Why did better teams of the 90s never really make the impact in Europe we have in recent seasons?

WinkieWATP

WinkieWATP

Well-Known Member
92 apart we always tended to be pretty poor in Europe. This side have been described on here at times as possibly one of our worst ever sides yet they find themselves in European competition yet again.

Why did we fail to ever really make a mark in Europe when we we’re competing financially with far bigger clubs back then with a far stronger pool of players to choose from?
 
SDF said:
The three foreigner rule is the easy answer when it comes to 90-96 but the wrong one IMO. When we were shitting the bed against mediocre opposition like Levski, Gothenburg and AEK, Craig Brown was getting respectable results and punching above his weight with the national team.
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Bit too young at the time, but why didn't we sign the like of Gary McAllister, Don Hutchison, Colin Calderwood, Colin Hendry from England at that point?

Also, guys like Eoin Jess, Steven Glass?

We did sign Steven Wright, Duncan Ferguson, Derek McInnes and Alan McLaren who were some of the highly rated young players in Scotland. But should we have bought more?
 
The league was a piece of piss for us for much of the 1990s, so when we played in Europe we were caught unawares by teams much stronger than those we faced in Scotland.

We seemed to go into European ties against seemingly lesser opposition (Gothenburg for instance) with the mindset that we'd be playing against teams on a par with what we faced domestically, which was obviously nonsense. We were complacent.

On the other hand, when we faced big clubs like Ajax and Juventus, instead of raising our game and having a go we seemed to write ourselves off before we began.

So it was the worst of both worlds.

Perhaps also we became too obsessed with 9IAR and considered Europe nothing more than a bonus.

Walter was a wiser manager second time around. I would have liked to have seen the Walter Smith of 2007-11 in charge of that team we had in the mid 90s.
 
govanfront85 said:
Bit too young at the time, but why didn't we sign the like of Gary McAllister, Don Hutchison, Colin Calderwood, Colin Hendry from England at that point?

Also, guys like Eoin Jess, Steven Glass?

We did sign Steven Wright, Duncan Ferguson, Derek McInnes and Alan McLaren who were some of the highly rated young players in Scotland. But should we have bought more?
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McAllister was linked every season TBF and Walter would've signed him but he always seemed happy to settle for mediocrity with Leeds and Coventry.

Hutchison would've been a no brainer but he didn't actually play for Scotland until 1999 by which point we had a midfield of Albertz, Gio and Barry with Reyna following in a few weeks time.

Calderwood was dogshit IMO. Hendry wasn't as good as Gough or McLaren for me so we didn't need him when they were around and he was not suited to how we played when Advocaat signed him.

I've said for years that guys like Scott Booth would've done us a turn. Not a world beater but he knew how to score goals in Scotland and did ok at international level.
 
Most British teams were welded into 4-4-2 and European teams tactics were a bit further developed and probably better coached.

Incidentally Smith did change to a 3-5-2 in 96/97. Happy to be educated though.
 
SDF said:
McAllister was linked every season TBF and Walter would've signed him but he always seemed happy to settle for mediocrity with Leeds and Coventry.

Hutchison would've been a no brainer but he didn't actually play for Scotland until 1999 by which point we had a midfield of Albertz, Gio and Barry with Reyna following in a few weeks time.

Calderwood was dogshit IMO. Hendry wasn't as good as Gough or McLaren for me so we didn't need him when they were around and he was not suited to how we played when Advocaat signed him.

I've said for years that guys like Scott Booth would've done us a turn. Not a world beater but he knew how to score goals in Scotland and did ok at international level.
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Hutchison was a bit of a late bloomer as well wasn't he, left Liverpool in the early 90s and wasn't til late 90s where he became the player he was for Everton and Scotland.

Agree on hendry, wasn't sure about calderwood.

Lambert and burley are possibly others. But Lambert was shaped by his dortmund experience and that took him up a notch. We should have got him when he left dortmund. But we had signed thern that summer and hoped he would've made more of an impact. 3 foreigner rule was scrapped by then (1997) anyway wasn't it?
 
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govanfront85 said:
Hutchison was a bit of a late bloomer as well wasn't he, left Liverpool in the early 90s and wasn't til late 90s where he became the player he was for Everton and Scotland.

Agree on hendry, wasn't sure about calderwood.

Lambert and burley are possibly others. But Lambert was shaped by his dortmund experience and that took him up a notch. We should have got him when he left dortmund. But we had signed thern that summer and hoped he would've made more of an impact. 3 foreigner rule was scrapped by then (1997) anyway wasn't it?
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Lambert was a no brainer and we should've signed him especially given his fee was £1.7m and he was desperate to sign for us and wanted home.

He signs and we win ten. It's that simple.
 
I don't think there's an easy answer. The 05/06 team finished 3rd in the league and went a record number of games without a win yet got to the last 16 of the Champions League and were unlucky not to go further.

Frequently in the last 8 years we've been very good in Europe yet miles off it domestically.

Football is strange sometimes is my answer.
 
SDF said:
McAllister was linked every season TBF and Walter would've signed him but he always seemed happy to settle for mediocrity with Leeds and Coventry.

Hutchison would've been a no brainer but he didn't actually play for Scotland until 1999 by which point we had a midfield of Albertz, Gio and Barry with Reyna following in a few weeks time.

Calderwood was dogshit IMO. Hendry wasn't as good as Gough or McLaren for me so we didn't need him when they were around and he was not suited to how we played when Advocaat signed him.

I've said for years that guys like Scott Booth would've done us a turn. Not a world beater but he knew how to score goals in Scotland and did ok at international level.
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Was it not claimed that Smith was going to sign him if Gazza hadn’t signed?
 
Tactically we were nowhere near up to scratch. I love Walter, but he was a significantly better tactician the second time around. The older Walter might well have won a European trophy with the 90s teams. The younger one struggled in Europe (so much so it was often a criticism against him that was used to call for his sacking, as ridiculous as that sounds now).

Our fitness, professionalism and general approach to European football was also all wrong.

Bar that one magical season, the harsh truth might be that we were domestic flat track bullies that struggled against better opposition on the continent. Sort of like the scum these past few years, but a far, far better version.
 
WinkieWATP said:
92 apart we always tended to be pretty poor in Europe. This side have been described on here at times as possibly one of our worst ever sides yet they find themselves in European competition yet again.

Why did we fail to ever really make a mark in Europe when we we’re competing financially with far bigger clubs back then with a far stronger pool of players to choose from?
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We were too busy winning in Scotland to think about Europe
 
Coaching and tactics were just miles off it in the early 90s. The English European ban and the collapse of Iron Curtain nations had massively fuelled the rise of Italian, Spanish and French football in particular, but even the Dutch and Belgian leagues improved with more exposure. The UK had become more insular and less exposed in the 80s and that persisted through coaching until the mid 90s. Money and extensive immigration brought the UK back into line by the late 90s and since then most of the top tacticians and sports scientists have worked mostly in England and that’s where most Scottish based coaches learn their trade (including Barry).
 
GR6 said:
Most British teams were welded into 4-4-2 and European teams tactics were a bit further developed and probably better coached.

Incidentally Smith did change to a 3-5-2 in 96/97. Happy to be educated though.
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In the 92/93 campaign, three of the six games had only one of McCoist or Hateley starting with Durrant playing off them. Two of those were the draws against Marseille, which does make you wonder if we might have edged even one of those games were both available.

I agree with @SDF on this subject every time it comes up - we made a mess of it, rather than the rules holding us back. We'd call it the "8 diddies" rule yet it was players like McCoist, Gough, McCall, Goram, Brown, Durrant, Robertson that we were using, not exactly poor players. Injuries were pretty rife throughout that squad in the 90s, but I can't help but feel a large part of that was the lack of facilities and professionalism off the pitch that was our real issue at that level.

I've said this in another thread before - I read a short interview with Souness, when he was still a manager, where he said that had he stayed, we wouldn't have won nine in a row as he would have been more focused on Europe than domestically. We were a bit too happy with domestic success at that time and possibly not demanding enough when it came to Europe.

In 92/93 we were very close to making the final. The next two seasons saw us papped out in the first round by Levski Sofia and Athens respectively. Were modern day demands in place, I'm not sure Walter keeps his job.
 
fyo-von-bluenose said:
Tactically we were nowhere near up to scratch. I love Walter, but he was a significantly better tactician the second time around. The older Walter might well have won a European trophy with the 90s teams. The younger one struggled in Europe (so much so it was often a criticism against him that was used to call for his sacking, as ridiculous as that sounds now).

Our fitness, professionalism and general approach to European football was also all wrong.

Bar that one magical season, the harsh truth might be that we were domestic flat track bullies that struggled against better opposition on the continent. Sort of like the scum these past few years, but a far, far better version.
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It wasn't just better opposition though.

Walter's record in Europe after 92/93, including qualifiers, was:

93/94 - lost to Levski Sofia on away goals in the first round.

94/95 - Lost to Athens home and away in the first round.

95/96 - beat Famagust 1-0 on aggregate in the qualifying round, then 3 draws and 3 defeats in the Juventus, Dortmund, Steau group.

96/97 - beat Vladikavkaz both legs, then one win and five defeats in a goup with Auxerre, Ajax and Grasshoppers.

97/98 - beat a team from the Faroes, then out to Gothenburg, and then beat by Strasbourg in the UEFA Cup first round as the parachuting started that season.

With the money we were spending and the squad we had, not many of those listed above could be described as better than ourselves, and some not better than what we were facing domestically either.
 
strider said:
It wasn't just better opposition though.

Walter's record in Europe after 92/93, including qualifiers, was:

93/94 - lost to Levski Sofia on away goals in the first round.

94/95 - Lost to Athens home and away in the first round.

95/96 - beat Famagust 1-0 on aggregate in the qualifying round, then 3 draws and 3 defeats in the Juventus, Dortmund, Steau group.

96/97 - beat Vladikavkaz both legs, then one win and five defeats in a goup with Auxerre, Ajax and Grasshoppers.

97/98 - beat a team from the Faroes, then out to Gothenburg, and then beat by Strasbourg in the UEFA Cup first round as the parachuting started that season.

With the money we were spending and the squad we had, not many of those listed above could be described as better than ourselves, and some not better than what we were facing domestically either.
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Were teams like Levski and Athens any use? Well before my time.
 
prenzlauerbear said:
Were teams like Levski and Athens any use? Well before my time.
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They were decent to good teams arguably.

Sofia didn't make the group stage and Athens only picked up two points in their group.

We should have been mixing it with some of the best sides back then - we certainly paid wages and transfer fees that were comparable with many of the top clubs those days.
 
I think we underestimated teams from abroad who were a lot stronger than we knew

Nowadays any half decent player will be happy signing for someone like Burnley for £15m and a decent wage than stay and play in Europe for his hometown team like a Steaua Bucharest or Red star Belgrade
 
Back then only Champions were in the champions league. Plus our only real world class players were Laudrup and Gascoigne. As much as players like Ian Ferguson, Davie Robertson and Stuart McCall are leagends they were hardly what you can call top players.
 
The most basic answer is imo fairly simple. We had very little in terms of tactical flexibility during most of the 90's. Walter, who we all love unconditionally, at that point in his management career was very one dimensional. We were successful domestically because we had better players than the opposition and those better players would win us games with individual pieces of magic quite often.

Take that on to the European stage where you are playing against sides who are structured and quite often have players as good, if not better than our own and it's a recipe for disaster. It's often said that our tactics equated to "give it to Paul or Brian", and whilst that is clearly overly simplistic, the fact remains that these guys were utterly crucial to the way we played and opponents at that level were quite capable of nullifying 1 or 2 players easily. We didn't have others that would be able to take advantage of the increased space in other areas, or sadly a manager who was capable of identifying that and changing it up in order to get positive results. Walter, by the time he returned in 2007 was an infinitely better manager than the one who left in 1998.
 
fyo-von-bluenose said:
Tactically we were nowhere near up to scratch. I love Walter, but he was a significantly better tactician the second time around. The older Walter might well have won a European trophy with the 90s teams. The younger one struggled in Europe (so much so it was often a criticism against him that was used to call for his sacking, as ridiculous as that sounds now).

Our fitness, professionalism and general approach to European football was also all wrong.

Bar that one magical season, the harsh truth might be that we were domestic flat track bullies that struggled against better opposition on the continent. Sort of like the scum these past few years, but a far, far better version.
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Definitely part of the reason why we struggled. The tactics seemed to consist of getting Gazza and Laudrup on the ball, then getting the ball into the box for Hateley and McCoist. But foreign teams were much more savvy, and better all round, than what we faced domestically, and were better at shutting down our creative players. I remember the wee guy Kiriakov for Famagusta, who ended up at Aberdeen, doing a number on Gazza at Ibrox.

The 3 foreigner rule, and the fact we faced qualifiers early in the season with no parachute down, were factors too. As was the fact that by the time we had 5 titles in the bag, all eyes on were on getting 9.
 
Also, we were about 20 years behind most of the continent with the culture of "the team that drinks together wins together"

That might have worked in Scotland where the same culture was shared by all clubs, but it was utterly amateur hour in European terms. Football at the top level had been treating it's players as athletes for a long, long time and alcohol consumption has no part whatsoever belonging within that culture. We were going in to games with one hand tied behind our back due to this.
 
Aren't we ignoring a pretty obvious point here?

The 90s Rangers team was competing almost exclusively in the Champions League, every season other than 1998–99 when we played in the UEFA Cup.

The success of recent years has all been in the Europa League which has some decent teams but it's still the secondary competition. It's harder to compete in the Champions League because it's the very top level of the sport.

The stark contrast between the levels of either competition was fairly clear when you look at how we did in the Champions League in 2022/23 just months after the Europa final run.

Yes we lost a couple of players and yes we underperformed as a team but it seems churlish to pretend there isn't a gap between the Europa League and the Champions League. A club of our size can have real success in the Europa but it's always going to be much harder against the very best teams on the planet.
 
We were very much built on our quality players turning on the style, in Europe they knew how to shut us down and we weren't defensive enough.

Also we had years of just CL football the odd uefa cup entry might have seen us go deep and pick up the european experience the team lacked,

Also the 8 diddies rule didn't help
 
Zapp Brannigan said:
Absolute naivety and lack of moving with the continent in terms of professionalism, tactics, fitness.
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This.

On a very basic level for me, the theory was fill the team with the very best players you can and pretty much let them play. Very little was done in those days in terms of tactics, shape etc.
Of course it worked in our league but you quickly became unstuck against teams who were far more tactically astute than we were.
 
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mac192 said:
Aren't we ignoring a pretty obvious point here?

The 90s Rangers team was competing almost exclusively in the Champions League, every season other than 1998–99 when we played in the UEFA Cup.

The success of recent years has all been in the Europa League which has some decent teams but it's still the secondary competition. It's harder to compete in the Champions League because it's the very top level of the sport.

The stark contrast between the levels of either competition was fairly clear when you look at how we did in the Champions League in 2022/23 just months after the Europa final run.

Yes we lost a couple of players and yes we underperformed as a team but it seems churlish to pretend there isn't a gap between the Europa League and the Champions League. A club of our size can have real success in the Europa but it's always going to be much harder against the very best teams on the planet.
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Yes and no. Clearly your point stands in terms of facts. But context is key. The gap between champions league and uefa Cup was nowhere near as big as it is now 30 years ago. 3 decades of inflated broadcasting rights and the rich getting richer etc has seen a quality gap grow between the elite dozen or so clubs competing in the champions league season after season and everyone else.
 
Rt. Hon. Bearman said:
The league was a piece of piss for us for much of the 1990s, so when we played in Europe we were caught unawares by teams much stronger than those we faced in Scotland.

We seemed to go into European ties against seemingly lesser opposition (Gothenburg for instance) with the mindset that we'd be playing against teams on a par with what we faced domestically, which was obviously nonsense. We were complacent.

On the other hand, when we faced big clubs like Ajax and Juventus, instead of raising our game and having a go we seemed to write ourselves off before we began.

So it was the worst of both worlds.

Perhaps also we became too obsessed with 9IAR and considered Europe nothing more than a bonus.

Walter was a wiser manager second time around. I would have liked to have seen the Walter Smith of 2007-11 in charge of that team we had in the mid 90s.
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Unfortunately this is correct. The attitude of some of the players was also poor. Walter 2.0 would have hunted Gazza and the Goalie for their off field antics. His second time around there was much more structure to the team. There is an interview with Archie Knox where he openly stated that ( paraphrasing) Laudrup and Gascoigne were given their head to do what they wanted, within the structure of the team. This worked against Raith Rovers, but not when getting humiliated by Juventus or others.
 
Bearskin said:
This.

On a very basic level for me, the theory was fill the team with the very best players you can and pretty much let them play. Very little was done in those days in terms of tactics, shape etc.
Of course it worked in our league but you quickly became unstuck against teams who were far more tactically astute than we were.
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We didn't even have a dedicated training facility until Advocaat insisted upon it. Minibus from Ibrox to public parks to train! We were very much a Sunday League club relative to most of the continent.
 
steve1873 said:
We didn't even have a dedicated training facility until Advocaat insisted upon it. Minibus from Ibrox to public parks to train! We were very much a Sunday League club relative to most of the continent.
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For many of the younger generation being used to seeing clips now of our Training centre etc, that will be difficult to comprehend.
When we watched the videos from the 90s era of training, you can see the level we were at.
As much as we had developed more by that stage of course, I think that Gerrard arriving brought us up far more levels again with some of the professionalism and set up he implemented in the background which all came from elite level training facilities.
 
I've always said Scottish football is probably the worst possible preparation for European football. When we dominated domestically, we were generally pretty dire in Europe, just as that lot are now. Most teams from most countries can take the take the way they play week in week out domestically, seamlessly into Europe. For Scottish clubs, it's a completely different beast. We've never really been able to get the balance right.
 
Bigbluebear said:
Did you hear Allys commentary on Thursday "get the ball to Cerny"

Well it was the "Get the ball to Brian" approach when he was a player in the 90s.

Tactically inept.
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Don't think it's quite the same thing.

McCoist was wanting the ball played to Cerny when he was in space and it was the better option, rather than the the player take a shot from 30 yards or try and beat 3 defenders.

But yes we were tactically inept in the 90s in Europe.
 
strider said:
It wasn't just better opposition though.

Walter's record in Europe after 92/93, including qualifiers, was:

93/94 - lost to Levski Sofia on away goals in the first round.

94/95 - Lost to Athens home and away in the first round.

95/96 - beat Famagust 1-0 on aggregate in the qualifying round, then 3 draws and 3 defeats in the Juventus, Dortmund, Steau group.

96/97 - beat Vladikavkaz both legs, then one win and five defeats in a goup with Auxerre, Ajax and Grasshoppers.

97/98 - beat a team from the Faroes, then out to Gothenburg, and then beat by Strasbourg in the UEFA Cup first round as the parachuting started that season.

With the money we were spending and the squad we had, not many of those listed above could be described as better than ourselves, and some not better than what we were facing domestically either.
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That 96/97 campaign was embarrassing, went to all on the KP Loyal, pumped rotten by Grasshoppers and Ajax.
 
WinkieWATP said:
92 apart we always tended to be pretty poor in Europe. This side have been described on here at times as possibly one of our worst ever sides yet they find themselves in European competition yet again.

Why did we fail to ever really make a mark in Europe when we we’re competing financially with far bigger clubs back then with a far stronger pool of players to choose from?
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Because todays tournaments are designed to last longer and keep more teams playing deeper into the tournaments
 
Zapp Brannigan said:
Absolute naivety and lack of moving with the continent in terms of professionalism, tactics, fitness.
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This, as others have said is spot on.

I’d also add that during 9IAR we never seemed to ever have our first choice XI all fit at the same time, and our squad depth wasn’t all that great either, which seems a strange thing to say.

Example - second leg against Levski in 93 we have Ally Maxwell, Fraser Wishart and David Hagen in the starting line XI
 
The 90s we were horrible barring 1 season.

Constantly beaten off poor teams the current 1 would either pump or get the job done ( Servette and Alashkert ) good recent examples of tricky games we manage now but in 90s would put us out comfortably.

Advocaat improved it but we never threatened anything and made a mess of a good couple of opportunities then ( Dortmund,Kaiserslauten)

I know what gets labelled at the current side but the last few years Europe has been fantastic. Tav,Borna,Kent,Morelos are up there with our best ever European perfomers something the brilliant team of 90s ) barring Durrant Albertz Gio possibly who knew how to play in Europe.
 
Zapp Brannigan said:
Absolute naivety and lack of moving with the continent in terms of professionalism, tactics, fitness.
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It can’t really be denied that for all that Walter knew how to set up teams to sweep all before them domestically, in Europe our lack of composure, preparation, fitness and belief was all too often exposed as inadequate.

And yet it’d be unfair to just blame Walter. Advocaat, despite ushering in a clear improvement on all those aspects, still should have achieved more for the money spent.

I think there’s a mindset that’s ingrained itself in the dressing room since Gerrard that has the belief that we’re actually a pretty decent team in Europe.

That never used to be there previously where we’d take to the field already looking bamboozled by these foreigners and their continental ways.

It used to drive me up the wall quite frankly.
 
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