'Most days I think of Walter': David Weir on Smith's Rangers influence

He went on to lift three titles and become an icon at the club and he owes it all to one man. Walter Smith.

Here in the first instalment of a two-part Rangers Review exclusive the Brighton and Hove Albion Technical Director talks to us about the late, great Walter, the lessons he taught him, the pain of his own coaching exit from Gers and why his UEFA Cup Final appearance is filed under F for Forgotten.

“His death hit me like a ton of bricks, he was like a second father, he is still there in my thoughts most days.”

David Weir can become embroiled in the pressure and intricacy of navigating the issues that confront him in his all-encompassing role as Technical Director at English Premiership club Brighton and Hove Albion.

Then time and again the wisdom of one man looms large in his thoughts.

Walter Smith.

Weir, now 52, is by nature studied and reserved.

As calm and considered a presence as he was at the heart of the defence for club and country.

Not when it comes to Walter.

Not when it comes to the mentor who was the touchstone of his storied playing career.

That’s why even now, 13 months on from the loss of an Ibrox icon, the emotions come bubbling to the surface and David confesses: “In some ways, and I know this sounds terrible, I don’t feel like he is gone because he is still there in my thoughts most days.

“Think about that, most days I think of Walter. There are not many people you get like that in your life.

“He was a special man and it’s still so sad we don’t have him with us anymore.

“His death hit me like a ton of bricks and only the loss of my father would feel the same way. That’s where our relationship was.”

The 11 years since former Falkirk, Hearts and Everton centre-half Weir, capped 69 times for Scotland, hung up his boots have seen him experience the peaks and troughs of coaching and management before taking a different path.

David found kindred spirits in Brighton owner Tony Bloom and Chief Executive Paul Barber who oversee a club with a clear vision, succession planning and logical processes.

From Loans Manager to Assistant Technical Director to the elevation to his current role when Dan Ashworth quit for Newcastle United Weir, the graduate of the University of Evansville in Indiana has thrived in the environment they create.

The departure of Brighton boss Graham Potter and his staff to Chelsea and the subsequent loss of Head of Recruitment Paul Winstanley to Stamford Bridge have heaped responsibility onto Weir’s shoulders.

He relishes it, though, and often he draws on the lessons he learned from his mentor.

David reflected: “I always think of how Walter was in life, not really in football. I think you have to be yourself and authentic in this game.

“What I will always remember is this balance of humour and steel that he brought to each day so perfectly.

“He was always approachable but you have to be careful with that. You never want to be the guy who can’t be spoken to yet there’s a fine line.

“Walter’s genius was finding that balance. I didn’t speak to him a lot when we weren’t working together but when I did it was an hour and a half and he was always so interested in what I was doing.”

That sounding board was lost to David on October 26 last year when cancer took Walter at the age of 73.

In the months since, in quieter times, Weir has pondered just how different his life would have been without the manager who won 10 titles amidst 21 trophies as Rangers manager and will one day have his statue unveiled at Ibrox.

David sighed: “The anniversary on October 26 seemed to rush up so quickly and I can’t believe it is just over a year now since we lost Walter.

“More recently our relationship would be on the phone just catching up but each time it would be a conversation that meant something.

“He was such a memorable man who played such a huge role in my career but it goes beyond that.

“It’s about what he meant to my life. He brought me to England at Everton, he took me back home to Rangers. He got me playing for Scotland again.

“There are so many things he did that changed the entire course of my life.”

It’s fitting that in Walter’s last game bossing his boyhood heroes it should be his trusted lieutenant Weir who was wearing the captain’s armband.

On May 15, 2011, the Light Blues travelled to Rugby Park knowing only a victory would do against Kilmarnock to seal another title triumph.

David was five days past his 40th birthday and a nerve-shredding finale season seemed on the cards.

What followed was an opening seven minutes of unimaginable mayhem, by the end of which Smith’s side were 3-0 up thanks to a double from Kyle Lafferty and a Steven Naismith strike.

The triumphant skipper will always treasure the moment he hoisted the trophy aloft alongside the manager who moulded him and he revealed: “That game at Rugby Park was Walter’s last game as Rangers manager and I felt the pressure of that.

“The game had to go one way to be fitting for him, there could be no Plan B.

“I am a lucky man to be in that picture, lifting the trophy with him. It was iconic for me and a dream come true.

“I was 40 years old and I had no right to be there!

“It’s not a testament to me, it’s a testament to his management that I was there.

“He’s the only manager who could convince people it was a good thing to have a 40-year-old captain of Rangers.

“Every bad result put us both under pressure but I never felt an ounce of that from him and that says everything.”

(Image: NQ)

Three years before that ticker-tape farewell to the Rangers hot seat Smith had guided Gers to the 2008 UEFA Cup Final where they bowed out 2-0 to former Ibrox boss Dick Advocaat’s Zenit Saint Petersburg at the City of Manchester Stadium.

Alexander, Broadfoot, Weir, Cuellar, Papac, Hemdani, Ferguson, Thomson, Whittaker, Davis, Darcheville.

That was the Final starting 11 and there is a salient argument that no manager but Walter could have inspired that collection of players to those heady heights.

It was an achievement to look back on with pride yet David’s cold-eyed assessment of it gives you a telling insight into the psyche of a player cast in the mould of John Greig and Richard Gough when it comes to the club’s great on-field leaders.

He shrugged: “That game is not a memory for me, it’s just a disappointment.

“It doesn’t match winning the title at Rugby Park because there was elation and a trophy at the end of that.

“Beating Celtic in Finals, winning the League Cup with nine men against St Mirren those will live with me for the rest of my life.

“The UEFA Cup Final is just a loss, that’s the reality. It was an anti-climax.

“Winning in Fiorentina, the games in Bremen, Lisbon, that whole run. Winning against Panathinaikos when secretly I feel Walter wanted us to go out!

“He felt it would give us a better chance in the league that season and history tells you he was right.

“They’re the memories I cherish because we won and Rangers is about winning so the UEFA Cup Final? Forget about it.”

When David called time on his playing career after over 600 league appearances on both sides of the border it was inevitable his football IQ and love of the game would draw him into the technical area.

Weir’s alliance as assistant to Mark Warburton at Brentford made them hot property and in the summer of 2015 he was back in Govan… this time as a coach.

During that time as a friend and aspiring UEFA A Licence coach, I was fortunate enough to be invited in and given a behind-the-scenes insight into a typical matchday for the double act.

From their analysis of the opposition to the attention to detail paid to improving individuals within the Rangers squad, it was fascinating.

That visit was never intended for publication, it was to make me a better coach and it did.

I saw first-hand not only how much planning and intelligence Warburton and Weir put into every game Gers played but also how much they cared about the club and the players under their guidance.

Season one saw a long-awaited return to the top flight after securing the Championship title by 11 points as well as delivering a Challenge Cup trophy.

Gers’ climb back from the ignominy of the financial irregularities that saw them sent spiralling into the bottom tier was complete.

They were back in the big time but season two for Warburton and Weir pitted them against Brendan Rodgers’ Celtic who had a five-year head start.

Any sane judgement of the situation would surely recognise that expecting the Ibrox management title to wrest the title away in the first season back in the Premiership was illogical.

Glasgow, though, is one helluva brutal sporting marketplace.

Mistakes were made and by February 2017 the team were languishing in the Hoops’ wake and the board presided over an unseemly exit for the coaching staff by insisting they had resigned.

This was contested and legal threats ensued, it was a sorry mess and one that hurts Weir to this day.

Warburton and Weir take Rangers' training (Image: Getty)

Should Warburton and Weir have been given a proper chance to build their project? Had they not built up some credit in the bank to deserve that? Was their departure a wise move from a board that was thinking with clarity?

Well, they appointed Pedro Caixinha as Warburton’s successor. Make up your own mind.

David admitted: “I don’t often look back with regrets but yes it was heartbreaking the way it ended and I hated it.

“It was hard especially on Mark because I feel he did an unbelievable job there.

“We inherited a broken squad of players with single digits in it and we had to recruit and get out of the Championship which was non-negotiable.

“To do that and we still felt we were doing well enough and had that credit in the bank to navigate the mistakes that we made.

“Rangers, though, is an unforgiving environment and you see that now.

“Gio took the club to a European Final and it’s not even the turn of the same year and he is out of a job.

“Everyone down here talks about Rangers, our new manager at Brighton has asked me and I have told him there is no other place like it.

“It’s a nuts football marketplace Glasgow. When you are in it you think nothing else exists and then you come out of it you wonder if that’s how you want to be as a person.

“Yet I know if I got plunged into it tomorrow I would get caught up in it all again!

“I still speak to Mark, we worked together for a long period of time at Brentford, Rangers and Nottingham Forest and I have a lot of respect for him as a person and a football man.

“It is brave of him now to go back to working as an assistant in the Premier League at West Ham United with David Moyes because that’s a role he has not occupied for a long time.”

When I caught up with David for this two-part Rangers Review exclusive he had just returned from another European trip on Brighton business.

He’s not a man who looks backwards much to honours like being the only player inducted into the Rangers Hall of Fame while still under contract at the club.

Part two of our interview will look more into Weir's life now but he does chuckle a little when I joke that the Rangers faithful were the only fans in his career to give him his own song.

“We all dream of a team of Davie Weirs….”

He insists though: “Things like being in the Rangers Hall of Fame are for my kids, I’m just not wired like that.

“I live in the moment and I always try to look forward not back.

“I was almost 37 years old when I joined Rangers and I thought my chance had passed me by.

“I couldn’t believe my luck when I got the opportunity and I thought it was for six months.

“To be honest I thought I had hit the jackpot with six months so to get five years? It was off the scale.

“My dad got the chance to see me playing for Rangers, we won three leagues in a row and then I was back playing for Scotland which I thought had gone.

“You couldn’t write my script at Ibrox as a player, it is simply too far-fetched.”

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