This is the second part of Martyn Ramsay's epic story of the 1987/88 season. The first can be read here.
"Physio Phil Boersma came on and even then I told him I was fine. He helped me to my feet", wrote Terry Butcher in his autobiography. "I thought it was easing, so I stamped my foot to check. Bad mistake. I knew then it was broken because I felt my tibia move. I collapsed to the floor again."
It is completely unfathomable that Butcher was allowed to test that out and even more so that he, like the major Rangers injury the following season, was not securely placed on a stretcher but instead was carried off by Boersma, around the pitch side, in excruciating pain. He would receive an injection for that of course, as he felt every movement inside his leg when the inflatable yellow sock was pumped up around it, before being rushed to Ross Hall hospital to get plastered up. The initial prognosis was encouraging as it was just the tibia and not the fibula that had been broken, with Butcher talking about returning for the European Cup quarter-final second leg or by the end of the season at least, so he could be back for England duty. Although he worked tirelessly in rehab at Lilleshall, it would be to no avail. The bone hadn’t bonded well enough and there was still a sign of a crack that would not withstand that kind of pressure. Butcher’s season was over and, according to management and fans of that vintage, so it was true of Rangers. Whenever asked about 1987/88 in later years, Souness references this injury quickly and it is what Smith referred to when he believed that they had almost gone back to square one. Richard Gough was all of a sudden no longer a prize addition that strengthened the Rangers defence, he was now an expensive replacement. Not only had they been unable to build upon strong foundations, the keystone has been taken away.
It really was a seismic loss. It could be argued that Butcher was an even more totemic figure than Souness due to his consistent influence on the pitch. As the Skol League Cup final had shown, Gough and Roberts were not a comfortable pairing and, although Roberts did a fine stand-in role and Gough would go on to be the most decorated Rangers captain of all time, neither had the leadership stature that Butcher could command at the time. Rangers would lose 1-0 that night - a very cheap Willie Miller header that you can’t help but feel was inextricably related to the loss of Butcher 25 minutes before - which left them further behind in the title race.
Some superficial similarities with the previous campaign stand out as Rangers responded to a November loss to Aberdeen with six wins and a draw before heading into the New Year Old Firm game, five points behind and with a game in hand. Those stats were just an eerie quirk. Rangers were at full strength a year ago whereas, in addition to the obvious loss of Butcher, Derek Ferguson was missing, Cooper started but was subbed after 26 minutes and Chris Woods had to go off in the second half with a broken rib. Souness, imperious before, was a shadow on this occasion, giving the ball away twice in the first half that could have easily led to Celtic goals. Also, this match was to be played at Parkhead, where Rangers had not won since 1980. It was a somewhat predictable display, overwhelmed from the off and the two goals from McAvennie - one before halftime and then a late header when Roberts was in goal - simply rubber-stamped a dominant Celtic performance. Once more, it was possible that Souness’s frustration at his own performance was externalised in the dressing room. "We lost 2-0 but we were fortunate to escape with that. It was a shocking performance", wrote Ally McCoist. "I hadn’t played well. The team hadn’t played well and Souness was not a happy man. I was soon receiving the sharp end of his tongue. ‘You were the worst man out there', he barked at me. ‘No, I wasn’t’ I hit back. ‘You were.’ Well, I’ve never seen him so angry, and he had every right to be. I shouldn’t have said that. I was so sick at the way that the game had gone that I just couldn’t bite my tongue. The manager and Walter Smith tore my game to shreds, and I was left to reflect that sometimes silence is golden." However bad the performance was and however bleak the league aspirations now looked, shamefully it wasn’t even the worst part about the day.
On the Rangers team bus that made the short journey to the east end of Glasgow was a new singing who was just about to be pitched in to make the most hostile debut imaginable. In order to pass the time Mark Walters flicked through the newspapers where he found a message, just for him. A Celtic fan was pictured with boxes of fruit with the accompanying message ‘This is for Mark’. "We had a good laugh about it on the back of the bus on route (sic) to Celtic Park", Walters wrote in his autobiography "but the reality was this clown had just spent 30 quid on fruit just to throw at me. Instead of feeding his family, he’d spend all that money on boxes of bananas to throw at a black guy! Pathetic." Walters was the first black player to play in the Scottish Premier Division and the reception he got at Parkhead was febrile. Boos echoed around the ground from his first touch to his last and the bananas, and much worse, were thrown his way whenever he took his place on the left wing. "I expected the bananas, but there was also a pig’s foot, darts and golf balls. They absolutely crossed the line when they started throwing objects like that." The coverage, however, was remarkably silent. BBC Scotland showed the bananas and Archie Macpherson merely commented that the second half was "slightly held up while some assortment of fruit was removed from the pitch" without ever providing the context. There was still no mention of it in his post-match piece to camera but earlier this year, he apologised for failing to grasp the racial significance on the day. "I missed the implication of the banana throwing. Yes, I looked down and I saw them lying on the edge of the pitch, but no more than that. It didn’t grab me, it didn’t make any impact on me and I regret it to this day. I’m not sure how long after the game I reflected on what it meant for Scottish football. It took me by surprise. Celtic has a great tradition of being open to everybody and they were shocked by it." Given that banana throwing was already an issue in England - Walters admitted that he expected that part - and with the intent made clear in the newspapers on the morning of the game, it’s astonishing that Macpherson - so convinced though he may have been of Celtic’s commitment to the principles of equality - wasn’t aware why this was happening.
The press coverage wasn’t much better. It barely got a mention in the match reports and when it did elsewhere, the levels were downplayed. "Only a few stupid fans greeted him with chants and fruit throwing", one report said. "But Walters cooly lobbed a piece of fruit back over the touchline." The Sunday Mail, in a six-sentence piece, attributed the fruit and monkey chants to "a handful of childish fans", implying that the acoustics at Parkhead must have provided sensational levels of natural amplification. There is also a degree of Scottish exceptionalism about the short note, comparing this with the wider levels of thuggery and abuse in England. "Lets’s hope all Scottish fans live up to their boast. That they’re better behaved than their counterparts down south." The fact was that the assumed levels of tolerance and respect hadn’t yet been tested in Scotland and the early signs were not good. Walters wrote about the warm response that he received at his first home match at Ibrox - where he set up two goals in a 3-0 win over Morton - but even then a Rangers fan was removed and banned for life for racial abuse. The matter really came to a head on 16 January when Rangers made the trip to Tynecastle. Walters was exceptional throughout. Pacy, skilful and direct. He won the Rangers penalty in a tight 1-1 draw and was unfortunate not to grab a decisive second after some incredible control from a long Nicky Walker ball that took out his marker, Hugh Burns, with breathtaking ease as yet again more fruit rained down on the new Rangers winger whenever he went to take corners. Deputy captain Graham Roberts came out publicly to protect Walters but he shrugged it off at the time and made mention that part of it was simply footballing rivalry as Graeme Souness was also booed whenever he touched the ball. Later however, he revealed that this was an attempt at self-preservation. "I would be lying if I said I didn’t have second thoughts. Rangers are a massive institution but were they worth losing an eye for? When I look back and recall seeing the darts lying at the side of the park, it still scares me." It was only now that the media started to find the courage to be introspective. The Evening Times editorial said "that was a disgraceful display of racism that shames Scotland. At Burns Suppers up and down the country just now, Scots are extolling the brotherhood of man. Yet yobbos unfit to lace his boots pillory Walters because of the colour of his skin." Macpherson too found it easier in his post-match monologue at Tynecastle than at Parkhead, to hold up one of the bananas that was still trackside and ask "do we really want a piece of fruit to become a blot on Scottish football? Give it up huh?" If the league form wasn’t the same as the previous season, sadly the Scottish Cup form was.
The much-delayed third round tie with Raith Rovers was a struggle - a 0-0 draw where it was Rangers hanging on for much of the later period - but was followed very quickly by a more routine 4-1 win in the Ibrox replay. Dunfermline lay in wait on 20 February and they had been generous opponents for Rangers that season, with three wins and a draw already and four goals being scored in each of those victories. Perhaps it was the familiar face of Dave McKellar in goal, who had such an outstanding afternoon for Hamilton on that fateful day at Ibrox, that generated some nerves. The Fife side were ahead in only five minutes and it came through a freak goal. Former Celtic winger Mark Smith beat Jan Bartram down the right side and before the ball could bobble out of play, he swung in a high, looping cross. Woods, not long back from injury, should have done better as it sailed over his head and into the corner. Like the infamous Hamilton match, Rangers bombarded Dunfermline with Roberts, Durrant and Gough all going close. Already under some degree of pressure, once again it would be a lack of discipline that would simply create more of it as John Brown was sent off for a needless off-the-ball charge on Smith right before halftime. It was the twelfth red card in Souness’s eighteen-month reign and it would take four years for Rangers to chalk up that number again. A clever corner left John Watson with a simple header to make it 2-0 soon after the break and Rangers toiled thereafter, Richard Gough being launched up front as an auxiliary target man to no avail. Rangers were once more out of the cup before the clocks changed but, with the league looking like an outside bet at best, at least there was Europe.
READ MORE: Rangers 1987/88: The tumult and turmoil of Graeme Souness' second season Part I
It was the players who left Ibrox during the winter that created the real questions later on. After just nine goals in four months, Souness decided that he had seen enough of Mark Falco to know that he wasn’t going to fill the Hateley-shaped hole in his heart and he was sold to QPR in early December. Less than two weeks later saw the loss of another striker that was considerably more damaging. Speculation about Robert Fleck’s future had been rumbling on for more than a month whilst he was scoring five goals in eight league games but, with the departure of Falco, all now looked settled. On 15 December, before Rangers threw away a point at home to Dunfermline, Fleck told the Evening Times that "all that transfer stuff is firmly behind me and I’m sure I can go on from here and score a few more…I have re-established the partnership with Ally and there’s more to come." The following day’s headline read "Why Fleck Had To Go" as he finalised a £600,000 transfer to Norwich City. Souness was clear that this was not his intention, he had offered him a new deal worth more than Norwich could match but that Fleck "wanted to leave Glasgow, not Glasgow Rangers, for personal reasons and he insisted it was best for everyone if he went." The problem now was that, when the European Cup returned in March, Rangers would be far too heavily reliant on Ally McCoist and could not register another player for the competition even if they signed three new forwards. Souness would receive a lot of criticism over the years for creating this exposure. Given that Falco had played well and scored in the two rounds already, it is fair to say that this sale was an unnecessary risk but his hands were relatively tied with Fleck and, given that it was just over a year ago since he was trying to sell him to Dundee for £20,000, it was undeniably great business. For the third time in succession, the UEFA draw sent Rangers behind the Iron Curtain when they were paired with Steaua Bucharest in the quarter-finals. Champions of Europe in 1986, defeating Barcelona via one of the worst penalty competitions in history at the end of that Seville final, and on a roll of three successive domestic titles, this was a strong side that had recently added one of the most promising young players in Europe, Gheorghe Hagi. Real Madrid and Bayern Munich were the two superclubs that were paired together and perhaps only Benfica would have been a more daunting prospect than Steaua with Anderlecht, Bordeaux and PSV Eindhoven the others left in the competition. The side that had beaten Kiev and had sailed past Gornik in the autumn would have relished this opportunity but Rangers in the springtime was a different proposition. Wilkins had been signed in time and Gough was also eligible to play but the new recruits - Walters, Brown, Bartram and Ian Ferguson - would have to wait until a possible semi-final, Butcher was obviously missing and now, three weeks before the first leg in Romania, the major fear around Souness’s winter market trading was realised. After 40 goals in 128 consecutive appearances, the Rangers attacking reliance on Ally McCoist finally took its toll as he suffered a knee injury which ruled him out of the 4-0 home win over St Mirren and then the cup exit at East End Park. When the recovery didn’t happen as hoped, McCoist was put under the knife on Tuesday 23 February (just over a week before the first leg) and then off to Lilleshall for the best rehabilitation possible. Microscopic keyhole surgery was revolutionary in 1988 as, instead of removing cartilage from his knee, they simply trimmed off the parts that were causing the problem. There were even some faint hopes that he would be able to make a comeback for the second leg in Glasgow on 16 March. He’d travel to Bucharest anyway, just for morale.
Even when the team sheets were shared an hour before the game, Steaua coach Anghel Iordansecu believed that there had been a mistake. They, like everyone else, had assumed that McCoist had as much chance of playing as those who weren’t yet registered. But there he was, the irrepressible talisman, taking his place as the lone striker - a job that requires great physical effort and more than a little bravery - eight days after undergoing knee surgery. His performance was a valiant one, he took his knocks and worked extremely hard to press the Romanians back but there was an understandable sharpness missing, especially with the one decent chance that was passed up midway through the first half after some delightful work by Cooper, Wilkins and finally Souness to send him into space. By then, however, much of the damage had already been done. "It’s a cardinal rule in these games away from home that you try and frustrate the opposition as much as possible in the early stages of the game" wrote Richard Gough. "Our hopes of achieving any kind of frustration disappeared after a couple of minutes. That’s how long it took them to score on a pitch which was a mud heap because of torrential rain." It was a sunny afternoon in Bucharest - the live STV coverage of the early kick-off bringing much stress to school teachers and office managers all around Scotland - but the night before had seen horrendous weather. "It was the most surreal moment I’ve ever experienced in football" said Campbell Ogilvie. "They had brought in two Army helicopters to hover over each half in order to try and dry it out." It created a mud bath, especially in the penalty box, and Rangers were to suffer the consequences almost immediately. Steaua had pressed Rangers in from kick-off and despite many opportunities, the lines could not be cleared, the last attempt, by Gough, weakly holding up on the floor before being rattled home by Victor Pitruca after only two minutes. Although the pressure continued, Woods was excellent and Rangers saw out that early storm well. Steaua’s recent success had been mainly built around a good home record - they were not too impressive away - so a 1-0 deficit, like Kiev, would have felt perfectly manageable. The killer blow came in the 66th minute when Stefan Iovan’s free-kick deflected wickedly off Cooper and past Woods after Gough was thrown to ground from the Rangers wall by Adrian Bumbescu, who had sprinted 50 yards just to take his place in it. It was desperately bad luck just as it looked as if Rangers were doing the type of containing job that they had managed well on their previous trips east.
Although the mood on the plane home was tense, Souness and later Roberts and McCoist, provided the usual frontier gibberish in the press so as to generate another special Ibrox atmosphere for the return and it didn’t fail, with the pre-match noise reaching those famous Kiev levels. All that energy was unplugged by yet another early sting from a more experienced and canny side. It was a good ball from the captain Tudorel Stoica, and the finish by Marius Lacatus was sublime, but the Rangers defence were caught cold and square inside three minutes of a match where one away goal was always likely to be fatal. Ibrox responded quickly and so did the players, with the ball spending most of its time in and around the Steaua box. Gough powered home a header from a Roberts flick in 16 minutes and then McCoist buried a penalty after Durrant was hauled down. The Souness control on the ball wasn’t in question as he directed so much of this counter pressure but yet again his lack of it in the tackle was scandalous, with the assault on Gheorghe Rotariu the best-remembered incident from the whole match. Souness was lucky to escape with a booking, that gesture of innocence, pointing to his ruffled sock, perhaps making all the difference. The Romanians were dangerous on the break and really should have grabbed another in the second half but Rangers too squandered some great chances to get a third goal that would really have made it interesting with Durrant going close twice and McCoist with the best chance, just eighteen minutes from the end, which he blazed over in plenty of space inside the box after a brilliant back-heel by Wilkins. It wasn’t to be.
But it could and arguably should have been. The sale of Falco and Fleck wasn’t as relevant in Romania, a lone role for which neither were particularly suited, but the support of either for a better-rested McCoist in the return leg would have been significant, especially if it meant that Durrant could have moved over into the midfield role that was instead filled in both ties by a young Scott Nisbet. Ultimately both games were undone by unforced defensive errors, not through failures in attack and, even with Terry Butcher watching a special BBC Pebble Mill feed of the second leg whilst in recovery, the players who were fit should have been more than capable of starting both matches in less comedic fashion. PSV Eindhoven would go on to win that season’s European Cup. From the nine matches they played in order to do so, they won only three, none of those coming from the quarter-finals onwards, with two ties being settled on away goals and the final on penalties. This, more than the more famous near-miss in 1992/93, was arguably the best opportunity that Rangers had for European success during this period, bearing in mind the players that would have been eligible in the next round, especially Mark Walters. There was also no opposition remotely close to the quality of Milan or Marseilles that would follow five years later. Rangers played most of their best football of the season in Europe, a stage that seemed to suit them and provide a welcome and exciting break from the domestic drudgery with which they never quite got to grips that year. Individual defensive errors and bad luck with injuries cost most but the loss of Fleck and Falco has perhaps been a touch overstated over time. The failure to land Mark Hateley in the summer was a far bigger factor in this competition and the season as a whole. It could have been the transfer that led to the ultimate glory.
There wasn’t much time for Rangers to mope as Celtic were coming to Ibrox on the Sunday, live on STV and billed as something of a title decider with four hours of coverage dedicated to it, including helicopter shots of the Rangers bus coming up from their Turnberry hotel and the Celtic camp in Erskine. A Celtic win would effectively seal the championship - putting them six clear with a game in hand - whereas a Rangers victory would only intensify the pressure with eight games remaining. It was a tense but clean Old Firm game with a frenetic pace and few clear cut chances. During the interval, both Sandy Clark and Willie Miller had noticed the lack of aerial dominance that Rangers showed when defending cross balls and in the second half this frailty was exposed. A Paul McStay cross from the right was so badly dealt with - Roberts had two failed attempts to clear - that he had time to get himself to the edge of the box to volley home and put Celtic in front. Just seven minutes later Rangers, through their new Danish left-back
With Rangers tiring late in the game, Celtic squeezed in that crucial winner with just over ten minutes to go and yet again it was down to a calamitous lack of defensive organisation. Anton Rogan was presented with a free header from a Tommy Burns corner which was, typically, going well wide of target until it was diverted quickly off the chest of the unmarked Andy Walker and in. Overall, it wasn’t a particularly poor Rangers performance at all. They enjoyed the better of the first half and had their moments in the second but, once more, it was a case of individual problems, especially the enforced central defensive partnership of Gough and Roberts, that were a liability under better quality pressure. The loss of Butcher was also a matter of height - a six-foot-four, he was considerably taller than both Gough and Roberts - and there was a never a settled back four with both full-back spots lacking consistency. Neither Souness nor Smith attended the post-match press conference - which was becoming something of a trend - and, now that the season was effectively over, the internal Ibrox pressure cooker was about to blow once more as the last seven weeks of the season descended into even deeper levels of chaos. The first impressions of Jan Bartram were of a mild-mannered pro with an eye for a goal but who was perhaps not cut out for the physical nature of the Scottish game. No one could have imagined the repercussions of his trip to Italy in the midweek following the Old Firm defeat, on Olympic warm-up duty for Denmark. He talked in an open press conference about his experience at Rangers and the story was subsequently run by the Danish daily newspaper Ekstra Bladet under the headline "My boss is a hooligan". It wasn’t an eighties version of tabloid clickbait. Bartram’s account was perhaps naive and ill-advised - he struggled to sleep later that night - but it was open, both in opinion and in fact. "I didn’t go to Scotland to risk breaking other players’ legs. I’m very much against that style", he said. "Souness wants us to be hard when we’re in trouble. He is a bastard. I will not follow orders and deliberately kick people. He should have been shown the red card against Steaua. He likes to get the ball and slaughter other players and I don’t think I can learn this type of play. I like to see the beautiful things in the game so I am prepared to be fired…I am glad to be back among my Danish countrymen so I can play real football again." With tales of television sets being smashed up in defeat Bartram said the Souness "behaves like a madman when we lose. He has threatened to hit a journalist so hard that he wouldn’t get up again." Bartram denied it all upon returning to Glasgow - despite three separate Danish sources, not a country known for sensationalist media, confirming it all to be true - and he and Souness went on television to provide a united, if well-rehearsed, front.7 Few people seriously believed it. With each passing month of this football season, Ibrox was further characterised as an environment of simmering tension and self-destructive turbulence.
Now, with no prizes left to play for, the results really did suffer as a consequence of a disharmonious dressing room. Rangers were fortunate to beat Dundee 3-2 at Dens Park thanks to a late Durrant penalty but were beaten 2-1 at home by Hearts, who were also chasing second place, despite being 1-0 up through Bartram and then, as the Glasgow Garden Festival bloomed into life on Easter weekend, there was the embarrassment of losing 3-2 away to relegated Morton. Even with an Ian Ferguson scissor kick goal - a promise of things to come - it was a symbolic performance of a tired season with Roberts going off injured and even Chris Woods looking very suspect for two of the Morton goals. Souness was curt but fair about the situation. "Last year I spent a lot of money on the defence and they won us the Premier League Championship. This year they have lost us the title." He didn’t however, place the entire blame on the loss of Butcher. "We have internationalists at the back and shouldn't have to rely on one man. The attitude will need to change and some of the players will need to remember that they are playing for Rangers."
On 12 April it was time for the most chaotic episode in this melodramatic season to come to its conclusion, as the trial began for the Old Firm Four. Four days were spent on the case at Glasgow Sheriff Court, most of which centred on the behaviour of the crowd rather than the kind of ‘handbags’ incident that could be seen at football grounds up and down the country every weekend. It all seemed to be much ado about nothing as McAvennie - the one who started the whole thing - was found not guilty and Roberts not proven. Terry Butcher was thus feeling quite relieved when it was his turn to stand and listen to Sheriff Archibald Mckay’s judgement. ‘‘Guilty. I couldn’t believe what I had heard. I didn’t hear how much I was fined, I was so stunned". It was Butcher’s decision to get involved, not to protect Woods but to deliver a "deliberate, violent push" that could "reasonably have been expected to upset other Celtic players and their supporters" that led to that judgment. Disregarding completely the reality of the football field and goalkeeping self-preservation, Chris Woods was also found guilty of jabbing McAvennie sharply on the chin with his forearm. "It was an assault which constituted a breach of the peace." The potential consequences of pitch invasions and riots were at the forefront of the judgement but both the players and the club felt that it was ridiculously harsh when far worse physical acts had been carried out in Old Firm games. This was, in Butcher’s mind at least, a deliberate decision to make an example of the two most high profile English players - "it was completely rigged as far as I was concerned" - even going to the top of Thatcher’s government. "Souness was in a flap because he was really worried we were going to say enough was enough" wrote Butcher. "David Holmes also said if we decided we had had our fill of Scottish football and Scottish justice, the club wouldn’t stand in the way of our leaving. But I told them immediately I wouldn’t be forced away. It was a sick joke as far as I was concerned." Chris Woods did contemplate the impact of this on his England career but decided to stay. Graham Roberts was also resolute that he wouldn’t be going anywhere. In a somewhat fitting coda to this tempestuous tale, it would be a choice taken out of his control. "Frankly," wrote Graeme Souness in his programme notes for the final home match of the season against Aberdeen, "I hope I never have to go through another season like it." He had already dropped Ian Durrant for the final few games of the season, he being yet again the subject of a nightclub scuffle, saying "if a footballer chooses to do things away from training in his social life which prevent him from giving 100 per cent on a Saturday then he is in the wrong business." The 1-0 defeat was a typical way to close it off, a late Brian Irvine goal coming from another defensive failure to deal with a long ball. It was the type of goal that Rangers had been guilty of conceding in big moments all season and it was Walter Smith who had a go at Roberts for his positioning. "He refused to accept any of the blame when it was clear to everyone in the dressing room that he had been at fault" said Smith sometime later. It wasn’t a goal that had an obvious culprit, more a general organisational deficiency but Roberts, being a centre half and captain, would have been expected to shoulder that responsibility. It was just as he was disputing his culpability that Souness arrived and immediately backed his assistant. "Some strong words were exchanged and his response was along the lines of ‘if that is the way you feel about it you’d better sell me.’ This was a direct challenge to my authority as manager and there was no way I was going to back down. I told him to ‘consider it done.’" Souness has since then conceded that there was another way to handle it, to bring him out of the dressing room quietly and give him the opportunity to apologise in front of the squad, but that this would have needed a different, more mature Souness. One that wasn’t still playing. Roberts by then was a massive cult hero amongst the Rangers support and some may argue that there is an underlying theme that runs through some of Souness’s clashes with those types of characters. That he has to be the ultimate hero. The reaction at the final game of the season at Brockville - a fine 5-0 win over Falkirk - was tense, to say the least, as Roberts took his place in the stand and fans chanted his name throughout alongside banners saying "Robbo Must Stay!" The manager, assistant and chairman took an awful lot of stick that afternoon. Souness was a huge fan of him, an ideal player for the kind of Rangers side that he knew needed to be built first so as to make the original mark on the Scottish game. He loved that he was going to get the same kind of player at Parkhead as he would at Fir Park. He was aware, however, of a feeling within the camp that Roberts was perhaps becoming too big an influence and a critical one when it came to the younger Scottish players and, by his own admission, he was looking for something with which to curb that. It would have made no difference here. Souness was always going to respond that way and the fans weren’t likely to change his mind. Smith was in full support. "Managers cannot afford to walk away from difficult or unpopular judgments" he later wrote. "Often things happen away from the public gaze which determines the direction you take. But if you bottle a tough disciplinary matter then you can lose all the players, not just the one who brought the trouble to a head." Roberts would eventually leave, at a profit, to Chelsea for £475,000.
It was a pertinent way in which to close a very difficult season. The title had been handed over - Rangers could only finish third behind Hearts and Celtic - and another European opportunity passed up a little too easily in a year that seriously lacked order and professionalism. A week later Celtic would produce yet another late escape to come from behind to win the Scottish Cup Final against Dundee United and in doing so, secure the double in their centenary year, making it a tough summer for everyone who had Rangers at heart. The mistakes of inactivity would be learned, however, and instead, the summer of 1988 proved to be the start of something very special. A period of real dominance, unparalleled in the history of the club. The physical point had been proven, by now Rangers were really only fighting themselves. It was now time to focus more on the football and for Souness to build a classier side that couldn’t be touched by any other team in the land. The signings of Ray Wilkins and Mark Walters were the first creative players that he brought through the door and there would be more. Yes, the signing of John Brown would be paralleled in the future by Nigel Spackman and Terry Hurlock - Souness was never going to give up that particular principle entirely - but they would be surrounded by more and more players of genuine inventive talent. And Souness himself - for so many years the perfect blend of steel and silk - would now have to let go. Souness played 30 games in 1987/88. He’d play 11 more for Rangers in the next two seasons before hanging up the boots for good. At a club of this size, a player/manager can only ever be a short-term role and more detachment would ultimately lead to better control.
The complacency that he had shown in the 1986/87 official video had now been well and truly banished. Although technically true - Rangers fans would always favour a title without an Old Firm victory over four great games and no trophy - it completely ignored the reality of league arithmetic. Beating Celtic, and beating them often, was key to winning the flag. Ultimately that final argument with Roberts, after a season full of recrimination, perhaps drew a line in the sand. "Is this how it is going to be?", an emotional Graeme Souness challenged his players that afternoon. "We win one, they win one, we win one, they win one? Because I’m not fucking interested in that." As it would turn out, neither were they.
The Souness-Gerrard comparisons were both inevitable and immediate. High-energy midfielders, kings of Europe at Liverpool, amongst the best players of their generation who arrived at a shambolic Ibrox for their first managerial job and delivered a much sought-after prize. Interestingly, both men quickly developed sides that were prepared to fight as often as they were programmed to play. The twelve red cards in Souness’s first two seasons was equalled by Gerarrd’s side after only one. Given that they both inherited withered punchbags, this was almost certainly a deliberate, preemptive strike on the rest of Scottish football. Souness was given the tools to complete the job a lot sooner but even then, it caused problems when it came to retaining the flag. As Lawrence Marlborough himself said as he tried to quietly escape Ibrox after the league championship trophy had been presented in May 1987, "We are actually a bit ahead of our planning, but we won’t kid ourselves there won’t be setbacks in the future." Gerrard’s path to that first title was tougher, beset with setbacks and heartbreak before he found what it took Souness two seasons to properly discover as well: control. Rangers in 2020/21 demonstrated a ruthless, cold approach to the league championship that synced perfectly with their manager’s newfound measure in the dugout and in front of a camera. He was now more detached and able to see a bigger picture whereas, as was so often the case in those first two seasons, he resembled the Liverpool captain of old, too invested and too verbose with both praise and criticism. It was like he was still kicking every ball. Souness literally was. The player/manager fad of the time didn’t last long because it simply took too much out of the individuals who were spinning both plates. So much of the chaos of this season arguably stemmed from the man himself. So much of the frustration that was taken out on referees, opposition midfielders and his own dressing room was perhaps a deeper, internal one. Graeme Souness the world-class footballer - an identity that he had carried for most of his adult life - was nearing its end. Only when he found acceptance could he build a creative and balanced side that didn’t require him to be in the middle of it all.
Rangers failed to retain their title in 1987/88 because of too much complacency, not enough control, a fair bit of misfortune and a Celtic side who were overdrawing from their emotional resources to fulfil some sense of destiny. It is very difficult to imagine Gerrard, Wilson, Beale et al, slipping into the same state of relaxation but they should be on guard nonetheless. On 7 March they created a legend - arguably bigger than any piece of Rangers mythology that has gone before - but by 31 July they need to put it to rest if they are to show the same incessant drive towards another title. 55 - special as it was - is just another stitch in a long and beautiful tapestry. Winning league titles is what Rangers do. What’s next?
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