Sean Higgins would never have believed he’d see a day where he’d love playing for Barry Ferguson. And it’s got nothing to do with the fact he grew up a Celtic fan with a hefty aversion to seeing the Rangers legend lifting trophies.
The former Dundee and Ross County striker was one of Ferguson’s biggest signings as Clyde boss after he’d turned part-time in the latter stages of his career. Seeing his old manager take the reins at Ibrox this week was a surprise – but not half as much of a shock as seeing him take on the role with the Bully Wee over a decade ago.
Tonight at Kilmarnock Ferguson gets underway for real as Gers’ new caretaker boss alongside his trusted former team mates Neil McCann, Billy Dodds and Allan McGregor. It’s a quartet Higgins knows well. As he puts it: he’s worked with three – and dinked the other. The 40-year-old was a team mate of McCann’s at Dundee while Dodds was assistant manager at Dens. And McGregor was on the wrong end of a cheeky finish off Higgins’ boot over two decades ago. But it was under Ferguson at Clyde that he really had his eyes opened to professionalism and standards.
Those are non-negotiables he insists will come as a rude awakening for any member of the Rangers dressing room that thinks he can coast. But Higgins also reckons Ferguson might need to LOWER his expectations from his own silverware-laden playing days. He told Record Sport : “I didn’t think Barry Ferguson would ever be my manager. Let’s be honest. When you look at his playing career, I was just as shocked as everybody else that he took the Clyde job.
“I was a big Celtic fan growing up but you put that to the side. Okay I didn’t like him at Rangers because he was so successful! That’s just normal, as a football fan. That’s credit to him. You admire him as a player, what he’s done.
“I think people forget how good he was. I think he’s one of the greatest Scottish midfielders of all time. Sometimes that might be detrimental to his management style because the standards are so high, the expectations are so high because of the standard that he played in and the teams that he played in.
“He’ll never see that again. He’ll never ever have that on par with him or on par with the players that he played with. His expectations will need to lower, I think, for him to be successful in a short period of time. But he’ll want to go there and make sure he puts his stamp on things and makes a difference.”
The Ibrox icon’s standards are no secret. But few on the outside have had a glimpse of his coaching and management style. Higgins worked under Ferguson for two seasons at Clyde. And said: “I loved Fergie’s organisation and the standards he set. I had been at full-time clubs that were very well established and organised and had good managers, good players.
“But even part-time at Clyde he made it as professional as he could. His training was second to absolutely no-one. To cram it into two sessions and get the quality and the intensity was amazing. We even had a pre-season trip. That just doesn’t happen at part-time level.
“We went to Jersey. It was an amazing experience for everybody. He just tried to do things the right way. Unfortunately, as players and as staff, collectively, we underachieved. We should have won the league in my first season. We ended up losing the play-off final to Queen’s Park. And a year after that, we fell way, way short and he left before the end of the season.
“I got on well with Fergie but a lot of relationships broke down. That was the start for me where you see in society where people couldn’t handle a rollicking. Some people could. A lot of people couldn’t. It was obviously a long time ago but I think that’s something that he’ll probably need to work on. He’s obviously got a backroom staff there with Neil McCann, Allan mcGregor and Doddsie as well. They’ll help him. If somebody needs an arm around the shoulder, maybe that’ll be them. And then the players that need a rollicking, I’m sure Fergie will be first in line to do that.”
It’s a coaching staff Higgins knows first hand from a career that took him from Ross County to Rossvale Juniors with Dundee, St Johnstone, Falkirk, Stenhousemuir, Cowdenbeath, Albion and Clyde in between.
He said: “I worked with three out of the four in my career … and I chipped the other one! McGregor got dinked at St Johnstone when he was on loan there and I was at County.
“Listen, when you played against Greegsy, it was horrible. My role if I wasn’t taking the corner, I would stand on the goalie. And he would stand all over your toes. He’d be nipping you.
“Just like Fergie, Doddsie and McCann, they’re all serial winners, proper mentality of I’ll do anything to win this game.
“I think that’s gone a wee bit from the game in general. But you need to have that at Celtic and Rangers where the expectation is you go and win every game.
“Rangers will have that back under Barry Ferguson. The only concern for me would be it’s his club, Rangers, and he’s watched the past 18 months and it’s not been good enough.
“He’ll be going in there and looking at players’ attitudes and if the attitude’s not right, then he’ll definitely not be shy and letting the players know that.
“But you don’t want him going in there and just absolutely exploding all the time. He needs to get his backroom staff team round about him so that he gets the best out of what he can do this year.
“Obviously, the league’s done. They’re out the Scottish Cup, the Europa League’s the main one, they’ve got a tough task. It’ll be interesting to see the reaction of the players on Wednesday.”