Barry Ferguson has asked to be judged one game at a time during his Ibrox reign. The next match for Rangers’ caretaker manager is the first leg of the Europa League tie against Fenerbahce in Istanbul on Thursday night.
That’s Ferguson coming up against the legend that is Jose Mourinho. The same Mourinho who has won five European trophies as a manager and 10 league titles with clubs in four different countries. The Special One against the Only One, you might think. The Only One because Ferguson is having to contradict, on a match-by-match basis, the notion that his availability was a more powerful argument than his suitability when Rangers decided a new man was needed.
The change had become an emergency response after Philippe Clement’s continued inefficiency could no longer be tolerated by the club or its supporters. It’s an appointment that appears to be more about who Barry is rather than what he is when it came to managerial credentials.
Thursday night in Turkey will only be Ferguson’s third match in charge of a full-time team, having cut his managerial teeth in part-time surroundings at Clyde, Kelty Hearts and Alloa Athletic.
But he will nevertheless be expected to become a serious man for serious times. And if he succeeds in getting a win, or even a draw, against Mourinho’s team, his credibility will go through the roof. And yet it might not be enough to guarantee Ferguson a job at Ibrox on a permanent basis because Rangers are currently a club in a state of suspended animation.
The root-and-branch review taking place to establish why even the manager’s job has become the least of Rangers’ worries might be thought of as a report card to be shown to those who are needed to progress the club from their presently parlous state to a healthier standing.
The current custodians of the club are, to put it bluntly, making it up as they go along while talks are ongoing over the possibility of a takeover bid from 49ers Enterprises, owners of NFL side San Francisco 49ers. And that includes the installation of a management team which is five strong and heavily based on people who are, to use the popular expression “Real Rangers men”.
I wrote here last week that the expression was the first one I waited to hear used by a caller on radio whenever Rangers were stunned by some calamitous development on the park. I remain unimpressed by the notion that having played for the club with great distinction is an automatic guarantee of possessing transformative powers when it comes to reversing the fortunes of the team if it goes into a state of distress.
It was a populist move carried out by a chief executive, Patrick Stewart, who has performed more u-turns than a learner driver since assuming office at Ibrox last December. The dictionary definition of populism is something which “aims to appeal to ordinary people”.
If that was Rangers’ intention it did not have the desired effect on the first radio caller after the announcement of Ferguson’s appointment. He said what had taken place was a case of the Ibrox hierarchy “pulling the wool” over the eyes of supporters. So much for the popular vote.
I bring in the team across the road on the other side of the city only for factual input where this debate is concerned. Ange Postecoglou arrived at Celtic as a Greek-born adopted Aussie whose last working address was on the Asian continent. He couldn’t have been less of a “Real Celtic man” if he’d tried.
But, over a two-season period in charge, Ange won five of the six trophies he contested before his talents captured the attention of Spurs, a club from one of Europe’s five elite leagues.
Mourinho’s achievements make Postecoglou look like a novice, which would entitle Ferguson to resemble a miracle worker if he can keep Rangers in Europe this season at the expense of the Portuguese manager.
Jose might be going down through the divisions in terms of his personal story, and be involved in a row about alleged conduct unbecoming a man of his stature in Turkey.
But his CV is still so glowing you could see it in the dark. Rangers’ squad is predominantly made up of players from several different continents, and the side who lost at home to St Mirren last weekend, ultimately costing Clement his job, contained no Scottish players at all.
As I’ve said before, Hamza Igamane, for example, is from Morocco. He is more Casablanca than Castlemilk. All of the “Real Rangers men” stuff will go over his head and the heads of several others beside him in the dressing room. If Barry overcomes Jose it will be about what he knows in the here and now and have nothing to do with what he accomplished back in the day.
And it would be the best personal assessment he could give of himself before someone above his pay grade makes the decision over whose name is to be put on the door of the manager’s office at Ibrox. One thing that can be said with a fair degree of certainty is that Clement’s side would not have come back from being two goals down at Rugby Park, as Ferguson’s team did, on Wednesday night.
It was the kind of start that stuck two fingers up to the sceptics. The next two weeks, which bring a couple of meetings with Mourinho and an Old Firm derby against Brendan Rodgers’ side at Celtic Park, will decide whether the sceptics get to make a retaliatory gesture.