Ally McCoist has fired a stinging blast at the Scottish football authorities for failing to help Rangers after the Dutch FA came to PSV Eindhoven’s aid in the Eredivisie’s quest to see off the Ibrox side and reach the Champions League group stage.
Ruud van Nistelrooy’s side will enjoy extra time to prepare for the huge second leg clash in Holland after their fixture with Volendam on August 20 was pushed back to August 31. Rangers face a tough trip to Hibs on August 20 and are in Premier Sports Cup action against Queen of the South on August 30 but McCoist believes more should be done to help Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s men and Scottish clubs in general.
And the Rangers strike legend and former boss reopened old wounds as he recalled how ex-SFA President George Peat revealed how one prominent Scottish football chairman warned ‘not to help Rangers’ during the bitter 2008 fixture row when Rangers were faced to play five games in 11 punishing days as a result of a backlog due to them reaching the UEFA Cup final against Zenit St Petersburg in Manchester.
McCoist was assistant boss to Walter Smith at that time and it was the SPFL who they had a major row with and it would be up to Neil Doncaster and his team on Hampden's sixth floor to accommodate any fixture change ahead of the PSV tie. However McCoist launched a broadside at the SFA. Speaking on talkSPORT, he said: “It’s a shambles. Particularly the Scottish FA. I keep harping back to when Rangers reached the Europa League Final in 2008, it was an absolute embarrassment.
“They made us play five league games in 11 days and there was a UEFA final in between it. The head of the SFA George Peat came out and said another club director said to him ‘don’t help Rangers’. I’ve got the quote in front of me. Ex-SFA supremo Peat told the BBC ‘When Rangers got to the final in Manchester, I got a phone call from a prominent chairman of a club requesting me not to help Rangers in any way’.
“That’s what you’re dealing with. We’re so blinkered and narrow-minded. Any Scottish team that has an opportunity to do well in Europe should be helped but there’s none. When we played Zenit in 2008 I honestly think they were given three weeks off by their federation and we had to play five league games in 11 days. The Dutch FA want to help their teams.”
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