McCoist's Rangers Part Two: Team and Tactics

Written by Kev
In this five part series, RangersMedia are commemorating Ally McCoist's first 100 days as manager of Rangers.
Today, Kev analyses the tactics of McCoist, as well as theplayers he has at his disposal.
“Spring being a tough act to follow, God created June.”
Al Bernstein
I must have been about eight years old when my mum took me to the barbers to get my hair cut like Ally’s. I’d been wanting ‘a Gazza’ (a bleach blonde number 2 all over) like every other young Rangers fan, but that morning Ally was back page of the Daily Record sporting a more reserved ‘number 4’ and my parents had managed to convince me, much to their credit, that this was a more suitable haircut for me. I thought I was the coolest person on the planet walking out of that place with the same hair as Ally McCoist and he immediately became my hero ahead of Gazza and Laudrup(all those options to choose from in the one team. We were spoilt rotten back then!).
Fast forward to now and it’s fair to say that my luscious head of hair puts Ally’s to shame, but my level of admiration for him remains at that ridiculously high level that is best described as ‘idolisation’. But that idolisation is in a less firm position now. You see, when players play, it was easy for them to gain the adulation of the fans. You get the ball, you score 355 times, everyone loves you. Managers however, are in the unfortunate position of being ultimately responsible for player mistakes. If a team doesn’t perform, it is the manager who has questions to answer. The credit for the good rarely goes to the man in charge. It’s not that I agree with this way of treating management, it’s more that this is the default response of a football fan. Managers put themselves in the line of fire.
It is hard to describe Ally’s impact since taking the hot seat at Ibrox in just one or two words, and trust me, I’ve tried. There has been a whole lot to talk about and not all of it good. There is no need for me to remind any of you about our current status in European football, but there is equally no need to remind you that we’re top of the league, coasting seven points clear of second place Motherwell (although it is nice to say out loud once every few minutes). They say that you have to take the good with the bad, and this season we’ve had quite a bit of both thrown at us. What impact has Ally had on all that?
A sensible place to start would be to look at his transfers this summer. We were all well aware of our long-term problems in defence with Bougherra looking elsewhere and Weir being older than time itself. It was important that we made good quality signings at the back to build a new solid foundation for our team to rest upon. Lee Wallace was brought in to offer competition for Papac at left back, also opening up the possibility of the Bosnian moving into the middle as he done at home to Malmo. £1.5million may have been a bit steep, but the Scot looks like a solid purchase and has shown enough this season to suggest he will be a quality acquisition as Ally builds a team here at Ibrox. The main interest, of course, was in who would be drafted in to replace Bougherra and the Captain. Kyle Bartley has returned on loan and, despite his injury, I think we can all safely say he’ll be more than good enough for SPL football. The introduction of Ross Perry to top flight football has also been an incredibly promising move by Ally with the Scotland Under 21 international looking like another good young player capable of making the step up. It’s the purchases of Goian and Bocanegra that have made the biggest impact though. Bringing in internationals with bags of experience is rarely a bad move, but Ally appears to have pulled out a couple of Walter-esque defensive singings with these two. I doubt there is a Rangers fan on Earth who is unhappy about the acquisition of two solid centre halves for somewhere in the region of a million pounds. In my eyes, the Gaffer has done well to rebuild a solid defensive unit over the summer. Absolutely no complaints from me.
Elsewhere on the park, I think it is fair to say we’ve seen less dramatic changes. Juanma Ortiz was brought in from Almeria and immediatly found himself in the team. His impact, however, has been fairly underwhelming, although I do think we’re starting to see improvements. Bedoya and McKay have barely had enough game time to make any sort of impact so it’s hard to judge what they will be like, although you would expect the Australian Player of the Year might be pretty decent. Here’s hoping he gets a chance and impresses.
Perhaps the biggest shock, and biggest frustration, comes in our failure to add another striker to the ranks despite obvious attempts to bring one in. Our moves for David Goodwillie were perhaps the most covered story in Scottish press this summer with the only other contender being the Cuellar ‘will he, won’t he’ shenanigans. In my opinion, we were most definitely right to not pay money for him before he was cleared of the rape charge. I know, I know, innocent until proven guilty and all that, but financially it would not make sense to invest in a risk like he most definitely was. After he was cleared, we found ourselves competing with a ridiculous offer from Blackburn that we were right to not match. Again, this is my opinion but I think we’ve done pretty much the right thing. My only objection is our lack of Plan B. Ally clearly wanted another striker; he said as much. The fact that I’m sitting here now telling you about how we don’t have one is fairly disappointing. Yes, we do have some quality, but I don’t believe we have many options. But is our failure to bring in an alternative to Goodwillie a failure of McCoist’s? Is it Whyte’s fault? Or would we have had the money had we reached the Champions League? Is our failure to be there McCoist’s fault?
No point in kidding ourselves, our failure to defeat Malmo was quite embarrassing. They are not a particularly good side and we should have been more than capable of breezing past them. But we didn’t. And that is, in my opinion, a failure of both the players and the management. I don’t think we can excuse Ally for our defeat at Ibrox way back in July when the Swedes stunned us with a first half strike, leaving the disappointingly half empty Ibrox to stew in a furious near-silence. We started that night with similar formation to the one used by Smith in last season’s Champions League; three centre backs, two wing backs, narrow three in the middle with one in behind the striker. Essentially, we lined up 5-4-1 against Malmo at Ibrox. It just didn’t work, and boy did we pay. Malmo found far too much space and took the lead. Weir did come off injured and we did move to a slightly more attacking formation, but we never controlled the game and our opponents always seemed far more comfortable, despite their obviously inferior ability. We looked lost. We looked like a team who went into the game not really knowing what to do or how to react. That said, we did also create some clear chances that we should have scored so the blame cannot rest entirely with McCoist, but he cannot escape from criticism. That was Ally’s first big test, and boy did he fail.
Tactically, we changed after that. Ally returned to the 4-4-2 that served us so well in the run in last season and, after contract negotiations were concluded, put Wylde back into the starting line up. In fact, our league formation appears to be very much from the ‘Walter Smith Guide To Winning The League’. Back line aside, we’re playing near enough the same team that cruised to victory in the final games of last season, often starting games with the same front 6 (and same GK, RB and LB!) that scored 3 goals in little over 6 minutes at Rugby Park in May.
So will Ally simply be another Walter Smith? Or will he be the June to Walter’s spring? To date, things seem to be pretty much ‘as you were’ at Rangers. Poor in Europe with defensive tactics, entirely dominant in the league with the same 4-4-2 that has done us well for years. My suspicion though, is that things will change ever so slightly. Malmo at home was a disaster, but Malmo away was an improvement tactically. We lined up with what appeared to be a continental 4-2-3-1 formation that worked really quite well until Whittaker’s idiotic red card forced us to make changes. We controlled the ball and passed it about with ease, even if we did lack that cutting edge. To me this suggests there is something a little bit different at Ally’s approach. I think he is more receptive to a change in style that may suit us better in Europe. I’m maybe (probably) basing this on nothing more than blind optimism, but I don’t think Ally will simply be another Walter tactically, although there is no doubt there are and always will be similarities.
There was a definite change in our play after initial early season blips; the return of Wylde giving us width on the left, Lafferty back up top, Naismith returning to the right to play his narrower role freeing up space for Whittaker to push down the wing. All these things were missing when the campaign kicked off, but they returned as our performances did as well. Ally has got things back on track.
To give you another Al Berstein quote, “Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction”. Our early season mistakes and departures from Europe may well be the missteps that have helped Ally find that path to success. Every cloud has a silver lining, that’s what they say. Our silver lining appears to be that Ally has changed tactics and personnel, brought in players required and got us 7 points clear ahead of Motherwell (it’s been a good few minutes since I last said that out loud). Will we regret our failure to not make Europe and the financial implications of such a dire beginning to the campaign? Only time will tell, but I suspect Ally will be fine. He has to be given credit for steadying the ship. Questions were asked about him immediately, but he has answered them with a solid start to the SPL season, despite dropping points at home to Hearts and St Mirren. I hope Bernstein is right about our misstep out of Europe, and I hope Ally really is the June to Walter’s Spring. And I hope I’m sitting here in May writing another article about how great it feels to be Champions again. 100 days down, plenty to go. Over to you Ally. Do us proud. If you win the league, I’ll even consider restyling my hair in your honour.