Alex McLeish has opened up on the managerial masterclass that saw him guide Rangers to a historic treble 20 years ago during his first full season in charge of the club.
The Ibrox legend took over midway through the 01/02 campaign on the recommendation of Dick Advocaat after he moved upstairs in Govan to become Sporting Director.
The impact of McLeish’s appointment was instant as he quickly put his stamp on the team and secured a crucial cup double by the end of his first campaign.
Glory would continue into his first full season as boss as he historically landed the league, league cup and Scottish Cup titles the following campaign in a dominant treble triumph.
“Listen, I grew up as a Rangers fan as a kid,” he reflected. “I would never have believed that I would be the manager and win three trophies in one season.
“Fast forward all these years and it doesn’t seem real. But I was privileged to work with some tremendous players.
“I studied the European and world market over the years as a kid and one of the things I always remember reading was one of the top Italian managers saying that when you have really good players you need to get your strategy right.
“My strategy was pretty basic. Sir Alex Ferguson always said, ‘play with tempo, pass with tempo, play assertively and get forward as quickly as you can.’
“There were the little pearls of wisdom I used when I took over Dick’s team. I knew I had to get them playing faster.
“That team went on to win that treble with me as the manager, with my great coaches by my side, it was fairytale stuff.”
May 25 will mark the 20-year anniversary of Rangers landing the league title, and it famously came down to goal difference on the final day as McLeish’s side defeated Dunfermline 6-1 at Ibrox.
Celtic only managed to defeat Kilmarnock 4-0 at Rugby Park, meaning the title landed at Ibrox after an absence of three years.
McLeish continued: “Mikel Arteta’s goal at the end sealed it. It was such a hurly burly 90 minutes.
“I kept hearing all the people behind me saying ‘Celtic have scored, Celtic have missed a penalty, Celtic have done this, Celtic have done that….’
“We had a plan from the beginning of the week that if we scored a goal we would run in the net, retrieve the ball and take it back to the centre.
“We knew it could all come down to goal difference. Sometimes you don’t think about that, you just say, ‘just win’
“Our message that week was, ‘we’re going to win this but we have to score as many goals as we can.’
“I know big Chris Sutton had his say but Celtic missed a penalty and a barrowload of chances. We were worthy of that title.
“We played extremely well that day and had a massive tempo in the team. You watch the finish again and you see how quickly we played and the levels of performance.
“They were top international players in that treble winning season. From a team that were a little bit down on their luck when I came in we got them absolutely flying.”
Asked where his Rangers team of 2002/03 ranks in the history of the club, McLeish added: “It’s hard to believe the way things happen. Some people say ‘you’ve been a lucky manager’. Lucky? I’ve never had a penny to spend at all my clubs and somehow I have got quite a lot out of the players and man-managed the great team that Dick left me.
“Dick said he thought they were tired of his voice and that he was tired as well. I went to see Dick when he was at Eindhoven and I bought this boy called Mitchell van der Gaag. That was probably why Dick put me in for the job when it came up.
“Ferguson was on a different planet to a lot of players in terms of his box-to-box play. He was a terrific player, one of the best ever. I bought a boy called Mikel Arteta who was a No.6 for PSG and I thought ‘well, there’s no way he’s going to take Barry’s No.6 jersey so we will have to find another position for him’.
“He was the playmaker at PSG, he started everything. But Barry started a lot and finished a lot, he was just a one-off.”
