The Goalie
Well-Known Member
In todays Sunday Times,
this also is part of his new book.....
When I was appointed as Rangers manager in 1986, I was asked if I would ever sign a Catholic. I replied, ‘Of course, I would.’ I could see all the press men raise their eyes to the sky, like they had heard it all before, but I meant it. My wife, at the time, was a Catholic, my kids had been brought up Catholic, so it was not an issue for me and I proved that by signing Maurice Johnston from Nantes in 1989 when Celtic thought he was about to join them.
I’d previously tried to sign Ray Houghton and John Collins, but had failed to persuade them. It was ridiculous. Given that Scotland is split 50–50, you were limiting yourself to picking from 50% of the kids that were out there.
It looked like Celtic had signed Maurice, until one day I made a passing remark to Bill McMurdo, his agent, in the foyer at Ibrox. “You should have let us know about Maurice, we would have been in for him,” I said, and then kept walking. Immediately, Bill was on my shoulder. “Do you really mean it?” “Yes,” I replied. That’s how it all started.
Next we ran the idea past club owner David Murray. David puffed his cheeks out, then after 30 seconds there was an expletive and then a “Yeah, let’s do it.” There was some resistance within the club, with other directors feeling that the fans would desert us in droves in protest, but I argued that very quickly Maurice would win the right-minded majority over with his industry and goalscoring, and I was proved right on that score.
Was it a good thing? I believe it was, if you reflect on the players the club have signed since then who have gone on to become legends. I am glad that I brought that ridiculous unwritten rule that was holding the club back to a spectacular end.
The actual deal had to be done discreetly, of course. I flew to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and Bill McMurdo used Orly airport there, so that we wouldn’t be spotted together. We then met at a little cafe in Paris to agree the details over coffee. We unveiled Maurice at Ibrox and I dealt firmly with players in the squad who refused to welcome him, making it clear they wouldn’t be staying.
The knock-on effect of us signing Maurice demoralised Celtic. He’d come back from Nantes for a few days in Glasgow, there was a photograph taken with Billy McNeill, Celtic’s manager, and he was going back to sign for them. Next thing, he’s our player. It prevented them from signing one of the best Scottish players around at the time, so we weakened them, but the psychological damage lasted for years afterwards.
It wasn’t just Maurice Johnston. We signed Mark Walters, Rangers’ first black player for 50 years, and the late Avi Cohen, who was Jewish, too. I’d spent my adult life in England and had my eyes opened to a lot more than if I’d stayed at home and not gone ‘abroad’. Signing someone who was a different religion or different colour wasn’t an issue.
Not that it was always plain sailing being Maurice’s manager. His behaviour and form in his first season were exemplary, but things started to go wrong as we prepared for his second season, at a training camp in Tuscany. I had two of my kids over because I was separated at the time, and I had said to Walter to let the players have a drink that night. I was in my bed and I could hear a commotion going on, but I chose to ignore it and let Walter deal with it.
When I came down in the morning, Maurice looked like he had been in a fight with a Bengal tiger. His face was all scratched and bloodied. I asked Walter what happened to Maurice and he said there had been an argument between him and Mark Hateley, who we had signed that summer from Monaco. I don’t think they exchanged blows, there would only have been one winner there, but someone had been into Maurice’s room and taken the mattress off his bed and it was one of the old-fashioned metal spring ones, so when he came in after a few beers and his argument with Mark, he’d dived onto the bed face first and it was like a cheese grater on his skin.
Though many wanted us to be successful at Rangers, there were twice as many wanting me to fail. It was a case of living with that, and because of my attitude and personality I could deal with it. For example, I went to the Glasgow Cup final against Celtic at Hampden one year. I had a black three-quarter-length leather coat on and a black roll-neck jumper underneath, so I must have looked like something from a Milk Tray advert. It was effectively the reserve sides of the two clubs, but there were still about 40,000 people there.
As I was standing talking to someone outside, out of the corner of my eye I saw a kid being dragged towards me by his dad until they stood about two yards away from me. Then the dad pointed at me and said, “There you are, son, there’s the bad man.” So in his house, when I came on the telly, I was “the bad man”. The kid was pulling away from his dad as he said this. It made me chuckle at the time, but afterwards it made me quite sad.
I eventually left Rangers to return to Liverpool in April 1991. I was offered the manager’s job there twice by Peter Robinson, Liverpool’s vice-chairman, and turned it down twice after Kenny resigned.
I was banned from the touchline at the time in Scotland, I was separated from my wife and I was getting followed along the M8 by journalists looking to see what I was up to in Edinburgh of an evening. It all became unbearable.
The final straw was a second argument with a lady called Aggie Moffat, who worked behind the scenes at St Johnstone and sadly died recently. To start with, it was just about players banging their boots on the floor and leaving mud on it. She thought that wasn’t right, made a point of saying so, and it grew out of proportion from there. I just hoped she could laugh about it later and that I wasn’t the bad guy. I certainly laughed about it later. It was like being spoken to by my mum again, but it didn’t bother me that much.
Nevertheless, as the row escalated at the time, it almost led to me assaulting Geoff Brown, St Johnstone’s chairman, as he put his arm on me. A pal of mine called Ian Blyth from Edinburgh came up to that game and on the way back I said, “That’s it, I’ve had enough.” By that stage, I was only one wrong sentence away from exploding.
That’s how I’d become. It wasn’t good for me and it wasn’t good for Rangers. I phoned Peter Robinson the next day and said, “If the [Liverpool] job is still available, I’ll come and talk to you.” In retrospect, I shouldn’t have done that.
David Murray tried to persuade me not to leave for Liverpool when we were sitting on the wall outside my house in Edinburgh talking about it one evening. He told me to take a year off instead, to sit on the board with him and enjoy it, then I could go back as manager if I wanted to. We’d become really close. I’d come back from Glasgow between four and five and we’d go out for an early supper in Edinburgh at six, that was our routine from Monday to Friday.
We’d done the hard work, taken the club that hadn’t won the league for eight years, had gates of 15,000, and created a monster. I like to think what I left there, although Walter Smith certainly added to it afterwards, also provided the foundations for Rangers winning nine consecutive titles to match Jock Stein’s Celtic.
this also is part of his new book.....
When I was appointed as Rangers manager in 1986, I was asked if I would ever sign a Catholic. I replied, ‘Of course, I would.’ I could see all the press men raise their eyes to the sky, like they had heard it all before, but I meant it. My wife, at the time, was a Catholic, my kids had been brought up Catholic, so it was not an issue for me and I proved that by signing Maurice Johnston from Nantes in 1989 when Celtic thought he was about to join them.
I’d previously tried to sign Ray Houghton and John Collins, but had failed to persuade them. It was ridiculous. Given that Scotland is split 50–50, you were limiting yourself to picking from 50% of the kids that were out there.
It looked like Celtic had signed Maurice, until one day I made a passing remark to Bill McMurdo, his agent, in the foyer at Ibrox. “You should have let us know about Maurice, we would have been in for him,” I said, and then kept walking. Immediately, Bill was on my shoulder. “Do you really mean it?” “Yes,” I replied. That’s how it all started.
Next we ran the idea past club owner David Murray. David puffed his cheeks out, then after 30 seconds there was an expletive and then a “Yeah, let’s do it.” There was some resistance within the club, with other directors feeling that the fans would desert us in droves in protest, but I argued that very quickly Maurice would win the right-minded majority over with his industry and goalscoring, and I was proved right on that score.
Was it a good thing? I believe it was, if you reflect on the players the club have signed since then who have gone on to become legends. I am glad that I brought that ridiculous unwritten rule that was holding the club back to a spectacular end.
The actual deal had to be done discreetly, of course. I flew to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and Bill McMurdo used Orly airport there, so that we wouldn’t be spotted together. We then met at a little cafe in Paris to agree the details over coffee. We unveiled Maurice at Ibrox and I dealt firmly with players in the squad who refused to welcome him, making it clear they wouldn’t be staying.
The knock-on effect of us signing Maurice demoralised Celtic. He’d come back from Nantes for a few days in Glasgow, there was a photograph taken with Billy McNeill, Celtic’s manager, and he was going back to sign for them. Next thing, he’s our player. It prevented them from signing one of the best Scottish players around at the time, so we weakened them, but the psychological damage lasted for years afterwards.
It wasn’t just Maurice Johnston. We signed Mark Walters, Rangers’ first black player for 50 years, and the late Avi Cohen, who was Jewish, too. I’d spent my adult life in England and had my eyes opened to a lot more than if I’d stayed at home and not gone ‘abroad’. Signing someone who was a different religion or different colour wasn’t an issue.
Not that it was always plain sailing being Maurice’s manager. His behaviour and form in his first season were exemplary, but things started to go wrong as we prepared for his second season, at a training camp in Tuscany. I had two of my kids over because I was separated at the time, and I had said to Walter to let the players have a drink that night. I was in my bed and I could hear a commotion going on, but I chose to ignore it and let Walter deal with it.
When I came down in the morning, Maurice looked like he had been in a fight with a Bengal tiger. His face was all scratched and bloodied. I asked Walter what happened to Maurice and he said there had been an argument between him and Mark Hateley, who we had signed that summer from Monaco. I don’t think they exchanged blows, there would only have been one winner there, but someone had been into Maurice’s room and taken the mattress off his bed and it was one of the old-fashioned metal spring ones, so when he came in after a few beers and his argument with Mark, he’d dived onto the bed face first and it was like a cheese grater on his skin.
Though many wanted us to be successful at Rangers, there were twice as many wanting me to fail. It was a case of living with that, and because of my attitude and personality I could deal with it. For example, I went to the Glasgow Cup final against Celtic at Hampden one year. I had a black three-quarter-length leather coat on and a black roll-neck jumper underneath, so I must have looked like something from a Milk Tray advert. It was effectively the reserve sides of the two clubs, but there were still about 40,000 people there.
As I was standing talking to someone outside, out of the corner of my eye I saw a kid being dragged towards me by his dad until they stood about two yards away from me. Then the dad pointed at me and said, “There you are, son, there’s the bad man.” So in his house, when I came on the telly, I was “the bad man”. The kid was pulling away from his dad as he said this. It made me chuckle at the time, but afterwards it made me quite sad.
I eventually left Rangers to return to Liverpool in April 1991. I was offered the manager’s job there twice by Peter Robinson, Liverpool’s vice-chairman, and turned it down twice after Kenny resigned.
I was banned from the touchline at the time in Scotland, I was separated from my wife and I was getting followed along the M8 by journalists looking to see what I was up to in Edinburgh of an evening. It all became unbearable.
The final straw was a second argument with a lady called Aggie Moffat, who worked behind the scenes at St Johnstone and sadly died recently. To start with, it was just about players banging their boots on the floor and leaving mud on it. She thought that wasn’t right, made a point of saying so, and it grew out of proportion from there. I just hoped she could laugh about it later and that I wasn’t the bad guy. I certainly laughed about it later. It was like being spoken to by my mum again, but it didn’t bother me that much.
Nevertheless, as the row escalated at the time, it almost led to me assaulting Geoff Brown, St Johnstone’s chairman, as he put his arm on me. A pal of mine called Ian Blyth from Edinburgh came up to that game and on the way back I said, “That’s it, I’ve had enough.” By that stage, I was only one wrong sentence away from exploding.
That’s how I’d become. It wasn’t good for me and it wasn’t good for Rangers. I phoned Peter Robinson the next day and said, “If the [Liverpool] job is still available, I’ll come and talk to you.” In retrospect, I shouldn’t have done that.
David Murray tried to persuade me not to leave for Liverpool when we were sitting on the wall outside my house in Edinburgh talking about it one evening. He told me to take a year off instead, to sit on the board with him and enjoy it, then I could go back as manager if I wanted to. We’d become really close. I’d come back from Glasgow between four and five and we’d go out for an early supper in Edinburgh at six, that was our routine from Monday to Friday.
We’d done the hard work, taken the club that hadn’t won the league for eight years, had gates of 15,000, and created a monster. I like to think what I left there, although Walter Smith certainly added to it afterwards, also provided the foundations for Rangers winning nine consecutive titles to match Jock Stein’s Celtic.
