SEASON 1985/86 by Alistair Aird Fingers were hovering over the panic button as season 1985/86 dawned. The euphoria that had accompanied the return of Jock Wallace in November 1983 had long since departed. Season 1984/85 was as bad as it had been in and around Ibrox for a long time. Wallace had looked to prepare for the new season with a tour of West Germany, but when this was called off, he had to be content with two games in The Highlands against Ross County and Inverness Caley and fixtures against Ayr United and FC Twente Enschede. The opposition goalkeeper in the latter match – which ended in a 2-1 win for Rangers – was one Theodorus Antonius Geraldus Snelders. The first team squad had been reshaped but not significantly. Out went midfielders Robert Prytz and Ian Redford, while Dougie Bell was recruited from Aberdeen for a fee of £125,000. The season opened with great promise with a six-game unbeaten run in the Premier Division. Dundee United, Hibernian, Hearts, St Mirren and Clydebank were defeated, while the first Old Firm game of the campaign at Parkhead ended in a 1-1 draw. That meant that after Bobby Williamson scored a last-minute winner at Kilbowie on 14 September, Rangers were top of the league, a point ahead of Celtic and three in front of third-placed Aberdeen. But the season unravelled thereafter. Back-to-back home defeats against Dundee and Aberdeen started the downward spiral. In the latter match, Rangers lost 3-0 and were reduced to nine men after Hugh Burns and Craig Paterson were ordered off. There was unrest in the stands and Jock Wallace had to emerge from the dressing room and appeal for calm. Rangers would win just two of the 13 league games that followed. Remarkably, one of those victories was a 3-0 home win over Celtic in November. Ian Durrant had a superb match and opened the scoring after half an hour. Derek Ferguson had a magnificent game too. Two goals in the last 10 minutes from Cooper and McCoist sealed a comprehensive win. But that flicker of light was soon extinguished. Seven days later as Sandy Jardine marked his 1,000th match in first-class football, Rangers were drubbed 3-0 by Hearts. Sandy Clark, who had left Rangers in October 1984, scored two of the goals. And that was followed by a 3-2 defeat against Dundee at Dens Park that featured a hat trick from John Brown. Interest in the League Cup was brought to a halt in that spell too courtesy of a 2-1 aggregate defeat at the hands of Hibernian in the semi-final. Ally McCoist – who had continued the rich vein of scoring form that he had ended the previous season with – had a penalty kick saved by Alan Rough early in the second half of the first leg at Easter Road. Late goals from two Gordons, Chisholm and Durie, gave Hibernian a two-goal lead to take to Glasgow, and despite halving the deficit with a stunning free-kick from Davie Cooper, Rangers couldn’t find the goal needed to restore parity. On 1 January 1986, Rangers lost 2-0 at Parkhead. After 21 games, they had registered 21 points. They sat joint fifth in the table, seven points adrift of Hearts, albeit they had a game in hand. But could there have been a revival? The Old Firm defeat was followed by three straight league wins. Eleven goals were scored and only two conceded as Dundee (5-0), Clydebank (4-2) and St Mirren (2-0) were put to the sword. The visit of Clydebank saw the Canadian international Colin Miller make his Premier Division debut. Alas, it was another false dawn. Seven days after the win over St Mirren, Rangers exited the Scottish Cup when they lost 3-2 against Hearts at Tynecastle. To all intents and purposes, the season was over before the end of January. Ally McCoist, whose goals had saved Rangers from further ignominy, dived to head home a Cooper cross before half time, but Colin McAdam equalised four minutes after the restart. McAdam had replaced Sandy Clark and along with Sandy Jardine and Kenny Black, they represented the former Rangers players in the Hearts player pool. Six minutes later, Gary Mackay fired Hearts ahead, but Ian Durrant profited when Henry Smith and Craig Levein got themselves in a fankle to make it 2-2. It was anyone’s game at this stage, but the scales tipped towards Hearts when Derek Ferguson was ordered off after 72 minutes after an altercation with Mackay. And John Robertson would deliver the knockout blow with five minutes left on the clock. Nicky Walker, who had finally established himself as the Rangers number one, seemed to have the ball in his grasp, but when he collided with one of his defenders, the ball spilled, and Robertson seized upon the chance to fire Hearts into round four. There was further embarrassment for Rangers in Europe too. Drawn against European debutants CA Osasuna in the opening round of the UEFA Cup, Craig Paterson slithered along the turf to head home the only goal of the first leg amid monsoon conditions at Ibrox. The second leg in Pamplona looked like it should be a formality. But between the two legs of the tie came those back-to-back league defeats against Dundee and Aberdeen. Perhaps confidence was sapped, and it was drained further when first half goals from Patzi Ripodas and Enrique Martin earned the novices a place in the next round. It was time for change. This murderous malaise couldn’t continue, and after a pathetic performance in a friendly against Tottenham Hotspur in April, Jock Wallace was relieved of his duties. In his two spells in charge, he had won three league titles, three Scottish Cups, and four League Cups, but after initially galvanising the side upon his return, a downward spiral soon set in. Rangers Football Club were at rock bottom. But the winds of change that would eventually reach hurricane force had started to blow as a gentle breeze as far back as November 1985 when a chap called David Holmes had arrived at the club. Appointed by Lawrence Marlborough, his remit was to retore Rangers to greatness, and he did so in quite spectacular fashion, drawing up and executing an ambitious blueprint that would shake Scottish Football to its very core. The man earmarked by Holmes to lead the revolution was none other than the captain of Scotland, Graeme James Souness. And a matter of days after Wallace had been sacked, Souness was installed as the club’s first-ever player-manager. The blue touch paper had been lit. Before the season ended, Souness had ensured that there would be European football at Ibrox in season 1986/87 – a 2-0 win over Motherwell at Ibrox on the final Saturday of the season had secured a fifth-place finish – and he also engineered a morale-boosting win over the newly-crowned champions, Celtic. Once regarded as a major trophy, the Glasgow Cup had long since dropped down the pecking order when it came to trophies that the Rangers supporters wanted to see their side win. But when the 1986 final brought together a reinvigorated Rangers and a Celtic side that had snatched the title in dramatic fashion, interest was piqued such that a crowd numbering 40,741 turned up on a Friday night at Ibrox to witness the two behemoths battle it out for the silverware. McCoist gave Rangers the lead – he later admitted that he mishit his effort, the ball coming off his knee and trickling past Peter Latchford – but the teams were level at the interval when Brian McClair managed to beat Nicky Walker. And it stayed at 1-1 until McCoist got in on the scoring act again after 76 minutes. He looked to be offside when he received the ball, but the flag stayed down, and he beat Latchford for a second time. But Celtic forced the tie into extra time when Maurice Johnston pounced after a shot from Murdo McLeod had rebounded from the chest of Walker. But in that additional half hour, McCoist grabbed the glory, firing in a magnificent dipping shot from 25 yards that ensured he now had two trebles against Celtic in this his third season as a Rangers player. The glut of goals scored by McCoist had been one of the few positives to take from the season. He missed only three league games and the League Cup tie against Forfar Athletic, all due to a suspension picked up following a fracas in the early season win over Hearts at Ibrox that saw him ordered off along with Sandy Clark and Walter Kidd. His 25 league goals saw him top the scoring charts in the Premier Division, and his overall return was 41 goals in 51 appearances. The fans who had wanted him hunted out the door back in February 1984 were now pinning their hopes on him firing them back to the summit of Scottish Football in the new era that was about to dawn. Those hopes wouldn’t be dashed either as McCoist elevated himself to the pantheon of Rangers greats in the years that followed. But not everyone would be around for the rebirth of Rangers. Having originally been led to believe he was part of the future plans; David Mackinnon was given a free transfer. He was joined by Derek Johnstone, Eric Ferguson, Billy Davies and goalkeeper Andy Bruce. Dougie Bell and John Macdonald were placed on the transfer list. Colin West arrived in mid-May from Watford for a reported fee of £175,000, and that wouldn’t be the last time the cash would be splashed as Souness began to mould and shape his Rangers squad. Thus, despite an ignominious season that had seen Rangers fail to average a point a game in the Premier Division or snare any major silverware, a wave of expectancy and positivity had engulfed Ibrox. From the darkness came light, and for the best part of a decade that light would burn bright as Rangers Football Club awoke from their slumber to dominate once more.
