Dragan Mladenovic

I was in Austria when he played for us against Roma, he had a very good game, we won 4-1. At this time I thought he was going to be good for us.
I don’t know who turned up in Scotland but it was not the one who played in that game.
 
Eck done
When I first joined this forum I had a daily battle defending big eck , probably the season before we signed dragan, now all the Rangers podcasts are agreed about the job big eck done .

Some of his signings didn’t work , not so much this season, some of them did . Not his fault we were downsizing .

I’m sure he’d have preferred numan to vanoli or Bernard, or canigga to ostenstad, or Neil McCann to capucho.

He done a great job overall I agree
 
I watched him play in a youth team game at Ibrox when he was on the mend.

There was something quite odd about hearing 18 year boys shouting things like "Here, Dragon, ah'm open" and "Dragon, square it" in front of an almost empty stadium.
 
He looked like he was the saddest man on the planet. Big long face.

To be fair, we all must have looked pretty sad and crestfallen when we watched him turn out.
 
When I first joined this forum I had a daily battle defending big eck , probably the season before we signed dragan, now all the Rangers podcasts are agreed about the job big eck done .

Some of his signings didn’t work , not so much this season, some of them did . Not his fault we were downsizing .

I’m sure he’d have preferred numan to vanoli or Bernard, or canigga to ostenstad, or Neil McCann to capucho.

He was given a terrible hand and still managed to win a ton of trophies. It was constant downsizing from the Advocaat era.
 
The game against CSKA at Ibrox was first time I had seen him in the flesh and after 10 mins he looked as mobile as C3P0
 
Overriding recollection is how miserable he would always look. He made Negri look like a jolly and carefree soul.
 
He seemed to completely fold on his debut and stuck to one 5 yard area and barely moved out of it . So strange . Remember another we signed from dundee , probably wrong spelling apologies polish lad named Adamchook or similar ? Looked a world beater for them signed for us caught depression early on and barely kicked a ball. So many signings like this .
 
IIRC it was Andy Watson who scouted him for Eck.
West Ham were having a fire sale at the time and Michael Carrick was available for an extra few quid.
Whether he would have signed is an other matter.]
 
The number of duds we paid off during the McLeish era was staggering.

For every Dado, Nacho and Boumsong, there were 2-3 x Capucho, Dragan, Jeffers, Bernard, Ostenstad, Nieto, Emerson, Maniero, Fanfan.

I always got the feeling Eck signed players like a 12yo playing Football Manager and its deadline day.
 
The number of duds we paid off during the McLeish era was staggering.

For every Dado, Nacho and Boumsong, there were 2-3 x Capucho, Dragan, Jeffers, Bernard, Ostenstad, Nieto, Emerson, Maniero, Fanfan.

I always got the feeling Eck signed players like a 12yo playing Football Manager and its deadline day.
His signings were absolute dross at times, but to be fair he was losing the likes of Numan, Amoruso, McCann, Ferguson etc and being told he has to make do with free transfers - Vanoli was never going to be a replacement for a Numan just as Dragan wasn’t going to replace Ferguson.
 
His signings were absolute dross at times, but to be fair he was losing the likes of Numan, Amoruso, McCann, Ferguson etc and being told he has to make do with free transfers - Vanoli was never going to be a replacement for a Numan just as Dragan wasn’t going to replace Ferguson.
I wonder about the economics of that period, we might have been better off making a reasonable offer to the likes of Numan than signing players and paying them off.

Bernard, Vanoli, etc wouldn't have been on a pittance.
 
Think it was 1-0 defeat early in the season at Parkhead where it looked as though he'd never seen the sport yet alone play football.
 
His signings were absolute dross at times, but to be fair he was losing the likes of Numan, Amoruso, McCann, Ferguson etc and being told he has to make do with free transfers - Vanoli was never going to be a replacement for a Numan just as Dragan wasn’t going to replace Ferguson.

Yep. You can only work the balancing act for so long when losing quality players and replacing them for buttons. We saw the same issue under Smith/McCoist.
 
An absolute bizarre period in our history.

Some unbelievable highs 02 cups, 02-03 Treble, Helicopter Sunday, Last 16 CL.
Mixed with some unbelievable lows - 03-04, 05-06 (domestically).

In a way The signings at the time mirrored that.
Prso and Nova Vs Dragan and Franny J.
 
Did we not play a pre season in Austria or Switzerland which I think was his first game for us.

I managed to get a stream for it & thought he looked awesome. I then saw him play in the flesh & realised it must have been a really shit stream.
 
The number of duds we paid off during the McLeish era was staggering.

For every Dado, Nacho and Boumsong, there were 2-3 x Capucho, Dragan, Jeffers, Bernard, Ostenstad, Nieto, Emerson, Maniero, Fanfan.

I always got the feeling Eck signed players like a 12yo playing Football Manager and its deadline day.

The arsehole up the stairs with his wee agent backhanders should take the hit for that.
 
He seemed to completely fold on his debut and stuck to one 5 yard area and barely moved out of it . So strange . Remember another we signed from dundee , probably wrong spelling apologies polish lad named Adamchook or similar ? Looked a world beater for them signed for us caught depression early on and barely kicked a ball. So many signings like this .
You never see many happy polish people.
Always smoke and have bad skin. peely wally.
 
I wonder about the economics of that period, we might have been better off making a reasonable offer to the likes of Numan than signing players and paying them off.

Bernard, Vanoli, etc wouldn't have been on a pittance.

We can thank expert negotiator Martin Bain for all this.

As for the Dragan - it's mystifying, really. How can a midfielder from a club like Red Star Belgrade turn out to be a dud and so out of his depth in Scottish football? Has he ever spoken about his time with us, I wonder?
 
When he went back to Red Star they couldn’t believe it was the same player they sold. The media said he’d got too rich at Rangers and didn’t care about football anymore.
 
"We've done our homework on him"

9 appearences and an £800,000 pay off later it's clear we failed that particular homework assignment.
Not one of Ecks best ideas,my abiding memory is him standing shivering in the centre circle,wearing his gloves while the play raged around him,in September.
 
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