It would be just like the Ibrox club to look at last night’s performance in Turkey and draw all the wrong conclusions from it. In fact, we should count on it.
But let’s, before we start, consider the objective facts of it: they seemed to know what they’re doing when it comes to playing in Europe. They press teams hard and high. They counterattack well. And a couple of those players—just a couple—seem to like playing on that stage.
I’m going to caveat this as I always do. This is not the elite-level competition. They do not come up against top-tier clubs in the second-tier tournament, and a lot of those clubs definitely don’t look like they belong at a higher level.
We would need to spend a season in the Europa League to test that hypothesis properly, and to be perfectly honest with you, I don’t want us to. I don’t want us to test the hypothesis because we don’t get anything extra if we prove that we could get similar results— and we leave a lot of money on the table.
This is by no means a good Ibrox side, and we know that they’re not a good Ibrox side. Their domestic record speaks for itself. It’s another season without a major honour.
They are rank. And you can see the signs of weakness and desperation all over the team. They’re good at playing a certain way, and that way translates very well to European football, but it does not work at all here at home.
We’ve all talked about this for what seems like forever—they seem better suited to playing in this competition than they do in Scotland. But I’ll take our happy knack for winning all the domestic trophies, banking all that lovely Champions League cash, and being able to put our players on a bigger stage and sell them for massive sums of money over their little odd quirk all day long.
People have slagged them for being our coefficient monkeys. I don’t ever join the chorus on that because I think we’ve done reasonably well with our own coefficient score in recent years, so it’s not that funny a joke. But I know it drives their fans a little crazy that they believe they are the ones propping up our chances of making the Champions League group stages on a more regular basis.
And that’s what makes it even more amusing to me that we have the opposite thing going here. Our domestic form is so, so, so good that people get genuinely shocked when we can’t translate it onto the European stage at times. But then we are playing a much better calibre of opposition, as I often like to say, and playing for much higher stakes in a much bigger competition than the one they’re in.
Sometimes people don’t understand why the Europa League teams sometimes look like they’re going through the motions. Let me explain a little bit about why some of the might very well be doing exactly that.
There’s so little money to be made in the Europa League compared to the Champions League that, for a lot of teams, even winning that tournament just isn’t worth their while—especially if they’re going to qualify for the Champions League anyway through their domestic league.
Let me put it this way: a team that wins the Europa League will probably pay out more in win bonuses to its players over the course of the tournament than they actually bring in from it.
For most clubs, even mid-table teams in the Big Five leagues, the sums of money involved just don’t justify the effort. The only thing the Europa League has going for it as a major incentive is that the winners automatically enter the Champions League groups the following year.
Look, I’m not saying it wasn’t an impressive performance. It was. It was a performance I didn’t know they had in them—although there’s been a lot of talk about their European form this season. But you know what? Give me managers who get them progress in Europe to a point but fail miserably here at home, and I’ll drink a toast to a different one of them every single year. And that’s where we are today.
So what do I mean when I say they will take all the wrong lessons from this? And why is nothing more certain in the world?
First, they will convince themselves that they do, in fact, have the core of a title-winning team. Good. That’s what I want them to think.
They’ve been clinging to the same desperate delusion for the past four seasons, and the longer they go on doing it, the happier I’ll be.
But I foolishly had written off Buckfast Boy and his coaching team.
And perhaps I shouldn’t have done that because maybe the European results—which got Van Bronckhorst more time than he was worth, which got even Michael Beale more time than he was worth, which got Crazy Clement more time than he was worth—are about to repeat the trick and give Barry Ferguson a chance at the job after all.
Mourinho did all his usual blathering last night in the aftermath of the game. He was good theatre as ever, but Mourinho is a manager from the old school. His time has passed. And I don’t believe—despite his insistence that the tie is not over—that Fenerbahçe will get back into this game.
I don’t believe they have it in them to go to Ibrox and win, even though the likes of Motherwell, Queen’s Park, and St Mirren have done it, and not so long ago either.
So no, I think Fenerbahçe are out. I think the Ibrox club will go through to the last eight. And since no one expected that, Ferguson is again being talked about as someone with a chance at getting the big job.
And if you’ve looked at the comments in the media, they’re all praising him for a tactical change they’re hailing as a stroke of genius, although it’s virtually the same one which Clement himself has pulled a couple of times.
But the media loves Barry Ferguson. Believe me when I say this, a lot of them would love for this to happen. A lot of them consider Ferguson a personal friend, and they probably still have posters of him on their walls. They will justify it any way they can, and some of them are clearly well onboard the bandwagon.
I did say to the Ibrox fans who seemed very confident this was a temporary appointment: don’t be too sure. Even losing twice heavily to Celtic might not necessarily be the curtain call for this guy. Those results might be considered unimportant as long as he wins the rest of his games in the league race.
Remember, Lennon lost a Scottish Cup semi-final to Ross County as interim manager and still got the job. None of us expected that to happen after that result.
Remember too that the guys coming in are going to spend an awful lot of money just to get their feet under the table.
If they have a management team already in place, that saves them money. That stops them from having to go out and find someone else and pay them big bucks to come to the club. If they have a management team in place that is just glad to be there and seems to have gotten a tune out of the players they have, that’s less money they must spend on transfer fees in the summer.
And I can see the attraction in that. It’s an obvious attraction for new owners, especially if the management team that’s already in place has a connection with the fans and some affinity with the club itself. It’s a tempting prospect. It’s the kind of thing new owners would love to see.
And so the danger for the Ibrox fans of this coming to pass is very, very real now. That was a result that exceeded expectations. That was, as the press has pointed out, Barry Ferguson besting The Special One.
No one will bother to wonder why The Special One is now doing his coaching outside of a top-five league, in Turkey, where his star player is a 38-year-old Edin Džeko. One thing is for sure: he is a long way from the rarefied atmosphere he used to call home. He’s a long way from being the king of a glittering kingdom.
Ferguson can still have his kingdom—for as long as that might last. The eight to twelve months it will take for the fans to completely turn on him and for the board to realise what a mistake they’ve made.
And for Rodgers to put another managerial trophy on his wall.
And the media can help make this happen. And if you read them today, a lot of them are coming round to the thought that this might be a good idea.
That’s the silver lining. After watching a performance like that, you just know they’re going to overdo it. They’re going to overthink it. And the idea that a favourite son is going to come in and rip the title out of Celtic’s hands? That’s too good to resist. That’s the fairy story they’ve been waiting for.
Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images
They got a result, fair enough and credit where due. Tho actually surprised, how naive fernebace were in leavin theirselves wide open, especially at the back, tae be exploited throughout the game like that. Ah doubt other teams will be as generous.
Butland should’ve been sent off for that challenge on Propper, nobody can be that thick so it must’ve been intentional.
Give Barry and the EBT crew a 5 year deal.
As I posted on here a few days ago …If teams are 100% of the time playing out from the back with no variation then the opposition can safely move their men up into a very aggressive press and cause trouble ..even poor teams can do it as we are seeing regularly now ( and we will see it again on Sunday in spades ) and cause trouble particularly if there are defenders who aren’t that great on the ball under real pressure ( trusty scales taylor) or midfielders ( Hatate ) who will similarly cough up possession
James is right . Rangers aren’t very good …Who in their team would BR have picked going into the ALLIANZ area to face Bayern ?..Answer; None of them .On a good day Cerny would be Kuhn’s back up
BUT ! they have enough about them to be dangerous in Europe using this tactic and when teams don’t respect them enough either using reserves or playing out and too openly
Against Celtic 1st 15 minutes at CP in SEptember , Cup final last year and in league Cup Final and at Ibrox they employed this tactic and will do so again
Yes James this isn’t brilliant Barry ..but great credit to him he is just continuing to use the sensible playbook where your own team can’t dominate the ball against better players and your players can get the adrenalin going . They treat every Euopa game like a final unlike the opposition
Rogers has to figure out how to vary the play using our pace up front .. he has to or there could be trouble ….If he does he will have the next managers head on a spike by Christmas whether it is hopefully BArry or someone else ideally Mourinho
As usual, its the media and support serious hype. And of course, the comparisons with us are all over social media. The ibrox support were quick in tellin us, when it took a CL bayern, practically the last kick of the ball, tae put us out, how ‘bad’ a side Bayern suddenly are. We know how they like tae completely ignore perspective and heap over credit on theirselves. Tho ah think there’s a difference in gettin narrowly put out by a top CL team away and gettin a win against a mediocre europa league side. Tryin tae compare and grab some sort of braggin rights about that is pretty detached. As always, they dont dae perspective. That’s just for everybody else.
I had to laugh this morning when the BBC’s Phil Goodlad posed a question to Ian Murray about Barry getting the post on a longer term. The question began. “If this run continues . . .”
Run! What run? His record from three games is W L W hardly constitutes a run, but so many in the media desperately want it to be.
One win in Sevco speak is 55 wins
“Elite” comments from Charlie. Hopefully BR will change the Celtic approach or will he be like Martin O’Neil and fail to cjange tactics against the new challenge presented by McLiesh
Elite” comments from Charlie. Hopefully BR will change the Celtic approach or will he be like Martin O’Neil and fail to change tactics against the new challenge presented by McLeish? McLeish basically took the first 5 domestic trophies available to him as Rangers manager (including a treble). The League was out of his reach when he joined mid season. He had devised a system for playing Celtic at Hibs and successfully transferred that to Rangers. It took a tactical change by O’Neil over a year later before Celtic altered that sequence.
Firstly, you have to give them credit for last night’s result. It could easily have been 5 or 6, but for the slimmest of offside decisions.
I thought Fenerbahce were, defensively, dreadfully naive and in the main, just dreadful. It doesn’t say a great deal for the ‘delights’ of Turkish football or the dwindling reputation of Mourinho.
Regardless of the post match bravado from Sevco fans, the gulf in quality between CL and Europa League is off the scale. That is fact, and that realism will tend to get lost in the melee of sycophancy that will be foisted upon BF.
However, firstly, it is hugely important that our team is fully focused on the Scottish Cup tie with Hibs, and ensures that the treble will still be an option post match.
After that, then and only then, can we turn our attention towards the Staunch Brothers’ Sevco team, a week later.
Our professionalism and superior team should give us enough to get past Hibs on Sunday, but it should be a cracking cup tie and we will have to be at our very best ! HH
If Rodgers sticks to his 4-3-3 at Celtic Park next week (and I’m sure he will) we could suffer the same fate as Fenerbahce and a rerun of our Ibrox loss at new year. They are definitely better away from home and I have no doubt this is due to the severe criticism from their own fans. We are not a powerful team physically and if they go 5 across the middle, we will have major problems again. They do have that physicality we struggle to match
Decent result for that lot last night,
Then again if you take away the best 36 teams in Europe and put them in a more elite competition the quality of opposition they are playing against can be fairly poor,
They are basically playing in The Europa League to decide the best team in the 37th to 72nd bracket,
The difference in quality between The Champions League and The Europa League is absolutely massive!
Looking forward to the game on Sunday to help land another Treble, HH
Playing Celtic is not like a typical SPL game. We won’t park the bus, we will attack and we will leave gaps for their counter attack.
They will raise their game as they have in Europe, after all they will be playing a European standard team.
It’s highly unlikely Brendan will change our format so will will as we have been, take our created chances. We should be wary against them and not too open. They don’t like having to be on the front foot and favourites to win matches. Hence their SPL results. I hope we are professional in our approach and against a better quality team they have shown they can raise their focus.
Hibs first though, I’ve no doubt we’ll find it easier to put them back in their place this weekend. HH
Pep Guardiola was interviewed a month or so ago and noted that teams had evolved to deal with the style of play that he had brought to the PL. I think this is true everywhere and some of the “excesses” of playing out from the back have been punished by high and hard pressing teams – we see it ourselves with the fear that Maeda puts into defenders. Defenders getting their pockets picked or rushed into passes in their own third is high reward stuff for the attackers.
I completely agree with the comments that we need more variation such that the high press can be exploited with longer balls over the top. In all my years of watching football I can think of only a handful of central defenders who were as comfortable with the ball as central midfielders.
As Jackie Charlton once said “I wasn’t a footballer, our Bobby was a footballer. My job was to stop the footballers!”
I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a bit of a sea-change in preferred formations over the next season across football. A return to more teams playing 3-5-2 (especially in an environment where the wingbacks are much fitter than they were in O’Neill’s day) wouldn’t surprise me.
Mourinho definitely didn’t do his homework, In Scotland everyone and their granny knows that the one and only thing going for The Rangers this season is that they can be dangerous on the break. With Fenerbahce’s 3 at the back and a high line it was manna from heaven for Cerny and Dessers, Mourinho’s time is up he’s all bluster and no substance these days. That Fenerbahce team will shit themselves at Ibrox.
BR will have to show his managerial skills a week on Sunday, there is no way we can sit back at home, it just isn’t our way, but surely against two C/B’s from either Soutar who’s good in the air but slow on the ground, Propper or Balogun two one paced veterans of the game who’s strengths again are in the air, we’ve got to move the ball from back to front quickly. It doesn’t have to be hopeful punts but well placed long passes into grass for our front men to use their pace. and have their defenders running towards their own goal.
Hibs come 1st, and it looks a tasty cup game, again their weakness is their C/B’s, it should be a good open game. I’ve got a feeling our front men will frighten them to death. Hibs also can be good on the break, and we all know Boyle plays the same role with Hibs as Cerny does with The Rangers. We’ve just got to be aware of both, but not fear them.
New Year was a pure fuckin EMBARRESMENT and it will be a fuckin EMBARRESMENT off the Richter scale if it happens again…
Learn from these mistakes please Saint Brendan !