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Gooners Beware Of The Ecks Factor; Success Follows McLeish Wherever He Goes
Topic Started: Feb 25 2011, 09:22 AM (113 Views)
Bluebird
Paul Tait
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ANALYSIS
By Steven Saunders

Alex McLeish will lead Birmingham City out at Wembley on Sunday and taste the English cup final experience for the very first time in his 35-year career in professional football.

But don’t be fooled – the flame-haired Scot is far more acquainted with silverware than even Arsene Wenger, his managerial rival in the League Cup final.

Be it as a player or manager, McLeish has never been far away from success. And it’s almost always been achieved swimming against the tide – Arsenal, you have been warned.

It began as a player under the tutelage of Alex Ferguson (plain old Alex Ferguson in those days, pre-knighthood) at Aberdeen. He made just short of 500 appearances for the club during a golden era that has come to define the Pittodrie club, even now.

In 1983, Aberdeen could lay claim to being the best team in Europe, having defeated Real Madrid in the Cup Winners’ Cup final, then gone on to beat European Cup holders Hamburg in the European Super Cup final.

It was the high point of an illustrious playing career for McLeish, which brought three Premier League titles, five Scottish Cups (including four in five seasons) and three Scottish League Cups. So much for the Old Firm dominance that most have come to expect – Aberdeen, with McLeish and Willie Miller at the heart of their defence, were more successful in the 1980s than either club.

The Glasgow native began his managerial career at Motherwell in 1994, and guided them to second place in the league behind a dominant Rangers in his first season in charge. With Hibs, he failed to steer them away from relegation in the final few months of the 1997-98 season, but then brought them back into the top flight better than ever, with astute signings such as Franck Sauzee, the former France captain, and Trinidad & Tobago winger Russell Latapy. He also experienced his first cup final as a manager in 2001, when Hibs lost 3-0 in the Scottish Cup final to a Henrik Larsson-inspired Celtic.

By the time he was surprisingly announced as Dick Advocaat’s successor at Rangers in December 2001, the Ibrox club had ceded supremacy to Martin O’Neill’s Celtic. Remarkably, “Big Eck” picked up a domestic cup double before the season was out, and a clean sweep treble the following year.

“Sure, but it was only in Scotland,” is the simple retort. However, it is worth remembering that O’Neill’s Celtic reached the 2003 Uefa Cup final and took Jose Mourinho’s Porto to extra time before losing 3-2. McLeish may “only” have had to beat Celtic, but this was a very good Celtic.

Another charge against McLeish is that he is a lucky manager. True, the manner in which Rangers won the title on the final day of the 2005 season would have been thrown out of a Hollywood scriptwriters’ meeting for being too ludicrous a plot.

Back then, two goals in the final two minutes of the final game of the season by Scott McDonald for Motherwell against Celtic gifted Rangers the title.

McDonald is a Celtic fan, Motherwell McLeish’s former club – and yet events there meant 40 miles away in Edinburgh a 1-0 win over Hibs (McLeish’s other former club) was enough to see Rangers crowned champions.

But throw in the fact that Rangers were five points behind Celtic with four games left in that season, and you begin to unpick McLeish’s managerial mastery. How does a manager convince his players to keep going when all seems lost?

This isn’t a one-off either. McLeish took Rangers to the last 16 of the Champions League for the first time ever in 2006 against the backdrop of miserable domestic performances and protests for his resignation.

Rumours emerged on the eve of a vital Champions League group game in Porto that Paul Le Guen had been approached to be his successor. Rangers still drew 1-1, then repeated the feat against Inter two weeks later to qualify. How does a manager convince his players to keep going when he’s not going to be the manager any more?

It’s not the only time he’s achieved with doubts over his future hanging over him. Birmingham secured promotion to the Premier League in 2009 on the final day despite rumours that it would be McLeish’s last match in charge. They did so by winning 2-1 at Reading, who themselves could have gone up automatically with a win.

Fast forward to 2011, and Birmingham were 3-1 down on aggregate in the League Cup semi-final at half-time of their second leg against West Ham. By the end of the night, they were on their way to Wembley.

Even in his first game as Birmingham manager in December 2007, Sebastian Larsson struck a sublime injury-time winner against Tottenham at White Hart Lane – Birmingham hadn’t won away from St Andrew’s since August.

These kinds of things have happened too often in McLeish’s managerial career to be pure old luck; there are motivational masterstrokes behind it all.

There have been mistakes, without question. Rangers fans will not easily forget a record run of seven Old Firm derby defeats in a row, nor finishing outwith the top two in the SPL for the first time in almost two decades in McLeish’s final season, which included a 10-game winless run. Signings such as Nuno Capucho were laughed back out of Scotland.

McLeish might even have guided his nation to their first major finals since 1998 when attempting to qualify for Euro 2008 but for a dismal 2-0 defeat in Georgia. A win there, and Scotland would have split Italy and France, the two 2006 World Cup finalists, in their group.

But that is something of a disservice to Scotland’s most successful manager ever by win ratio (70 per cent - Scotland's all-time win ratio is 47%). Quality sides like Ukraine were well beaten at Hampden as the Tartan Army witnessed their team playing with a swagger that had rarely been seen, certainly since Kenny Dalglish hung up his boots.

McLeish declared the League Cup semi-final success with Birmingham the proudest moment of his career. It was a bold claim – and it will be surpassed again if Arsenal are defeated on Sunday.
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Source: http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/2920/league...it-that-leaves-
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