Dick spent £83m chasing dream...Walter can do it on a shoe-string

May 11 2008 By Gordon Waddell

WALTER SMITH will stand 10 yards away from Dick Advocaat on Wednesday night, going head-to-head with him for the first time.

Yet every day of his working life he has to live with the Dutchman.

Appreciating his best. Suffering his worst.

Smith will thank him from the bottom of his heart each time he drives through the gates of Murray Park, a lasting legacy to one of his predecessors foresight.

Once hes in there, though?

He should look around his first team dressing-room and curse the Little General for all hes worth.

Because thats the other side of Advocaats Ibrox legacy. The one every boss stepping into his brown brogues since his reign has had to make up for.

The one where he left them all without apot to pee in.

Looking at the pictures from the Motherwell game the other night, seeing Advocaat sitting in the back row of the Ibrox directors box beside David Murray, brought it all rushing back.

The chairman thinking he had Gods gift to football in his midst, thinking all he had to do was give him the family silver to get the European glory he craved.

And Gods gift himself quite happily flogging the family silver and still not achieving any more than any manager before or since.

He shelled out s83million in 40 months chasing the dream. Brought in s47m chasing salvation. But ultimately ran the gravytrain right into the buffers.

Its a tenure that might well be remembered in a fond blue haze by Gers fans but will forever be tainted by the depth of red Advocaat left the books in.

Thats why, when it comes down to the two of them on Wednesday night, there should only ever be one who earns the true respect of the Light Blue legions.

Its the man on the cusp of history, on the brink of winning a quadruple with possibly the least gifted set of individuals any Rangers manager has had to work with in decades.

Thats not a slight on the guys who have taken the club this far.

The strength of character theyve shown this season, the reserves of energy theyve unearthed even when they were told the well had run dry, thats a measure of the heart they have as a team.

They have talent sure, but more than that they have desire.

However, even they would admit they are a team that have always produced more than the sum of their parts. More than anyone ever expected from them.

In the Champions League they had to graft even to make the group stages. And oncetheygot there? Every big competition has a group of death, right? This one won the Serial Killers' Award for Most Death Ever in a First Phase. Champions of Germany and France with the brilliance of Barcelona thrown in.

Rangers would have taken anything short of a massacre right at the start and been grateful for it.
 
Yet seven points from three games and suddenly you realise they have something about them. And the thing that brings that something out is leadership.

If you handed Advocaat a squad list like the one Smith faced when he walked in the door at Murray Park 15 months ago, and told him he had the square root of zip to spend doing anything about it, he would have laughed and walked straight back out the door.

Advocaat could never have taken this squad the distance.

Scratch that. He wouldnt even have tried.
 
By all accounts Dicks coaching methods are outstanding. He has a knack of getting quality work from quality players. But this was a job that needed more than just that ability.

This was a job for a man who could take lemons and not just make lemonade but keep squeezing and squeezing until he had every last drop out of them.

Smith knew what he was getting into when he signed up and left the Scotland job but he got into it anyway.

Partly through his love of the club and his dismay at the nick Paul Le Guen had left it in and partly because, deep down, he still felt he had something to prove at exactly the level hell find himself on Wednesday night.

He knows hes a better manager now than first time round.

And if anyone doubted it the run that has taken Rangers to Manchester should prove it beyond doubt.

Not just on the park, off it too. The staff Smith assembled are as much a team as the guys he sends on the park. He got hold of Ally McCoist, Kenny McDowall, Ian Durrant, Jim Stewart, Pip Yeates, Adam Owen and Ewan Chester then set about using each one to make what he had better.

And Wednesday night will be the end product. People have said justice will be done if Rangers lose to a gifted, expansive and you guessed it expensive Zenit St Petersburg side.

Critics portray Smith as the anti-christ of football, the defensive devil on the shoulder of the beautiful game.

Eighteen European clashes, 12 clean sheets. And in nine of the 18 theyve failed to score.

But the bottom line is Rangers are there, just 90 minutes from a trophy that will immortalise Smith and his team. Maybe 120 minutes. Maybe that plus penalties. Doesnt matter. No-one will remember how they got there in years to come. Just that they did.

And the great irony is all of this has come from a boss who in his first spell at Ibrox, the spell that saw them make history with nine-in-a-row, was always accused by his own fans of being tactically naive when it came to Europe.

That was back in the days when he did have the talent, gifted individuals like Paul Gascoigne, Brian Laudrup, Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Jorg Albertz.

When he did have the cash. And when the results never matched the resources.

When Rangers took horrible batterings at the hands of Juventus, when they coughed up defeats to the likes of Gothenburg, Strasbourg and Grasshoppers.

This time its the opposite.

Rangers have exceeded even the wildest set of expectations anyone could have had of them. And that says it all about the manager as well as the players.

Systems and results like that dont just happen. Theyre the result of meticulous planning, great communication, organisation and hour after hour of hard graft on the training ground, in the gym and the video room.

And the ingenious thing is that Walter has built it round what he had at his disposal, not any other way.

This is going to sound ridiculous but in this system hed struggle to play Laudrup.

Seriously. Not because he doesnt have the talent, obviously, but because hed never do the kind of shift going backwards that Walter needs from everyone filling a jersey.

Its why guys like Lee McCulloch, Charlie Adam, Nacho Novo, Steven Whittaker and Stevie Naismith have all become cogs in the machine. Because theyll die in both directions for their gaffer.

Maybe next year he will have the chance to change it. To be more adventurous with more money and more talent.

To spend a little bit of what Advocaat had when he was able to attract a Ronald de Boer, a van Bronckhorst, a Stefan Klos.

But whatever Smith does it will struggle to match what he has done this season.

If the medals are being handed out for style on Wednesday night Rangers may as well stay this end of the M74.

If its about substance, though? Then its Smiths night, not Advocaats.