Ibrox fans are feeling good today over the news that Walter Smith will be commemorated with a statue at the stadium. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a more than fitting memorial for a guy who did as much as anyone over there to kill Rangers.
There is a lot of revisionism about Smith, but most especially amongst the Ibrox fans themselves. Not only did he play a starring role in the death of Rangers, with his utter selfishness and desire for personal glory miles out in front of the welfare of the club, but he was one of the first people to go public in accepting that it no longer existed.
His comments are on record. To the best of my knowledge, they were never publicly refuted. Walter Smith regarded the club that plays at Ibrox right now to be a NewCo. In that, he was firmly on the side of those of us who recognise objective reality.
Smith’s role in the death of Rangers goes back a long time, but mostly it’s seen in those years near the end when he won his final titles there whilst fighting off the final effort that the bank made to keep the volcano from blowing its top.
What he did next sealed their fate. He walked in the year Whyte took over, perhaps intuiting that the “Motherwell Born Billionaire” wasn’t what the press suggested he was, and he turned over what he knew to be a colossal mess to McCoist, who was never likely to make things better. Smith saw the writing on the wall, and he couldn’t wait to be away.
In this, he has a lot in common with David Murray and it is not a coincidence that they departed at around the same time, knowing full well that the train would very soon be leaving the tracks in spectacular fashion. Murray is a hate-figure amongst some of the Ibrox supporters. Smith, in contrast, is revered. That’s just another denial of reality.
Of all the managers over there in the course of the Murray regime, Smith did more than any except perhaps for Advocaat to propel them towards their doom. Then, when they were facing the end, he put together a consortium that failed to move on time.
After declaring the club dead, he made a half-hearted grab for the assets for a second time, and having failed he then went to work for Charles Green. It is for that decision that should have guaranteed his damnation in the eyes of their supporters.
No other single individual, not even Keith Jackson, Chris Graham or Darryl King did more to legitimise the man with the Big Yorkshire Hands than Walter Smith did.
If their fans feel that years of pain followed, and if they can trace much of their modern misery to Green’s door then they have to acknowledge the role Smith played in selling that regime to the wider world, and to them in particular.
He lent credibility to a man who ought to have had none.
Smith, at least, cannot be accused of the sort of grand hubris that afflicted his initial patron, David Murray.
Whilst chairman, the tax cheat named the training ground after himself and that was only changed years later when Hummel purchased it. Smith could have statues to his own greatness built when he sat in the big seat, but he chose not to.
But he didn’t need them anyway.
The fitting memorial to his last spell at the club is to be found in the Companies House documents which confirm that it ceased to trade. Celtic’s ten titles in the eleven years since he managed his last game for Rangers were the final part of his legacy.
As far as I’m concerned, a statue is the least he deserves.
Some people might think he could have had one in the Gallowgate as well, along with Murray, Green and Whyte.
Done normally speak ill of the dead, but there must be a tax dodge in there somewhere.
I demand a 1000 foot tall statue of moonbeams for all the zombies to worship at
Let the uninatiated follow follow their “greats”. We have Our greats. Statues are for those that created something so special that cannot be ignored. We have true Greats in our past ranks, those who made the Club better in an honest way, The Celtic Way, so The Statue for Walter is for them and their warped look on history.