Graeme Souness, bad history and the importance of Rangers vision

One of my more recent heroes pushed the point even further. Dominic Sandbrook is the leading voice on modern British history and is one half of the best podcast to come out of the UK that isn’t affiliated with David Edgar. In an early episode of The Rest is History, Sandbrook countered the prevailing wisdom that we should never forget history, lest the future be destroyed by those who do. On the contrary he argued, people remember too much of it and, as a result, can never escape the never-ending cycle of grievance and bloodshed. We may be better off as a society, if we were able to forget a lot more.

Okay then, much to ponder with the study of real, grown-up history but the relative trivialities of sport, football and our own clubs - subjects to which I devote more and more of my free time - is surely untouched by such intellectual trouble. Are we really all wasting our time working on the past? What is there that can possibly go wrong by us visiting there, the foreign country that it so definitely is?

Nothing at all as long as we find the right balance. Nostalgia has never had it so good with so many outlets now providing such a warm destination for the footballing memory. The attraction is obvious: not only are great games and moments relived, the dopamine level is increased by connections with a time when we had more hair, a faster metabolism and when the best years of our lives in front of us rather than behind us, which is where they are. Frequent visits there are absolutely fine - like enjoyable holidays for the soul - but the danger arises when people try to set up home there and thus constantly view the current situation through that faded perspective, judging their team’s present fortunes by the standards of a time that no longer exists. Centuries earlier, physicians treated nostalgia like an acute homesickness which isn’t actually too far off the mark. Those who dwell too long in the past are left saddened by the wish to return home only to realise that’s exactly where they are, it’s just that it now looks very different.

There’s also nothing wrong with the telling of interesting life stories and, more importantly, telling them well. More and more forgotten or almost unknown footballing biographies are being brought to life for the sheer love of it. Sport always provides a rich seam from which to mine glory and tragedy in equal measure. The kind of lives that any of us could have had were it not for that knee injury or, indeed, a completely different genetic makeup. Great storytelling is always worth the print but when is it history and when is it light entertainment? Even Sandbrook was cautioned whilst at Cambridge for being too heavy on narrative and light on analysis but he ignored the warnings and instead found the perfect blend. There is always a thesis at play in his work but it is brought to life so vividly by the prose, whilst never forgetting the central point of any historical writing: to explain why something happened when and how it did, not just the latter.

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And this is the trap that all fans who write about their own club must be wary of. Biography can so quickly turn into hagiography, passion for a club manifests itself as teenage love letters. Where is the harm in that, you may ask. Fans will be fans, after all. Well, whether we like it or not, a club’s past - and how it is presented and remembered - really does impact the present. Fan expectations are heavily shaped by their past experience and how they define their club by what they believe that they have inherited. Inflating the mythology of what has come before - pages and pages without criticism and no reference to the reality of opinion and passionate rancour even through the best of times - creates further pressure on the present incumbents to hit that romanticised and impossible perfection.

An example of bad history raised its head near the end of the season as hearts began to flutter about the return, in some capacity - any capacity - of Graeme Souness. Whether as a Director of Football, a role for which he has little modern experience, or even simply as a club ambassador, there was an immediate connection drawn - as there was when he was part of a group who were interested in buying the club in 2012 - between the man and the past. Souness equals success and therefore any involvement is a no-brainer. This is big talk for an author who chose the man himself to be on his front cover, you might say. However, if the point wasn’t made clearly enough in Revolution, then I shall try and simplify it here: the main character in the story of the Rangers Revolution in 1986, was 1986 itself. Souness and David Holmes were the perfect men in the perfect situation and their role was played with skill and courage but it was that exact opportunity which underlined the whole story.

Graeme Souness (centre) is unveiled as Rangers player/manager. He poses with Rangers directors (l to r) Campbell Ogilvie (secretary), Freddie Fletcher, David Holmes, John Paton, Jack Gillespie and Hugh Adams (Image: SNS)

Rangers weren’t able and willing to exploit the world the way Souness demanded them to in the years prior to 1986. It wouldn’t have been the success that it was. And Souness wasn’t choked the way his successor would later be in the 1990s, by the strict limitations of UEFA’s rule on foreign players. Timing is everything and it is getting the whole story right that helps us understand the present set of circumstances better, not the cartoon version of superheroes, which is far more seductive. It was Jerry Seinfeld who joked that "when men are growing up reading about Batman, Superman, Spiderman, these aren’t fantasies. These are options". Complete agency is something that fans are always so willing to bestow on those who either provide us with success or fail us completely. For too many, they’re either totally to blame for defeat or completely responsible for triumph.

If it isn’t Souness himself, then it’s the return of someone like him that is so often pined for, although it is difficult to argue that anyone quite like him that has taken charge of that particular hot seat. Toughness, a big personality and an incessant drive are boxes that are always required to be ticked off. The same goes for another job that continues to decrease in relevance throughout the sport but still holds firm at Ibrox: the captain. Despite personal numbers that could safely mount a case for the defendant leading by example, for thousands of fans James Tavernier is not a Rangers captain. Specific alternatives are hard to prise out of them but they know what one looks like. The picture is hazy but you can just about make out a bandaged head, weeping blood onto a hitherto white England jersey. Terry Butcher was a sensational signing, an ideal leader for Rangers and a man who really did help influence an underperforming group of players but he was also rightly considered as one of the best central defenders on the planet and was only at Ibrox because British football was being turned on its head. Once again, a player of that stature who could provide that kind of impact walked through a window of opportunity that has long since closed. The latter part is just as crucial as the first and there is now no point in pining for a Butcher, Gough or Greig, when we don’t currently have the door big enough for them to fit through.

READ MORE: Why following Rangers invokes the Myth of Sisyphus

Another big challenge in adding nuance to any sporting history is that, by definition, sport demands to be brutally simplistic. You have winners and losers, sugar and shite, those who are first and then the rest. To borrow once more from Brooklyn’s funniest man, as he showed an audience how close the end of a 100m race can be by moving his head a fraction back: "Greatest man in the world. Never heard of him". How it all happens is irrelevant, there are no pictures on the scorecard and all of that. Perhaps then, it is our job to add them. I write this poolside, after the first Ashes test of the summer which turned out to be a thrillingly tight contest. Both England and Australia made big tactical calls from the first ball and ultimately the match was decided by a couple of dropped chances. In the end, Australia’s defensive caution was suddenly presented as calm, professional maturity. Had the catches been taken, England’s naivety and superficiality would have been a case of adventure and risk getting its just reward. Even seconds after a contest is over, history was defined in its most simplistic way.

Football is full of those moments too, of course. For Rangers, perhaps none more so than Dougie Arnott’s second goal at Fir Park in 1991 that put Motherwell 3-0 up and, with only one game left to play, meant that Rangers dropped into second place.

Arnott's goal (Image: SNS)

It was a result of Walter Smith’s wild decision to wave his players on to grab a goal when a 2-0 defeat would have kept them hanging onto top spot. Arnott had scored a carbon copy minutes before and the risk of another was high with so much space being left open. With Rangers now underdogs and needing to win instead of seeing out a draw at home to Aberdeen, the dynamic shifted and the rest is history. From a shambles of his own making, Smith had created an early opportunity to show that he was the man for the big moment. If he had shut up shop at Fir Park, Rangers would have likely lost by trying to hold on against a rampant Aberdeen side, nine in a row would have been ended early, Smith may have been more of an interim manager and the club may well have planned for a longer future whilst they were generating cash like they never would again. There are margins in the mythology and it does us all good to appreciate them from time to time, lest we create gods of men.

No, there are always lessons to be learned in any kind of history. Nothing was inevitable nor was it solely at the whim of great men. It is almost always a story of ability, chance and opportunity. A sporting contest can only ever have three outcomes, but thousands of reasons for how it gets there. Adding layers to our understanding of the past could perhaps go some way to reducing our simplistic view of the present otherwise the pub idiot who likes to tell you that there’s only one tactic worth knowing - just win - dominates the sporting conversation. The desired result is a given. How our heroes got there - and how they can in the future - is always the tricky part.

Where it can be difficult to appreciate the context of the past, it shouldn’t be a problem for the present. If the 20th century belonged to Rangers - and it did, with over 20 more major honours than their great rivals - then the 21st so far belongs to Celtic. As the new season and all of its associated challenges draws near, one final flaw of history should be remembered: that we all have professorships in hindsight. Fallacies such as ‘oh of course Rangers were always going to spend big in England as they did in 1986’ are still all too common. There was no certainty about it. The board had to be convinced by Souness that English football was ripe for exploitation. No other Scottish club or had done the season before, when the same conditions applied. It wasn’t an open goal waiting to be scored. What looks obvious now, wasn’t then but by the same token, what looked grim then, doesn’t now. Mainly because Souness and Holmes shared another characteristic that is needed now more than ever since 1986: vision.

On and off the field, Rangers need to see a future that others can’t and then lead the way. That window might not be as big as it was in the mid-eighties - it probably will never be again - but the ability to prise it open is key to ensuring that this old story continues to produce the glory that it once did.

It would just do us all good to appreciate that it won’t be simple and just as importantly, that it never, ever was.