"Managers have a shelf life at a club." Those were the words of
Alex McLeish after another awful display by Rangers Football
Club. In this interview he seemed to be accepting that his time
with Rangers is up. Since then Rangers have staggered to a lucky
draw in Porto and another humiliating draw against Falkirk. Alex
is not a bad manager. In fact, I think that he has done an
excellent job during most of his time in charge of Rangers.
Things change, though. Sometimes, a situation just gets out of
control and you need to face that fact and make a change.
Everyone now assumes that Tuesday's match with Inter Milan will be the
last in which Alex is the manager. However, even if this is the
case, the situation has been allowed to drag on for far too long.
David Murray must hold up his hand and accept that he has made a mess
of the situation at Rangers. In October it became apparant that
Alex McLeish was not going to be able to turn round a terrible start to
the Scottish League season. The Rangers players were low on
confidence, playing badly and looked like they expected the manager to
get sacked. The point of no return had been passed. The
players looked poor to mediocre and Alex had tried everything that he
knew. It wasn't working. This was substantially the same
set of players that had miraculously won the Scottish title in May so
there is undoubtedly some quality in the team. However, the
performances of the team this season have been dreadful.
There were many people saying that November was going to be the crunch
time for Alex McLeish. In fact, as far as I am concerned, October
sealed his fate. Two wins out of six very winnable games left us
looking for miracles all over the place. The beginning of
November saw Rangers going in to an extremely tough set of games.
The miracles were there for the taking but failed to materialise.
Rangers did not win a single game in November and only the draw in
Porto was an acceptable result. We went in to November hoping for
the best but knew that what materialised was not only possible but
likely.
After the disgraceful surrender at Parkhead in the League Cup it should
have been obvious even to a non-football man like David Murray that a
change of manager was needed. Instead we got the ridiculous
decision to review the situation in December. This was a
shockingly bad decision that has damaged both Rangers and Alex
McLeish. With each passing game Alex's reputation gets further
damaged. Rangers now have no chance of winning the league and
will struggle to win a place in Europe through their league
position. Today's shocking collapse against Falkirk brings the
run of games without a victory to nine. This is unprecedented in
Rangers 132 year history and would have been avoided if David Murray
had made the appropriate decision in October.
Hopefully, Rangers will win on Tuesday and become the first Scottish
team to qualify from a Champions League group. Alex McLeish can
then walk away with this achievement intact and Rangers can move
on. Win, lose or draw, the manager must change on
Wednesday. Anything else is unthinkable.