Did Barry Ferguson get Paul le Guen the sack?

Fact confirmed by Rangers staff at the time and ran via GS:

We'd drawn a game, press conference and Barry was meant to speak first, he was going to say it wasn't good enough, we weren't performing well etc and talk about the game but the press asked PLG the first question where he said we're unlucky and other pish.

Instead of Barry being truthful he backed his manager 100% and instead said we played well and unlucky etc.
 
Unicorn said:
That was just a strange one from start to finish. A manager who quite clearly didn't want to be here and had zero affection for the club. Making Gavin Rae captain summed up how bizarre it all was.
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When Rae was called to his office to be told he'd been made captain, he assumed le Guen was going to be telling him he was being released. That's what we were dealing with.
 
Badger said:
If a player can get a manager the sack then the manager clearly doesn't know how to manage.
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If a player stops trying the only thing a manager can do is drop him. If others stop trying the manager is history.

Ive read all the stuff about BF v PLG and its all conjecture. No one really knows apart from those involved directly.

What always struck me as strange is how well we did in europe while performing so badly at home. Its as if some players only tried when it suited them.
 
Devil's Advocate said:
Is that right? :p

Thought we were on the up when Le Guen was announced. Very quickly prove not to be the case (under him at least).

Remember being linked with Schweinstieger and Govou that year. Was there not s9me French keeper as well?
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Lol if PLG could have any claim to anything it would be that.

I remember there being a big thing about 'landing him as it were. Think most of us seen it as a huge statement of intent.

Can't remember who was all linked at the time though, but I don't think any of those names were in the fray lol.
 
AyrshireBear79 said:
Lol if PLG could have any claim to anything it would be that.

I remember there being a big thing about 'landing him as it were. Think most of us seen it as a huge statement of intent.

Can't remember who was all linked at the time though, but I don't think any of those names were in the fray lol.
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A Celtic website/forum had posted at the time: "PLG would make an ideal Celtic manager but it looks like he is destined for one of Europe's elite teams" :D
 
AyrshireBear79 said:
Lol if PLG could have any claim to anything it would be that.

I remember there being a big thing about 'landing him as it were. Think most of us seen it as a huge statement of intent.

Can't remember who was all linked at the time though, but I don't think any of those names were in the fray lol.
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Oh contraire friend:

www.eurosport.com

Bayern warn Rangers - Eurosport

Bayern Munich have warned Rangers they have no chance of luring Bastian Schweinsteiger to Scotland next summer.
www.eurosport.com www.eurosport.com

theworldgame.sbs.com.au

No Gers regrets says Govou | The World Game

Sidney Govou could have been a Rangers player but the Lyon striker insists he has no regrets at deciding to stay in France, even if he is a self-declared admirer of Scottish football.
theworldgame.sbs.com.au theworldgame.sbs.com.au
 
Devil's Advocate said:
Oh contraire friend:

www.eurosport.com

Bayern warn Rangers - Eurosport

Bayern Munich have warned Rangers they have no chance of luring Bastian Schweinsteiger to Scotland next summer.
www.eurosport.com www.eurosport.com

theworldgame.sbs.com.au

No Gers regrets says Govou | The World Game

Sidney Govou could have been a Rangers player but the Lyon striker insists he has no regrets at deciding to stay in France, even if he is a self-declared admirer of Scottish football.
theworldgame.sbs.com.au theworldgame.sbs.com.au
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It could all have been so different...

(Honestly don't remember those players being linked at the time though lol)
 
A lot of things came together at the same time, and it led to the inevitable outcome; it was in a sense a perfect storm, involving many things. Compounding that, I do believe Le Guen thought the expectations at the club were very unrealistic, and in that sense he was incompatible for Rangers.
 
KGR98 said:
Do you think he was expecting more backing in the transfer market? If so do you reckon he stays on with that backing?
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Yes. I think he was promised a war chest and in the end we got one decent player - Papac. We were a bit better in Europe but he didn’t understand Rangers or Scottish football. I’ve no idea what he was promised but I’d guess double what he got. I think he was reasonably expecting £20m and he got about £10m. There is a good argument the squad needed a major overhaul but he wasn’t able to do so.
The question is how did he do so well at Lyon.
 
David Edgar said:
He was expecting more backing, yes. I think he got to Scotland, realised he’d underestimated the challenge of being Rangers manager, hated the style of football and just generally thought he’d picked the wrong job.
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Iirc, the deal was done for plg the previous season. He never sent anyone to look us over or the rest of the league. He just came here with his idea of what would work, and had vastly underestimated the competitiveness of the league.
Maybe he didn't get the backing he was promised but the fact he thought the Swedish boy , Karl svensson? Would do at ch set alarm bells off.
Tellingly, Walter dropped the lad sharpish.
 
AyrshireBear79 said:
It could all have been so different...

(Honestly don't remember those players being linked at the time though lol)
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It was all smoke and mirrors by Murray. There was never any chance of those players joining us but he was using his friends in the MSM to pull the wool over our eyes.

Turned out Le Guen was not the miracle worker Murray thought. And yes Ferguson contributed to him leaving but he was never ever going to succeed in Scotland, even if he had Sir Walter's or Advocaats teams he just didn't have it.

Looking back it is amazing the success we had after PLG left, considering the amount of downsizing that we were going through at the time.
 
It’s bizarre the abuse Barry Ferguson takes on this board. A proper Rangers legend and a proper Rangers man through and through. He did what needed to be done because Le Guen didn’t understand our club. Similar to Wallace and Miller slaughtering the frauds at Hampden that day, Ferguson got it spot on and deserves way more respect than people give him on here.
 
David Edgar said:
Le Guen tried to resign in September 2006, again at start of December then engineered a situation which meant Murray had no choice.

Simply put, he could never have been a good Rangers manager because very quickly he realised he’d made a bad decision and didn’t WANT to be Rangers manager.

This is not to excuse some of Ferguson’s behaviour at the time.
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I think it does excuse his behaviour mate
 
Ally Dawson said:
It was all smoke and mirrors by Murray. There was never any chance of those players joining us but he was using his friends in the MSM to pull the wool over our eyes.

Turned out Le Guen was not the miracle worker Murray thought. And yes Ferguson contributed to him leaving but he was never ever going to succeed in Scotland, even if he had Sir Walter's or Advocaats teams he just didn't have it.

Looking back it is amazing the success we had after PLG left, considering the amount of downsizing that we were going through at the time.
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Getting way off topic, but amazing the success both AM & SirW achieved during periods of the same thing.

PLG was a Pedro. He was just in disguise.
 
Perfect storm: no DoF, no budget, players who had sick lines for being hungover, and a manager who almost instantly regretted his decision. Was never going to work.
 
CaptainHolt said:
It’s bizarre the abuse Barry Ferguson takes on this board. A proper Rangers legend and a proper Rangers man through and through. He did what needed to be done because Le Guen didn’t understand our club. Similar to Wallace and Miller slaughtering the frauds at Hampden that day, Ferguson got it spot on and deserves way more respect than people give him on here.
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I love Barry Ferguson and to be honest I hate it when he gets slammed and slaughtered in here or any rangers fan, but he is a bit thick
 
ClockworkOrange said:
Le Guen's success at Lyon (and good results with us in the UEFA Cup) was used as irrefutable proof that we had an outstanding manager on our hands, the heir apparent to Arsene Wenger, and that he should be backed unconditionally by the fans. I was a poster on here at the time and FF had very much taken the side of the manager.

The problem - as his run as Rangers manager and subsequent career showed - was that he simply wasn't a very good manager. Lyon were already well on the way to becoming a great team before he took over (Santini had won the league and left for the France job) and he was flattered by an exceptional crop of talent that made winning Ligue 1 the footballing equivalent of a walkover. Alain Perrin was sacked by Portsmouth and later won the league with Lyon, FFS.

The less said about the rest of his career the better, but it seems to have been a case of baffling recruitment, questionable decisions and weak management.

His career post-Rangers made a mockery of Speirs' book title on him - "The Enigma." He wasn't an enigma at all. He just got lucky at his first job and dined out on it for a while. It just so happened that the Rangers players who worked with him found that out first.
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I'm sure Lyon were held up as the poster boy club to emulate for having selection committees signing players and recruitment was handled outside of the head coach which Le Guen was. Giving Le Guen none of that structure and expecting him to do it all when he hadn't really done it at Lyon seems to me to be the obvious reason for the failure. I'm sure Gerrard still has final say on players coming in and is heavily involved in the process but I'm sure that at that time, we probably still relied on the manager alone to make those signing decisions with scouting recommendations.
 
A couple of arseholes with microphones talking about things they will never understand anything about our Club.

Is Ferguson a bit of a d*ck? Yes.
Was he wrong in this instance. No.

PLG got PLG sacked with Murray not fulfilling promises, surprise surprise.
 
Unicorn said:
That was just a strange one from start to finish. A manager who quite clearly didn't want to be here and had zero affection for the club. Making Gavin Rae captain summed up how bizarre it all was.
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You can't only hire managers with previous 'affection' for the club. I'm fairly fond of Rangers but I doubt it's going to take me very far. Acting as if we're some unique club when a competent manager could come in without any affinity (like Advocaat) doesn't really seem to be a point worth making.
 
Kubala said:
You can't only hire managers with previous 'affection' for the club. I'm fairly fond of Rangers but I doubt it's going to take me very far. Acting as if we're some unique club when a competent manager could come in without any affinity (like Advocaat) doesn't really seem to be a point worth making.
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I wasn't talking about his hiring, obviously a manager isn't required to have any affinity at all. But at no point in his tenure did it seem as if Rangers mattered to him, he arrived woefully underprepared and spent most of his reign trying go engineer an exit. Advocaat - or even Gerrard - had no previous attachment towards Rangers but they treated the job with the respect it deserved, prepared thoroughly and an attachment to the club grew within them. None of that happened with Le Guen, he clearly didn't want to be here.
 
Ferguson supposed quote: "I never once undermined him. There's a limit as a captain and as a player."

I've yet to see anyone suggest he didn't undermine him. All that's being discussed is whether he was right or wrong to do it.

BF I will always love when thinking about on the park, he was aggressive, confident, relentless..

But he did undermine the manager. Which wasn't an isolated incident.

Tino_Col said:
It is possible that Murray, Ferguson and PLG all made an arse of it.

It's also the reality.
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100%.
 
Square it! said:
PLG got PLG the sack.
He wanted out very soon after he arrived.
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He offered his resignation as soon as he realised Murray wasn't exactly truthful about the budgets available to him. Wouldn't be surprised if that had an effect on the way the situation with Ferguson unfolded, but even if he'd tried to gradually introduce the changes he wanted and was on the same page as Bazza, Boyd etc - that anything other than a win at Rangers is unacceptable - he would have failed as he didn't want to be here.
 
Gazp said:
Ferguson is one of our best ever players for me. The ability he had, the winning mentality, the way he used to control games against the very best. Take the game by the scruff of the neck and make things happen.

pretty embarrassing comment to make about the guy tbh
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Given some of the articles and comments Ferguson has made about us since retiring, I don’t think it’s an embarrassing comment about him at all tbh

You’d sometimes never know Ferguson played with us and captained us for years the way he sometimes goes on.
 
Since when did anyone care what Andy Walker, John Colquhoun or Gerry McNee thought about Rangers?

LeGuen never worked out. I think there were many reasons for that. But, that was 15 years ago.
 
David Edgar said:
Le Guen tried to resign in September 2006, again at start of December then engineered a situation which meant Murray had no choice.

Simply put, he could never have been a good Rangers manager because very quickly he realised he’d made a bad decision and didn’t WANT to be Rangers manager.

This is not to excuse some of Ferguson’s behaviour at the time.
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Or his behaviour later which resulted in being stripped of the captaincy that was given to Davie Weir.
 
CooperBlu11 said:
Le Guens downfall really came at that shambolic handling between Letizi and McGregor. It exposed his stubbornness.
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When he stripped Ferguson of the captaincy - he gave it to Gavin Rae!

A finer point - I don't think it helped he didn't bring someone in with knowledge of the Scottish game. Advocaat relied on Greig a lot. Even Pedro brought JJ in.
 
He didn’t, that being said Ferguson’s behaviour was unbecoming of a Rangers captain, you have to respect the chain of command and he didn’t do that.
 
Mustang mad said:
Iirc, the deal was done for plg the previous season. He never sent anyone to look us over or the rest of the league. He just came here with his idea of what would work, and had vastly underestimated the competitiveness of the league.
Maybe he didn't get the backing he was promised but the fact he thought the Swedish boy , Karl svensson? Would do at ch set alarm bells off.
Tellingly, Walter dropped the lad sharpish.
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To be a half decent centre back you have to attack balls in the air. Svenson acted as if he was scared to head the ball. Also it helps if you don’t turn your back when the fuckin thing is coming towards you.
 
GraemeButNotMurty said:
He offered his resignation as soon as he realised Murray wasn't exactly truthful about the budgets available to him. Wouldn't be surprised if that had an effect on the way the situation with Ferguson unfolded, but even if he'd tried to gradually introduce the changes he wanted and was on the same page as Bazza, Boyd etc - that anything other than a win at Rangers is unacceptable - he would have failed as he didn't want to be here.
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Bear in mind too that the previous year, we finished 3rd in a 2 horse race. I was almost in tears when Murray came out with "I looked into Alec's eyes". McCoist came in for a bit - for a different voice at training.

He contemplated playing Wattereus in midfield.

Longest winless run I think?

But, hey, we got to the knockout phase of the Champions League.

We were a shambles.

If I was LeGuen, I would be wanting money too.

Clement did OK when he was here.
Papac is Papac.
Sionko was a bit unlucky.
Sebo tried too hard - and got worse and worse and worse.
Letizi wasn't good. Got some hellish press too because he wasn't McGregor. I recall he had a good game in Livorno. First Scottish team to win in Italy?
Svensson couldn't jump.
IIRC Bardsley crocked or almost crocked someone in training - meaning that tackling was banned.
Fernando was misbehaving. I always felt McLeish did the dirty on him. Was outstanding when given the responsibility of captaincy. Then reacted very badly when it went back to Barry Ferguson.

I am sure under PLG, we were unbeaten in Europe.
 
The blame lies with Murray.

PLG didn’t do much research because he had been told he would be signing guys like Toulalan, Kallstrom and Govou. Murray promised him the earth.

When he got here, he quickly realised he had been lied to and wanted to leave. Murray refused this. We had a man who didn’t want to be here because of the false promises he had been made.

He tried to implement his methods in a half arsed way, but the players were not for turning given the extreme Scottish culture.

A total slope of disaster from there on in.
 
No got himself sacked. Barry was brought up at the cub with a winning mentality can’t see a problem with that.
 
Derek84 said:
PLG never had what it took to be a success at Rangers.
Barry Ferguson was a winner and a great player for us!
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Sums it up exactly.

No doubting Barry could be a pain in the arse at times but a strong manager can handle that, as Walter proved, PLG simply couldn’t. His complete lack of success after he left us proved PLG simply wasn’t very good.
 
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