Graeme Souness has confirmed that he turned down an ambassadorial role at Rangers because he and James Bisgrove ‘couldn’t meet in the middle’ of what role they felt he should do.
Speaking about his disappointment at being unable to return to the club, Souness explained he absolutely wanted to return, but it wasn’t to be.
He said:
“Am I disappointed? I suppose I am. I still think I’ve got my marbles and at my age I still remember what you have to do to win football matches. I felt I had something to offer but maybe it wasn’t seen as a road they wanted to go down from their point.”
He went on:
“I’ve not been part of Rangers for 30 years. I’m a little disappointed but I’ve got plenty going on in my life, like my charity work. Without going into any great detail, I had a couple of meetings with James Bisgrove but ultimately decided it [an ambassadorial role] wasn’t for me.”
In short, Souness wanted to be a director, his actual influence being there at board level, which Ibrox Noise proposed, but Bisgrove wasn’t having it:
“I’m a great believer you can never have enough football people around the place. I look at the likes – and the most recent example would be Todd Boehly at Chelsea – coming in and not having any football knowledge around him and they made loads of mistakes. Ed Woodward at Man Utd after Fergie left he was making all the big football calls and look how well they did with that. Look at Mohshiri at Everton, they had Ellis Short at Sunderland and Mel Morris at Derby, there is a whole litany of smart people going into football clubs and not getting it right. But I wish them all the best. This is my team. There was no clash. But yeah [we couldn’t meet in the middle]. It is my team and I will only ever wish them well.”
He’s right. He’s a Rangers man, and would love to be at the club, with his football acumen a definite advantage, but the board and Bisgrove didn’t want to offer him a director role and only the ambassadorial one, and Souness was unable to really do anything with that.
Meeting and greeting the fans and being at the odd event in Rangers’ name is for some of the ex-players, but not for Souness.
So it was not to be.