Graeme Souness has warned that Derek McInnes will only get one opportunity to win the title back from Celtic at Rangers, and that a misfiring recruitment department could wreck his chances.
McInnes is still settling into the Ibrox hot seat, a position Souness occupied 40 years ago when the club was similarly starved of league success. Souness transformed Scottish football by winning the title in his first season, backed by high-profile signings such as England skipper Terry Butcher and goalkeeper Chris Woods.
Recruitment Concerns
Souness suspects the task facing McInnes may be even greater unless the men leading the summer rebuild provide him with the quality needed to knock Celtic off their perch. McInnes has already brought in eight players since leaving Hearts, with Japanese winger Daisuke Yokota expected to make it nine within 24 hours.
Souness believes McInnes, who came within minutes of winning last season's title with Hearts, will know that another near miss will not earn him a second chance at Ibrox. “I don’t think he’s turned up to be told it’s OK if you finish second,” he said. “No Rangers manager would be told, ‘Oh it’s OK if you finish second’. It doesn’t work like that.”
Under Par Recruitment
Souness says McInnes will be relying on a recruitment team, spearheaded by Dan Purdy and Robbie Thelwell, which has proved unfit for purpose. “You can talk about the structures of a football club but the most important thing you have to get right is what goes on on the pitch,” he said. “I think Rangers, in their recruitment, for a long period of time, have been under par.”
“You can have every other part of your club working perfectly but if the Saturday isn’t right, none of that matters. You can have all your club underneath what happens on a Saturday being average. But if it’s working on the pitch, everything is rosey in the garden. The most important thing at a club is recruitment and Rangers have not been very good at it in recent history. Whoever is responsible for that should hold their hand up and say, ‘It’s down to me’. But you don’t get that in football.”
Pressure of the Old Firm
Asked if McInnes ought to be concerned about not getting the help he needs, Souness responded: “I’m sure when he walked in the door all the questions that you are asking would have been asked. If I had been a manager walking in I would have been, ‘Right, what’s the story? Do you have money? And who is going to make those decisions?’.”
“That’s why I’m a dinosaur because I couldn’t work under the modern way most clubs seem to do where someone else is responsible for the most important part of the job at a club – and that’s recruitment. If you get that right then everything else will follow. If you don’t get that right then you’ll be changing your manager on a regular basis.”
“It used to be called Latin disease when I was a player, where managers got very little time. But that’s in the British game now as well. And it’s amplified here in Glasgow because finishing second is deemed a failure. That’s the price on the ticket if you’re managing one of the Old Firm. You either accept that on day one or you’re in for a very difficult period.”
McInnes's Background
“Rangers have had a lot of managers in recent years because that’s the nature of the business. Derek obviously knows the football club having been there as a player. He knows Scottish football having been around the Scottish scene. He was successful at Hearts last season because if you ask any of their supporters what their year was like, they’ll say it was disappointing in the end but they’d a great season. That doesn’t apply at Rangers. So although all those boxes are ticked, he’ll find himself under enormous pressure that he’s never had before simply because of the nature of the job in Glasgow.”
“Obviously he knows the task in front of him. He did a great job at Hearts but the lure of Rangers was clearly just too much. I can understand that too, because it was too much for me. I was leading my life in Italy, opening my curtains to the Mediterranean. And more than once I asked myself, ‘What the f*** have I done?’.”
Last Season's Title Race
Souness then adopted a more diplomatic position when asked if he believed previous Rangers boss Danny Rohl was ‘unlucky’ not to land the title in a thrilling end to last season. He said: “I’m choosing my words carefully here but I think luck wasn’t with them last year when I look at decisions happening in other places. That’s all I would like to say on that but I think you know where I’m going.”
Souness stepped away from Ibrox in 1991 after five years in charge, with Walter Smith then stepping into the job. Smith bought McInnes as a player from Morton four years later. And it was Smith who first earmarked McInnes as a potential Rangers manager.
Legacy and Expectations
Souness said: “You don’t get a job in football management because it’s going well. That is rare. Walter took over a team on the way up. He realised that and added to it to have some unbelievable success. No recent Rangers manager had taken over a team that was doing that, it’s very simple. And every one of them had been under enormous pressure. Finishing second just isn’t good enough. Not here. But he [McInnes] will know that having been a player at the club, and had success. He knows what success feels like.”
Graeme Souness was promoting Premier Sports’ coverage of Scottish football including over 80 matches from the Premiership, Premier Sports Cup and Scottish Cup. Fans can watch an entire season for only £99 using promo code FITBA26.
