Fergus McCann versus David Murray – How Celtic Turned the Tables on their Glasgow Rivals is the new book from Stephen O’Donnell and it is published by Pitch Publishing at the end of July. After the success of Tangled Up in Blue, O’Donnell this time tackles what is a fascinating aspect of the football story in Glasgow over the past three to four decades.

COMING SOON! In recognition of Celtic winning nine in a row, Fergus McCann Versus David Murray tells the story of the transformation in fortunes of the two Glasgow sides from the 1990s to today. More info inc how to buy here https://t.co/e6j1CD0Wtc @CelticStarMag @Celticnewsnow

— Stephen O’Donnell (@StephenODauthor) May 18, 2020

David Murray and Fergus McCann both took over a Glasgow giant and the author digs deep into both men’s track record at Ibrox and Celtic Park respectively to do something that has been long overdue and will frankly embarrass more than a few journalists who had got used to the charms of succulent cuisine over the glory years for Rangers under Murray. McCann never had the same sort of relationship with the media and they frequently attacked him, even orchestrating a booing of the Celtic CEO on the day that the League flag was unfurled at Celtic Park in 1998 for the first time in a decade.

Since those days the traditional media has just about clung on amid tough market conditions and the emergence of fan media has meant that alternative messages are more widely available to football supporters. This is especially true at Celtic, although the club itself seems reluctant to embrace this reality and follow the lead of for example Liverpool Fc who operate a policy of communicating with their supporters principally through the fan media and the traditional media hacks have to follow on from that in a new reality.

Here’s a very recent example on how Liverpool FC work with their fan media to build a strong unity between the club and the support.

“If it happens, we decide what it means to us! We decide when we celebrate.” ✊

“If anybody thinks we are a little bit crazy, i couldn’t care less!”

Exclusive TAW Special with Jurgen Klopp, out tomorrow as a podcast and video on the TAW app 👉https://t.co/v3xcfwjq7C pic.twitter.com/LWkKIeh9lm

— The Anfield Wrap (@TheAnfieldWrap) June 2, 2020

Strangely Celtic remain committed to providing full access to the press hacks – like the guy from ITN who claims to have seen a shocking video of Celtic fans racially abusing Alfredo Morelos at Celtic Park in December – but was unwilling to share it. How did that turn out again Mr Smith? But don’t worry he’ll be as welcome as Tom English who led the charge for the Rangers over the past few months, which had the ultimate goal of getting the Scottish Premiership declared Null and Void thus stopping Nine-in-a-Row.

Celtic fan media makes a difference – as Celtic should realise from the fake racism video claims from end of December, the Gardiner at Inverness story and even the Channel 4 hatchet job on Celtic where their Chief Correspondent actually doorstepped Peter Lawwell. It was this site who stood up the Alex Thomson and exposed the errors and the lies in his report.

Authors like Stephen O’Donnell are very much part of the emerging Celtic fan media and play a vital role in getting out there what is certainly a more accurate assessment of what actually happened than you’d get from the hacks. The other day Invincible author Matt Corr had an article on The Celtic Star about Gordon Strachan’s appointment as Celtic Manager 15 years ago on Monday. That came of course after the game we call Black Sunday but the Rangers support and the hacks all call Helicopter Sunday, which happened ten days before Strachan’s appointment.

So when the hacks were all busily reliving that wonderful day for them and the Rangers support at the end of last month, not once was the fact that the Rangers team that won the league on their Helicopter Sunday was riddled with the EBT scandal. It is just never mentioned. Previously Tom English had done a sit down interview with various Rangers players from that team and talked expensively about their time at Ibrox – but failed to mention anything at all to do with the EBT scandal and the tens of millions of pounds that was owed to and never paid to HMRC.

Fergus McCann with his North Stand under construction in the background.

And after liquidation, when Charles Green’s club eventually got themselves into a position to play against Celtic in the League Cup semi-final in 2015 it was the the fan media who took the initiative to place a full page advertisement ahead of the fixture to set out the reality of the status of the club that Celtic would play for the first time ever. There was no such truth told in any of the traditional media, all of whom were busy selling the myth that this was an Old Form game and Celtic’s opponents were old rivals Rangers FC.

So back to Stephen O’Donnell’s new book, Fergus McCann versus David Murray – How Celtic Turned the Tables on their Glasgow Rivals, and here are the answers to some questions we put to him recently, ahead of his book launch on 27 July.

What is the book about and why have you written about McCann and Murray together?

The book tells the story of the transformation in the fortunes of Celtic and Rangers from the 1990s to the present day. Back then, the Ibrox side were the dominant force on the Scottish domestic scene, eventually equalling Celtic’s Nine-in-a-Row record, while Celtic were initially staring down the barrel at one of the most troubled periods in the club’s history in the final years of the old board, before Fergus arrived and rescued the club from insolvency. Compare the situation today where Celtic have just won a ninth title and Rangers have succumbed to the reality, not just the threat, of insolvency.

It’s a total reversal of roles and the book celebrates Celtic’s recent Nine-in-a-Row by telling the story of how we got here. I also liked the idea of showing how the smart guy won over the longer term. Fergus had his faults, but they were exaggerated by the media; he knew what he was doing from the start. His plan all along was to leave after five years, turn a profit, and ensure the regeneration of Celtic, a club he had always supported. Murray, by contrast, was a boorish, unselfaware, attention-seeking loudmouth, so it was nice to examine how their legacies have proved to be so different in the end.

Football fans tend to see things in black and white, especially in Glasgow, but can you give us an example of something decent Murray did and conversely something Fergus got wrong?

Fergus got quite a few things wrong and he was happy to admit, once his five years were over, that he had made mistakes along the way. The structure he put in place after sacking Tommy Burns, with a general manager overseeing a head coach, didn’t work and when Jock Brown was eventually forced out, he was not replaced and his post was done away with.

Another example was the ‘Bhoys against bigotry’ campaign, which was a flawed attempt to deal with a complex issue that was never going to be satisfactorily dealt with using a three word slogan. In trying to make Celtic more commercially appealing he alienated a significant section of the fanbase by trying to ban Irish historical and political songs from the Celtic Park matchday experience.

I would pay tribute to Murray for finally doing away with the notorious employment policy at Ibrox. Despite the fact that Souness had been trying to sign a Catholic for Rangers for some time, it was Murray who received a great deal of the credit in the media when Johnston signed. Although the way it was done was objectionable, and set Celtic back several years, it was a change that had to be made and the move was a positive start to Murray’s time at the club, as he had only been there about 8 months when the deal was concluded.

How did your previous book on Rangers influence this one?

There was so much more detail about this period that I wanted to include in Tangled up in Blue, but the book was getting quite long and in the end I had to leave most of the stuff about Fergus McCann and Celtic out. The good thing was though that it helped to inspire the idea for this book. Initially, I just wanted to tell the story of Celtic’s recent resurgence and compare it to Rangers’ decline from the 1990s, but after we won the eight title, I realised that a second nine-in-a-row for Celtic would frame the book quite neatly. If Celtic hadn’t won the league this year the idea for the book might have felt a bit flat, but instead it’s a celebration of the ninth title and shows how Celtic won both on and off the field in the end.

Why does Celtic, a club that honours its legends brilliantly not have something dedicated to Fergus and do you think that it will come in due course?

I’m not really sure why there isn’t some sort of official recognition from the club about the role that Fergus played. Maybe these things tend to come when a person is no longer with us, but it would certainly be nice if the club could make an exception in Fergus’s case and honour him in some significant way during his lifetime. I also tend to think these honours are more usually reserved for former players and managers, which is probably no bad thing in the end, because Celtic is a football club after all and these are the guys who achieve success on the field week after week and season after season.

Is David Murray the biggest disgrace in the history of the old Rangers?

He’s got quite a few rivals for that dishonourable title! Rangers under Murray ran an unlawful tax avoidance scheme over many years which redirected money that should have been collected as tax into the bank accounts of already highly paid footballers.

The aim was to keep a stronger team on the field and gain an unfair sporting advantage over all other clubs, who were meeting their responsibilities to society in accordance with the law. This is as clear a case of cheating as you could make out, but despite these crimes, I tend to think that the old-style bigots at Rangers are the real villains of the piece.

The Willie Allisons and so on, who maintained the club’s stance of refusing to employ Catholics in any capacity at the club. Allison, incidentally, the club’s PR guru in the 1960s, was described by Alex Ferguson as ‘a religious bigot of the deepest dye’ and the former Ibrox forward loathed the man so much that he later admitted he didn’t have an iota of sympathy for Allison when he was informed that he had cancer.

Men such as these poisoned the story of Scottish football with a form of sectarianism and religious bigotry which it has never been fully able to shake off. Murray, by contrast was from Ayr and grew up in Edinburgh, so he was a relative outsider when it came to the unique culture at Ibrox. It still didn’t stop him, on occasion, from referring to Catholic or Celtic supporting journalists as ‘f***king P***s’, and the like.

When is the book out and where can we get hold of it?

The book is out on 27 July and is already available to pre-order in all the usual places. I’ll also be doing some signed copies and posting them out to anyone who wants one. Quite a lot of people have already signed up for one so get in touch with a DM or a tweet on twitter if you’d like a signed book, I’m on @stephenodauthor
Cheers and hail hail.