No Rangers blue-carpeted treatment for Barry Ferguson amid modest introduction and 'serious guy' response

What would Walter Smith have thought? The news that Ferguson had been recruited as head of a managerial squadron of former Ibrox players generated all manner of different reactions. Among them was the lament that Smith had not lived to see this remarkable turn of events.

There are of course a million reasons for wishing the Ibrox legend was still around. Knowing Smith, he’d be wearing a wry grin at the sight of Ferguson being parachuted in at Ibrox. The process has been completed with such haste there hadn’t even been time to stitch BR into the regulation Castore training top Ferguson was wearing at his first press conference.

He spoke well at the table where Philippe Clement had sat and dissed Jose Mourinho as recently as Friday. Ferguson avoided criticising the style of play of Derek McInnes’ teams, with the new era kicking off against Kilmarnock at 8pm tonight.

“We're going to a place where they're not blinded,” he said, with reference to the 1-0 defeat at Rugby Park in October that was further indication that Clement was living on borrowed time. “They totally know what they're going to be going into. They're coming up against an experienced manager who I've got a lot of respect for. Also, he's got a real good team as well.

“They've got a physical side to them, but they've also got players that can hurt you. We're briefed on that. We're ready for that. I just can't wait for tomorrow night to get going.”

The new men’s interim head coach, to give Ferguson his full title, had come straight from his first training session and was still looking rosy cheeked from the morning’s exertions. Nothing said ‘interim’ appointment more than the setting. Reporters were asked to report to the Rangers Academy for Ferguson’s first press conference.

The opulent Blue Room at Ibrox, with its ornate cornices and a grandfather clock gently ticking in one corner, is the usual venue for managerial unveilings. Ferguson will have to make some extraordinary strides over the next three months, including getting the better of Mourinho’s Fenerbahce in the Europa League last 16, to merit that sort of blue carpeted, wood-panelled treatment.

He stressed he hadn’t even considered what might happen come the season’s end. It will surely be difficult to return to a Go Radio studio having acquired such a rich taste. Like everyone present, he was still processing the chain of events.

“I've not had much sleep, as you can probably see with my eyes,” he said. “But listen, I'm not complaining about it. It was a bit of a whirlwind couple of days.”

It has been 16 long years since the incendiary press conference that made all this seem even harder to take in. It was April 2009 when, in a room not a million miles from where Ferguson was sitting, an unusually irate Smith dropped the bombshell that his then skipper was being stripped of the Rangers captaincy (for a second time), fined and placed on the transfer list following errant behaviour while on Scotland duty. "It is one of the biggest decisions I have had to take," said the manager at the time. Ferguson has since described not apologising to Smith at the first opportunity as his greatest mistake.

Partial reconciliation occurred when Ferguson returned to the team for the final three games of the season, including the Scottish Cup final win over Falkirk, which the midfielder started. Ferguson was sold to Birmingham City that summer, with Smith admitting it was best for all concerned. A return as manager, albeit interim, would have been considered a laughable notion then. It seemed laughable as recently as Saturday, when Ferguson was performing his ambassadorial duties at Ibrox for the game against St Mirren. “I went down a different route,” he said, when asked about the three-year break from management since leaving Alloa Athletic. Now his big orange Ford Ranger jeep was sitting very conspicuously in the Rangers manager’s parking space outside.

He was asked whether he felt he had unfinished business at the Ibrox club, given the way it ended when he was last involved at first-team level. “There's a sense of pride,” he said. “It wasn't ideal the way it finished the last time, but I was given an opportunity a year and a half ago to come back and represent the club as an ambassador. As I said earlier on at the start of the presser, I loved that role. Now that's totally changed. Now my role is to get this group of players winning games of football on a regular basis.”

Training, he reported, had been “bubbly and noisy”. He said his job, and that of his assistants, had been to try and pick everyone up, although woe betide anyone taking this lightness of mood a bit far and repeating the social media references to Ferguson as ‘Ned Lasso’.

Rangers missed a trick not making this first training session pay-per-view. Surely they’ll have made a sloMo video for future broadcast with the camera gradually panning up, Sergio Leone-style, to reveal Ferguson and his compadres, Neil McCann, Billy Dodds, Allan McGregor and the one everyone tends to forget, Issame Charai, striding out into the middle of the pitch. 'Things are going to change round here...'

Did his former teammates think it was a wind-up when he phoned them up, asking them to join an all-star backroom team. “No,” replied Ferguson slightly nonplussed. “I am a serious guy.”

The money shots would have been the look on each player's face as they desperately tried to recall what Ferguson had said about them in Daily Record columns. To be fair to the new interim manager, he tends to be as supportive as he can in these pieces. “Is Dessers the finished article as a Rangers No.9?” he asked in August. “No”. He went onto explain in this particular column that while Clement cannot hang his hat on him as a first-choice striker, he deserved a break, because he boasts a decent goal return.

As for James Tavernier, the much-maligned skipper, Ferguson knows what it means to be stripped of the captain’s armband. He is aware how much it hurts. “I have honestly never experienced anything to compare with the pain I felt in that instant,” he wrote in his first autobiography, Blue, when recalling Paul Le Guen informing him on New Year's Day 2007 that he wasn't captain of Rangers any longer.

“I don't think there's anything to change,” Ferguson replied, when asked specifically if Tavernier would remain as captain. “I had a good chat with James last night while we were in, obviously getting to know some of the staff and getting to know the surroundings as well.

“I know I’ve been here plenty of times but there's been a few changes. It was good to sit down with him. I spoke to him and looked him in the eyes. I have no doubt that he will give me 100 per cent to lead this club until the end of the season.”

It was almost possible to hear the groans of Rangers fans watching on the delayed broadcast. This new populist era at Ibrox clearly has its limit.