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Even Sir Alex couldn't close the gap between Rangers and Celtic, says Archie Knox
The gulf between Celtic and Rangers is now so great that even Sir Alex Ferguson would toil to erode the Parkhead club’s advantage according to Archie Knox.
Such prognostications are common enough in Glasgow these days, but due weight is added when expressed by the man who was Ferguson’s assistant during golden eras at Aberdeen and Manchester United and who also acted as No 2 to Walter Smith at a similarly productive time at Ibrox.
Knox, who turned 70 recently, marked the occasion with a book – The School of Hard Knox – and his standing in the game was illustrated at yesterday’s launch by the presence of Smith and other Ibrox favourites like John Brown, Ian Durrant and Ally McCoist, plus former Scotland manager, Craig Brown, for whom Knox was assistant in a second spell at Pittodrie between 2010 and 2013.
Since then, as a spectator rather than employee, he has kept abreast of the progress of his former clubs.
When it was suggested that even Ferguson might struggle to exercise his transformative powers at Ibrox, Knox said: “Well he would."
“Unless you recruit well or be lucky enough to have good players then you are not going to do it. For Rangers to get back to what they once were then they need to have the same level of player as Celtic.
“Celtic have better players – it is not rocket science. There is no magic formula for it – you simply have to have better players who have better attitudes than the rest of the teams and then you have a good chance of winning.”
Nor does Knox believe that Celtic’s regal dominance will be usurped for some time to come. “It is major – I don’t see anybody doing that in the near future,” he said.
“There is no question that Celtic can deliver at the moment. There is no question about that.
“Brendan Rodgers is bringing Patrick Roberts back. Kieran Tierney is a phenomenal player, Stuart Armstrong is improving all the time, and with Leigh Griffiths scoring goals as he does and having six players in the Scotland team, it is great for Celtic.
“I don’t know enough about the players at Rangers. Whether they can lift Rangers, I am not sure. What I will say is that they have to win their next two league games before they play Celtic.
“That will always be the case at Rangers. No matter how you are going, a draw is no use. You have to win.”
Rangers have yet to triumph in a league game at home this season and lost their opening fixture at Ibrox to Hibernian, in vivid contrast to what was expected of the team when Knox worked there under Smith. “I tell a story about coming out of Ibrox after we beat Hibs 7-0,” he said.
“I always came out with Ally McCoist because whenever he left everybody surrounded him, so I could make a quick getaway. That day I heard the voice: ‘Hey Knox! Hey Knox!’
“There’s a guy running along the road beside me and he’s pointing the finger at the park and he screams: ‘That was f---ing ridiculous. You allowed the players to take their foot off the pedal. It should have been ten!’
“You can’t win. We played Kilmarnock in the first game of the season after we won nine titles in a row and a boy appears at the dugout after 17 minutes, shouting, ‘Hey Knox, this is f---ing s---e!”
“I told him there was a long hard season ahead.”
At least such abuse was the by-product of high expectation matched by accomplishment, although Knox maintains a degree of wonder at his own progress in the game. “It’s been phenomenal. I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” he said. “My first job was at Forfar where Sam Smith was the chairman and, if he hadn’t been there, I would never have survived in football. Never for the length of time I did.
“His influence was phenomenal. Then I was lucky enough to get a job like Aberdeen with Fergie. It’s a case of being in the right place at the right time.
“There are hundreds of people like me that just never got that opportunity and I’ll be eternally grateful that I did get it. It could have gone the other way, you just don’t know.
“I was a joiner to trade, I worked as a building estimator and a surveyor, so I would probably have been kicking on with that, but my love of football was such that I was never going to leave myself short in terms of my attitude to the job.”
The School of Hard Knox, published by Arena Sport, is out now and available from all good bookshops and online at arenasportbooks.co.uk