To play football, or not to play football? The question still stalks Walter Smith. It was two years ago that Lionel Messi, Barcelona’s lippy striker, made his barbed “anti-football” comment about Rangers’ style, and as Smith and his team prepare to re-enter the Champions League in Germany tonight, the topic is still being debated.
While Rangers arrived yesterday to face Stuttgart in their opening group G encounter, Smith was still having to bat away questions about his team’s on-field image. The irony for the Ibrox manager is that this allegedly atrocious style of play actually worked, carrying Rangers to their first European final in 36 years, in the Uefa Cup in Manchester, where they lost to Zenit St Petersburg.
Smith has always been self-deprecating on the subject, often humorously referring to his team’s “wild, gung-ho style”, and he was at it again yesterday as he once more debated the theme.
The Rangers manager does hope that his team can play in a more creative way in this 2009-10 Champions League, but still defends the 4-5-1 formation that helped Rangers to claw their way to Manchester two years ago.
“What Lionel Messi said about ‘anti-football’ didn’t bother me at all,” Smith said yesterday. “Nor did the criticism we received for playing 4-5-1 frustrate me in the slightest. Messi was right — I said so at the time. But managers are in jobs to make big decisions for games like these.
“We were facing Barcelona in the Champions League two years ago and, with the players we had, we couldn’t possibly have gone gung-ho against them. It would have been folly. Indeed, last season I watched Chelsea play Barcelona, and, even with the players they’ve got, they were not dissimilar to us tactically when they played them. So Messi’s comments didn’t annoy me at all. You always have to use a system which is best suited to the players at your disposal, to get a result. That’s all I tried to do.”
These days, despite their financial problems, Rangers arguably have players who are better equipped to attack than they did two seasons ago. As Smith said yesterday, over the coming weeks in Europe we are about to see if this is true or not, but with Steven Naismith, Kenny Miller and Pedro Mendes, Smith certainly feels that his side can be more offensive in the opposition half.
Yet old habits die hard. The Rangers manager also knows that it was quite a feat leading his side to that Uefa Cup final two years ago, and if the template worked then, why not use it again? It is a question that Smith has wrestled with as he has tried to make Rangers more expansive and attractive.
“As you move on, you want to try to show that you can maybe loosen up a bit and achieve a more attacking style of play,” he said. “Whether we can do that and still be successful is another matter, but it seems a natural progression to try to make.
“The last time we went into this competition we were a new team, but once we settled down, we managed to get a reasonable bit of success. In many ways I’m drawn back towards that old system, although we do now have one or two forward players who can cause teams problems.
“In the early part of our pre-season we looked at a system which was slightly more adventurous than the 4-5-1, because I wanted to see how we would do by using more attacking players in the wider areas. Now we must make a judgment in terms of what system we use in these Champions League away games.
“We will have to take into consideration the opposition, and also the home and away aspect. But I think we’ve got better in certain areas, so we’re about to see if we have improved to a level we’d have hoped for.”
However he chooses to shape his team, Smith is toying with the idea of throwing Kevin Thomson on from the start in the Gottlieb-Daimler Stadium tonight, making a central midfield pairing of Thomson and Mendes. Depending on David Weir’s fitness, Smith may also play Lee McCulloch in the holding midfield role, with Kenny Miller as a lone striker.
After his red card against Heart of Midlothian three weeks ago, Thomson’s season has hardly got going, having missed most of last season through injury. Yet Smith sounded unabashed about playing the midfield player. “It has been an awkward situation with Kevin, but he has to start playing some time,” Smith said. “He is useful for us in terms of our retention of the ball. Away from home in Europe you have to make sure you are reasonably solid, and you look to make the other team work extremely hard to get their goals.”
The Rangers manager dismissed Stuttgart’s shaky start to the season under Markus Babbel, the coach; they have slumped to twelfth place in the Bundesliga after winning just one of their opening five fixtures.
“Their season has only just started,” Smith said, dismissing the notion of out-of-form opponents. “Stuttgart had a terrific second half to last season where they rose to finish third in the league.
“Any team can have a shaky start to a season — we haven’t had a great start ourselves — so we know we face a real test out here.”
Stuttgart (probable; 4-4-2): J Lehmann — C Trdsch, S Tasci, M Delpierre, S Celozzi — T Gebhart, T Hitzlsperger, S Khedira, J Simak — Cacau, P Pogrebnyak.
Rangers (probable; 4-1-4-1): A McGregor — S Whittaker, D Weir, M Bougherra, S Papac — L McCulloch — S Davis, K Thomson, P Mendes, S Naismith — K Miller.
Referee: M Busacca (Switzerland).
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