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Dominant - The Sense Of An Ending (1997/98): Part One (Patreon)

Published:
2023-01-10 07:00:03
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2026-06
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Content

Dominant is back for that difficult final season and it's a bumper episode as Martyn, David and Alan get stuck into those who signed and those who didn't in the summer of 1997 as well as the Laudrup decision, the Nike Family Day, Amoruso's botched operation, Negri's sensational start and the crash of European reality. 

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Comments

Callum Dinnen

The Laudrup thing is so easy to criticise in hindsight but there would have riots selling him in summer 1997 given how much he'd carried the team in the 9 in a row season. What I find so interesting though is the hindsight reactions of most of the support to both Laudrup and Gascoigne. Virtually everyone would now concede that not selling Laudrup in 1997 was a mistake, because we know what we got (or rather didn't get) from him through 97/98. Yet despite him being a fucking disgrace for the last 15 months or so of his Rangers career, one of the most common myths is that selling Gascoigne cost us 10 in a row - probably because that scenario has an unknown 'what if' factor we don't have with Laudrup.

Miguel Sanchez

£30 in 97 is the equivalent of £54.25 I paid less than that for my ticket for RB in a European semi final last season

Martyn Ramsay
>>99304017

As I said in the show, it’s perfectly understandable why Murray and Smith held the line on Laudrup given so much change and uncertainty. All I can say personally was that I wasn’t comfortable with it and it’s been a golden rule since. Gascoigne’s sale was a huge trigger at the time but very quickly was binned as a reason as his career plummeted. Plenty of the other sliding doors have remained romanticised

John Davidson

You're absolutely correct Martyn about the unhappier times making more interesting listening. As Mrs Doyle once said on Father Ted: "What if I like the misery!?". Great show.

Callum Dinnen

My abiding memory of the Strasbourg game is the guy behind me shouting 'Smith Out!' and banging his seat in frustration. Funnily enough David has just mentioned the penny dropping as I type this.

Graham Roy

That Nike day I remember I had flown in from holiday in the US and fell asleep in the 2nd half due to jet lag! I do recall everyone raving about Johansson that day. Was so over the top but both the strips were classics!

Steve Clark

The £30 a ticket for the Gothenburg game was my turning point with Murray.what made me really angry at the time was the insinuation from Murray that if you didn’t cough the money for a ticket you weren’t really a rangers supporter.i hardly missed a game at ibrox around then but that night I had to make do with listening to the game on the radio as Murray had also blocked live tv coverage.

Craig

Ah being 13 and not knowing the half of it however I remember a Nike billboard that said 9/10 must do better! Also was at the family day. Just remember being awful in Europe though.

Ben

100% a cross

Martin Boyd

I lived near Gothenburg for a while and played golf the odd time with a fan of a similar age to myself and when I brought up the match he sort of laughed and said they couldn’t believe how easy it was. Smith should have been sacked years before , knocking over rabbits when you can outspend them many times over doesn’t make you a good football manager. Europe was where it was at and at that time we and he were bloody awful.

David Martin

I was young at the time so the memory is quite vague, but does anyone else remember going to see the 3 Italian signings at a phone shop - DX Communications in the city centre?

Gary Shaw
>>99304017

Couldn’t agree more…Gascoigne was a disgrace this season and I know it’s hard to say now but throw Goram into that aswell….Laudrup didn’t play well this season but his professionalism was never in doubt which is more than can be said about Gascoigne and Goram

Gary Shaw

Pretty sure the first OF game of the season was scheduled for the Monday night (the day after Princesse Diana’s death) and not on the Sunday

Callum Dinnen

Speaking of Hubris, anyone remember the Queen, Charles and Philip puppets on the 9 in a row video singing 'We'll make it 10' to the tune of 'We'll Meet Again?'

John Johnston

I wish Advocaat had arrived a year earlier and this shitshow of a season would have been avoided.

Mark

I agree with David, it was a ball from Laudrup intended to generate chaos in the Sheep six-yard box and it ended-up in the net. He made his own luck with the delivery.

Paul Dunnachie

I’ll go against the grain… in spite of the new signings and the utter state of Celtic, I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that the football Gods would leave us and them tied on 9 titles a piece. To balance that, I vaguely knew a guy who played for Hibs at the time and they played Rangers in a behind closed doors match that summer - he said that Rangers looked unstoppable, was also raving about Amoruso. The 9/10 Must Do Better adverts and the like seemed to be massively tempting fate as well. Just had a bad feeling from the start.

Gary Havlin

A sensational episode men!

Ross Matheson

I remember the Billy Connolly thing too! Can't seem to find anything about it either.

Ross Matheson

Interesting points being made about Negri's chance conversation rate and a lack of stats. David and I have spoken about this point before online but as far as Laudrup goes, when clips of the season are posted on Stephen Millar's Rangers Archive page, Laudrup's consistently assisting a huge number of the goals. I'm not sure how many he scored that season but I'd like to know his goal involvment totals. I doubt too many people have watched much of it since they saw the games live all those years back and I think it's just become accepted that he contributed hee haw. I'm sure David mentioned to me that even Ian Ferguson reckoned Laudrup's chucked it and it sounded like a large part of the blame was being laid with him for not winning the league. Speaks volumes to me that the others saw it as down to him (captain or not) to make the difference ALL the time. If everyone else had had just a smidgen of the professionalism that Laudrup had, even if he wasn't applying himself to HIS levels, we'd have won it at a canter.

Ross Matheson

Why didn't Laudrup start the home game against Gothenburg? Was he injured? Is that why I was McCoist and and Negri upfront?

SDF
>>99376002

Laudrup was still recovering from Chicken Pox and only just made the bench for the Gothenburg game. Absolutely no idea why Walter dropped Durie after his excellent showing v Dundee United days previously (where he looked to have a good partnership with Negri) for McCoist.

Martyn Ramsay
>>99375875

It’s an interesting point Ross and I’ll keep a tally as we go, as best I can. Laudrup scored 5 that season and, as of the end of September, had assisted 4 of the 34 goals Rangers scored. Albertz is more dominant in that regard and my memory is that’s the case throughout the season. Possibly one of the few players to come out of 97/98 in credit. The point that I’ll try and bring through in the show is that these easy targets and explanations rarely are. There was a wider malaise of which most of the players, including Laudrup, were a part.

Ross Matheson
>>99375875

Aye, that'll be interesting. It's a good point about Albertz being a main part of things now. As much as he was obviously there for 9, I forget about him this year when blame is being laid (he's really remembered that year for the two OF games coming in EP3 or 4) and then I associate him with Advocaat. That's likely due to him not being "one of the ones to blame" right enough. Absolutely the wheels had come off. I thought the opening to the show with all the things which went wrong - and then the point being that "if only this didn't hhappen" was fantastic when coupled with "but something else would" I hadn't thought of it like that before. It was just a matter of time before it all came to a head. and when the cracks had started to appear long before, it's not until it's all crashing down, that it goes really wrong.

Campbell Maclennan

Even as a 14 year old I thought the Nike "9 out of 10 - must do better" adverts were a bit much. A lot had to go wrong that season for us not to win that league and by God it did...!!!

Gary Brown

Thanks again Martyn for the latest episode of your wonderful series and thanks to Alan & David whose key contributions do so much to make it so. Aye! 9/10 Must do better! That ad was 'very Nike' for the time - very clever and just a touch cheeky. Neither have a welcome home in most OF football fans mentality. I just remember feeling "Oh no! Jinx!" The saddest thing about this season is it ended SO close, despite all the 'baggage' we continued to load ourselves with and carted along! Looking forward to the next installment, thanks again guys 👏👍😊

CJT

Brilliant episode. Thanks. Show just keeps getting better. The hubris of the times is simply breathtaking in retrospect. I wasn't as smart as you guys as i saw no end to it, domestically at least, even at this stage.. Didn't take long for nemesis to visit though unfortunately

Ian Milne

How similar does this season sound to last season (2021-22). Manager coming from Japan, Celtic being 6 behind, we thinking it was over etc.

Scott Christian

Another riveting discussion chaps, with so many interweaving threads going on. Several things to pick up on (not in any particular order). Laudrup’s goal v Aberdeen was a cross, zero chance he was trying to score. Laudrup was certainly mentally in another place, but I specifically remember at the time chat being around the long lasting debilitating effect that getting chickenpox as an adult being the main culprit for his form. On a similar vein to David, I was very much in the Smith must go camp and had been for several years by this point. The European debacles were enough for me. I paid the Gothenburg money last minute, travelling up from England where I’d moved in April to start a new job. What a disaster. As much as I was as angry as everyone else at the price and the Murray rhetoric, myself and a colleague Gary Shearer travelled together for the game. What a waste of time! Negri’s 5. I think that was amongst the most joyous atmospheres at Ibrox I can remember. People just looking at each other with glaikit smiles trying to understand this phenomenon! Came up for the Strasbourg game too. No need to add anything. The Nike deal was out of this world, that really did set us apart. I did the Nou Camp tour in 99 & the Barca club shop stocked only one other team’s kit apart from their own… The reach was global. Perhaps the signs were also there at Dave Watson’s testimonial. We played so well going forward scoring two brilliant goals yet lost our brand new colossal defender and the match (in fact I think we were ahead in the game twice too) Celtic lost to Bohemians or someone similar in a tournament in Dublin on the same night & the chat at the service stations on the way home was all around the shambles they were. Was it this season that they tried to get Artur Jorge in as manager or was that the year after when they brought Dr Jo in? The best part of this episode is Martyn’s introduction. Time passes and we probably all each have our own single moment that we blame for not getting over the line. Stubbs’s last minute equaliser would be mine. There are so many other moments though, which you are right, hindsight shows the inevitability of it all (though would Celtic’s challenge have faded if we had beaten them with ten men that night?!!) As previously mentioned, very sad that this excellent pod is coming to a close soon, always look forward to a Tuesday!!

Fraser Black

New year, same class show lads 👍🏻 so much to unpack on that episode but just a couple of questions from me: 1) on the back of the Nike family day (was there as well) everyone being fit that season & not encountering the personal issues what would your strongest starting 11 be? 2) after Gough’s departure who would you have put in as captain that season if not Laudrup? Do you also think it’s maybe a real reflection of the professionalism within that squad that players that had been there for 6,7,8+ years were overlooked for the role? I also think given he was captain of Hamburg & seemed to be a popular member of the squad, strange that big Jorge was overlooked that season. Food for thought as well, if we sign Lambert that season, does Advocaat still build his team round Barry Ferguson the next season . . ? 🤔 Given it was always thought the two were too similar playing for Scotland. Thanks again lads look forward to next week.

Gordon Smith

I remember a batch of the Nike stripes were accidentally released (or stolen) a week early. People all over Glasgow wearing them before the release.

Pedro

Sensational stuff guys. That transfer window is a real strange one. Some excellent business, some bad and some sore luck. Amo, Rino, Niemi, Porrini, Negri, Vidmar is excellent business. How the fück did we not win that league....