
Why was Stein bitter towards Rangers, what harm had the club ever offered to him?
I always thought Stein a good manager but a bit of a cvunt, I would suggest his bitterness was borne from his own flawed personality.
He was just a cvunt, bitter or otherwise.
Apparently his father was a big Rangers man and when Stein signed for them it caused a massive bitterness from his father to Stein, their relationship was never the same. I remember reading that Stein was home from playing in Wales when his former best friend came to visit Steins mother, the woman informed the friend that; her words "John is in the next room", the man turned on his heels and walked out without saying a word to Stein. His signing for that mob was never accepted by the community of Burbank. The fall out with his father turned Stein to have a hatred and bitterness to Rangers.
 
My old man told me in the past it was unfortunate timing for him due to their dominance as i asked the same question


I wasn't around then , but I know the elder statesmen in my family thought he was a better manager than Waddell and certainly his record against Celtic was way better.

They also felt he wasn't strong enough in dealing with certain players, one in particular.

Was always going to struggle after the 69 Cup Final I think.

Couldn't win the big matches against them, despite some excellent performances against them in other games.
 
Apparently his father was a big Rangers man and when Stein signed for them it caused a massive bitterness from his father to Stein, their relationship was never the same. I remember reading that Stein was home from playing in Wales when his former best friend came to visit Steins mother, the woman informed the friend that; her words "John is in the next room", the man turned on his heels and walked out without saying a word to Stein. His signing for that mob was never accepted by the community of Burbank. The fall out with his father turned Stein to have a hatred and bitterness to Rangers.
Stein himself was also a big Rangers man. It was simply in the DNA of his community.
This was held against him on many occasions at the Piggery.
When he left as a youth coach it was made clear to him that he had gone as far as could be expected....for a protestant! Not only was he rejected by his own but faced bigotry from that lot as well. That's a lot to carry for anyone and it embittered him even more.
 
Season 73/74, only four league games over 30,000.
Season 74/75, less than half the league attendance were over 30,000 and this was bolstered post New year when we were looking like winning the league.
Season 75-76 less than half the league attendances over 30,000.
Season 76-77 only six league attendances over 30,000, the six being the two games against Hibs, Hearts and Celtic.
Season 77-78 Only five league attendances over 30,000
Season 78-79 only three league attendances over 30,000.

By season 81-82, and this is post reconstruction, we got around half our games over 20,000.
The following year, I think it was only five or six got more than 20,000.
So if my 20,000 comment was a load of shite, surely that we, at the time of planning, when we were very seldom reaching over 40,000, showed a lack of vision, is, well, I‘ll just say nonsense.
(I won’t be so “neddish” with my posts)

How much nonsense can you post?
We don't just play our League games at Ibrox, we play Cup games at Ibrox too, but you conveniently choose to ignore that, because it makes your foolish argument even more foolish.
It was you that said
"Most weeks 20,000 was good. 30,000 excellent."
Which I pointed out to you (with facts) was a load of shite.

Even with all the expensive improvements we have made to the stadium over the last 40 plus years, we still have a capacity that is below 52,000.
I can think of at least 10 fixtures, just last season alone, whereby we could easily have sold a lot more than 50,000 tickets.

Like I said, it was short sighted to design a Stadium for Rangers with a capacity of 44,000.

If you think 'vision' is based on 'at the time of planning' as opposed to the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom, and restricting Rangers to a 44,000 capacity,
then your vision is as flawed as your posts.
 
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Davie White did pretty well at Clyde but at Rangers you need to win stuff. The unwashed were unfortunately in a purple patch so we were always playing second fiddle.

I thought Waddell’s nonsense was unnecessary and self-serving.

In different times I think White might have been regarded a lot more favourably but he never really got a chance.

He was also too nice a guy for such.a job.
 
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Like baw face White was one of the first "Tracksuit" managers in scottish football. A complete opposite to Scot Symon who was treated appallingly by the board when he was sacked and informed by a third party. White was actually a very good coach who was unfortunate to come up against baw face who was a master of the darker aspects of management. His lack of experience was a factor in his downfall, stories at the time of lack of respect from some senior players, and a hostile campaign by Waddell who was a journalist with the daily express. The debacle that was the 69 SCF finished White and he was a dead man walking after that.

Like baw face White was one of the first "Tracksuit" managers in scottish football. A complete opposite to Scot Symon who was treated appallingly by the board when he was sacked and informed by a third party. White was actually a very good coach who was unfortunate to come up against baw face who was a master of the darker aspects of management. His lack of experience was a factor in his downfall, stories at the time of lack of respect from some senior players, and a hostile campaign by Waddell who was a journalist with the daily express. The debacle that was the 69 SCF finished White and he was a dead man walking after that.
Yes you mention some senior players,I remember when the team were preparing for a European game that Baxter and Henderson failed to turn up for breakfast at the hotel they were staying at the time,and also late for training,as it's well known Baxter got away with nearly anything under Symon and probably thought he could do it with David White as we'll.
 
If they hadn’t sacked Simon we would have won the league that year. Simon and White was good combination but White wasn’t ready to take a big job like Ranger. He proved how good he was at Dundee. Felt sorry for him.
Waddle was a right bastard to him in the media .
 
Why was Stein bitter towards Rangers, what harm had the club ever offered to him?
I always thought Stein a good manager but a bit of a cvunt, I would suggest his bitterness was borne from his own flawed personality.
He was just a cvunt, bitter or otherwise.
Quite a few of his players would agree.
 
John Hughes hated him as did Willie Wallace. His disrespect to John Fallon was common knowledge, especially after the new year 2-2 game at the piggery. There would have been others no doubt.
Hughes had very good reason to hate Stein. While on tour in America, Hughes wife had a miscarriage back home in Scotland, Stein know about it but held the news back from Hughes. When Hughes did find out and confronted Stein, Steins words, ach what could you have done about anyway. A bastard of a man
 
Wasn’t Waddell given dogs abuse by the support when he addressed the support before a game about the “signing policy”.i think it was in the wake of the trouble at old trafford or villa park.
 
I’d suggest any manager of either us or them would do well to survive a 4-0 Cup Final defeat to the other.

As such, the writing was on the wall for White after the 1969 Scottish Cup Final
 
Most weeks 20,000 was good. 30,000 excellent."
Which I pointed out to you (with facts) was a load of shite.
Which I accepted was wrong.
That said, I have shown you irrefutable facts that show why 44,000 was perfectly adequate.
Was Waddell really suppose to see a Souness type revolution?
 
White had a very decent record against the best Celtic team ever, and a fantastic percentage win rate overall in the league, but he won the "wrong" big games.

All his wins ended up bringing home no trophies, whereas the ones they beat us seemed to be crucial in winning silverware.

I don't think there's any doubt he was a very good manager, and I like to think history will remember him as far better than the first Ibrox manager to win nothing.
 
Which I accepted was wrong.
That said, I have shown you irrefutable facts that show why 44,000 was perfectly adequate.
Was Waddell really suppose to see a Souness type revolution?

I don't want to take this very good thread off on a tangent.
I don't think you showed irrefutable facts on anything other than your selective League games only, which isn't really reflective of the attendances we would get for Domestic and European cup games.
If you think a Rangers stadium limited to 44,000 with little scope for expansion was visionary, then fair enough.
I don't.
 
I’d suggest any manager of either us or them would do well to survive a 4-0 Cup Final defeat to the other.

As such, the writing was on the wall for White after the 1969 Scottish Cup Final

Bill Struth survived a 0-5 Semi Final defeat to the Filth, and did pretty well afterwards.
Scot Symon survived a 1-7 Cup Final defeat to the Filth, and didn't do too badly afterwards.
 
A touch before my time but, was Stein’s ban amongst the longest handed out since Woodburn’s sine die?
Did Stein have such a bad disciplinary record?
Three ordering offs doesn’t seem too villainous.
My old man and the uncles always swore this was the scum at work here.
The SFA trying to disprove their assertion that officialdom hated them, that septic won despite referees and linesmen and that Rangers were the establishment club.

Note for the youngsters, this wasn’t last week, it was over fifty years ago!
Yes, they were the same back then and, no doubt, the fifty years before that.
To get sent off in those days though you had to literally clobber someone!
 
Bill Struth survived a 0-5 Semi Final defeat to the Filth, and did pretty well afterwards.
Scot Symon survived a 1-7 Cup Final defeat to the Filth, and didn't do too badly afterwards.
True mate but the knives were out for White, mainly due to the pressure Waddell was exerting on the board at the time.
 
Bill Struth survived a 0-5 Semi Final defeat to the Filth, and did pretty well afterwards.
Scot Symon survived a 1-7 Cup Final defeat to the Filth, and didn't do too badly afterwards.
I take your point but we won the league the season of the 5-0 and had won the league in the season prior to the 7-1.

White had no previous trophies to point to and had the misfortune to manage at a time when they were winning everything
 
I don't want to take this very good thread off on a tangent.
I don't think you showed irrefutable facts on anything other than your selective League games only, which isn't really reflective of the attendances we would get for Domestic and European cup games.
If you think a Rangers stadium limited to 44,000 with little scope for expansion was visionary, then fair enough.
I don't.
When the stadium was completed we had the best ground in Britain by a distance and until the Taylor report made changes compulsory no other venue came close.

From its completion until Souness came along, I’m struggling to think of a game where tickets weren’t easy to come by, albeit our form was largely hopeless.

It’s obviously true they have a bigger stadium but surely that’s in part down to the extremely favourable land deals McCann got
 
One thing that comes across on books about White is the fact that so many of the players and the coaching staff had great respect for his coaching methods and for him as a man. Harry Davis tells in his book how Greig, Baxter, Henderson and McKinnon among others had every respect for White. Harry didn't have a good word to say about Waddell though
 
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Is that the real car registration?!
 
This is true but it was short-sighted to think attendances would never go back up. Pre-war attendances for run of the mill games were rarely that great but after the end of hostilities they went back up and there was every reason to think it could happen again. The original plans for Ibrox were 56,000 but for some reason they dropped it to 44,000 and the design meant adding tiers was unlikely, or costly if we did. It was a mistake.

But we should be grateful to Waddell for his leadership after the disaster because by all accounts the Rangers Board to a man were in disarray otherwise, given there had been other crushes over the previous decade. Waddell provided a steadying hand at a chaotic and tragic time for the club, and I'm grateful to him for that.
IIRC the original plan was for the front of each stand to be standing. That was changed to seats late in the day and the capacity dropped. That may explain why the rake of the front of the stands is shallower than the rear.
 
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My recollection of the White era, as an 11 year old, came from listening to my dad an his cronies talking about things at the time.
The two main things I remember are that they all thought man for man we had a better team than the Tims. That is bourn out by the head to head of White's Rangers, and I think we had more internationalists. There was also a consensus, mentioned in other posts, that discipline was a bit lax.
 
So do you think that we shouldn't have went to an all seated stadium. Waddell was looking to make the stadium as safe as possible for the support after the 1971 tragedy, if that meant reducing the capacity then it was a decision that had to be made and the events of Hillsborough highlight Waddell's foresight in this. Uppermost in his mind was ensuring that the tragedy of 1971 would never happen again at Ibrox and for this he was 100% correct.
Where did MO_X suggest we shouldn't have went for an all seated stadium?

What some of us are suggesting is that Waddell's 'vision' was flawed.

How come Waddell couldn't see the potential in what was always there with the Rangers support, but a non entity football wise in 'the bunnet' could recognise it with the filth support?

Dress it up anyway you want. Willie Waddell's vision has hampered us big time.
 
I stand corrected.
Dunno where I got the preliminary round from, but I've had it in my head for years.

My memory suggest you were correct. I don’t know what they called the round but they were the first winners required to play in that particular round. Previous winners had always received a bye or entered at a later stage. It all added to the pleasure of them getting beat.
 
My memory suggest you were correct. I don’t know what they called the round but they were the first winners required to play in that particular round. Previous winners had always received a bye or entered at a later stage. It all added to the pleasure of them getting beat.
You're correct, they were the first winners to play in that round but it was the first round, there wasn't any preliminary round that season, 1967/68 going forward. The previous season, 66/67 there was one prelim round with four teams in it. They weren't one of the four.
 
I don't want to take this very good thread off on a tangent.
I don't think you showed irrefutable facts on anything other than your selective League games only, which isn't really reflective of the attendances we would get for Domestic and European cup games.
If you think a Rangers stadium limited to 44,000 with little scope for expansion was visionary, then fair enough.
I don't.
As is often the case, people don’t read all that’s been posted or all of a post.
I’ll let you figure that out.
 
People also forget that Willie Waddell took Kilmarnock to the League Championship. An amazing achievement by anyone's standards.
 
The Stadium?....going to a 45,000 Capacity, when we could easily put 80,000 for probably half a dozen games a season, with a decent run in Europe.
You think denying 35,000 fans a chance, and killing an atmosphere when it really mattered was an achievement?.
I think it was short sightedness at the very least.

You will excuse my thought that this is a somewhat easy view to take with the benefit of hindsight and applies 2020’s logic to a 1970’s problem.

Safety not atmosphere was the overriding consideration allied to cost when the decisions regarding Ibrox were made. Safety before, during and after games was the overriding concern. I’m no structural engineer so I can’t comment on the shape and size that would have been required, at that time, to have an 80,000 all seater stadium. The purpose was to have as many seated as possible as this was considered safer than terraces and an ability to get fans out of grounds without crushing. There was no TV money and the cost of the rebuild was met, in total from Rangers Pools profits. Again I can’t say if finance would allow the boat to be pushed out further in terms of cost but I doubt that Bank borrowing or Directors loan funding would have been an option.
 
I wasn't around then , but I know the elder statesmen in my family thought he was a better manager than Waddell and certainly his record against Celtic was way better.

They also felt he wasn't strong enough in dealing with certain players, one in particular.

Was always going to struggle after the 69 Cup Final I think.

Couldn't win the big matches against them, despite some excellent performances against them in other games.
It’s always interesting to hear others‘ perspective on White’s tenure.

My take White’s teams performance in crucial games against them: senior players (Ferguson, Persson, Greig) made atrocious mistakes against them in the Scottish Cup Final which directly lead to goals. Further, Greig was a calamity in the 0-2 reverse in the League Cup in 1968 and Neef dropped a howler in the 2-1 League Cup defeat in 1968. We did win both league games in 1968/9 and a key 2-2 draw in 1967/68.

Davie White not strong enough? I always feel this was Waddell’s pernicious campaign in the media. Davie White stood up to the board to bring Baxter back and I was told by players from that era that “White was a hard cu*t.” Baxter also confirmed this.

Finally, Waddell: Bobby Brown, in his autobiography, opines that he was angling to replace him as Scotland manager through constant criticism in his columns and other “nod and a wink” activities.

Peerless thread and many great opinions.
 
For any Bears who were there at the time, is it too simplistic to say that he was simply overwhelmed by the job and by Stein as well?

Interested to know if he was on a hiding to nothing from the start or whether other factors were at play.

Remember my uncle saying the atmosphere at the Gornik Zabre match was properly mutinous.

Random thread I know but reading the 50 Greatest Games book and his name came up.

The Evening Times take, on that week
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Which I accepted was wrong.
That said, I have shown you irrefutable facts that show why 44,000 was perfectly adequate.
Was Waddell really suppose to see a Souness type revolution?
He shouldn't have needed to forsee a Souness revolution.

His knowledge of the support and what they were capable of over the previous forty odd years, spanning his association of the club should have been enough.
 
Jeez Louise. Did you read that! A engine exploded a fell off a passenger jet which had taken off on a flight to The States. If I’d been on it, I’d Davie White myself.
 
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