Rangers Legend Graeme Souness Admits he Regrets Leaving Ibrox

Between 1986 and 1991, football legend Graeme Souness was manager of Rangers, to begin with as the club’s first ever player-manager, and then as sole manager.

His time at Ibrox was very successful, winning three league titles and four league cups, with all of those trophies barring the final league cup also won as an activity player. Very impressive when you think about it.

Then, in the summer of 1991, he moved South of the Border to join Liverpool, the club whom he had enjoyed a very successful playing career with back in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

After that he managed Galatasaray, Southampton, Torino, Benfica, Blackburn Rovers and then finally Newcastle United. He has not taken up another managerial role since leaving the Magpies in 2006, and considering he is now in his 70’s, we can probably assume that was his final job in the dugout.

Realistically, the best spell of Souness’ managerial career was at Rangers. As touched on earlier, he won seven trophies with the club. The rest of his roles saw him win a combined three trophies - the FA Cup with Liverpool (1991/92), the Turkish Cup with Galatasaray (1995/96) and the League Cup with Blackburn Rovers (2001/02). The only league titles of his career were at Rangers.

This has lead to several fans over the years wondering if he regretted his choice to leave all those years ago. Well, it appears we now finally have the answer to that question.

Indeed so, as in a recent interview with the Rangers Review, Souness has admitted he regretted his decision to depart Glasgow: “Of course I regret it. You know, we had put the hard yards in.

We put five hard years of creating a team that was dominant, a team that was still getting stronger. A team that didn’t need any immediate replacements. So for me to walk away from that, some people would call it foolish.

I would say if I had my time again I wouldn’t have done it. I was angry with the (Scottish) FA, I was angry with how it was working for me.

The most important thing was going well, which was the football. Personal life wasn’t great, separated from my first wife. The FA were after me.

So, yeah, I have regrets. What I should have done is what David Murray suggested - was take a year off. Let Walter (Smith) have it and take a year off.”

Fair play to him, takes some balls to admit that, especially when departing for a club he is a club legend for from his playing career. Just goes to show what a good thing he had at Rangers, which he alludes to there. Can't knock him for wanting to go to Liverpool, perhaps if it had been another club that came calling, he would not have gone.