Ferguson's watershed

RANGERS' REMARKABLE run to the UEFA Cup final has already put Barry Ferguson on a pedestal. The penalty shoot-out victory over Fiorentina in the semi-final second leg of the tournament on Thursday night was the Ibrox captain's 81st game in European competition. No Scottish player has turned out in more. The 30-year-old is, indeed, now two ahead of previous record holder Kenny Dalglish... and pulling away from David Narey, whose 77-match total stood as the best for a player at a Scottish

And should Ferguson find himself accepting a trio of trophies in the course of the next three weeks he will find himself keeping exalted company not simply for accumulating appearances. He will do so for leading his beloved Rangers in games that will be placed on their very own pedestal.

One of only six captains to guide the club to a treble, John Greig is unique among that set in also lifting a European trophy, courtesy of the 1972 Cup Winners' Cup win. Greig did not combine these two feats in the same season, however. Neither did Willie Miller, who skippered Aberdeen when they became the last Scottish team to win a European trophy with their 1983 Cup Winners' Cup success but never won a treble. Ferguson has the opportunity to become Rangers' Billy McNeill, the man whose leadership qualities were instrumental to Celtic in 1967 becoming the British club to complete a quadruple, underpinned by European Cup success. Ferguson's very presence gives him an importance to his side way beyond his own capabilities.

Yet, these are hardly slight. He remains one of the few sources of craft and flair in a team incredibly dependent on industry, even when he is now patently hampered by an ankle problem that caused him to grimace his way through the semi-final the other evening. He might have had his penalty saved in the shoot-out, but without the man described as Rangers' "heart" by former team-mate Sergio Porrini this week, it is impossible to envisage the club being in a position to triumph in that ticker-racing climax.

Football's major club prize may be denied to Ferguson in Manchester on May 14, but if he is gripping tightly on the hulking vase-like UEFA Cup come then his hold on the claim of outstanding Scottish player of his generation will be vice-like.

"I don't want to talk too much about lifting the trophy," he said, on admitting to dreaming of doing so before his team's show of fortitude in Florence. "It's a fair size but I'm sure I'd manage it."

It is one of those quirks football regularly throws up that Zenit St Petersburg coach Dick Advocaat, who will send out his side to thwart Ferguson's hopes of brandishing European silverware in ten days, is responsible for the Scotland captain currently being gripped by outrageous possibilities.

Although he has since dismissed such talk as idle blethers from an immature 20-year-old, in the first year of Advocaat's Ibrox tenure, Ferguson credited the Dutchman with "rescuing" his fledgling career after succeeding Walter Smith in the summer of 1998; a time when the club were then reeling from failing to rack up a tenth consecutive title. Having made only seven league appearances in the 1997-98 season, the youngster then seemed hell bent on going out on loan had Smith not departed. Until a call from his incoming replacement changed everything.

"I was at a crossroads when he (Dick Advocaat] became Rangers manager in 1998," Ferguson has said. "I didn't know if I had a future at the club under Walter Smith, although I understood the pressure Walter was under going for ten in a row. Dick phoned me, said he had watched me on video and that I was going to be his main man in midfield.

"He then made me captain when I was 22. It came at a young age, and it came as a bit of shock to be honest. But it was a massive thing for me, as a Rangers supporter, and it was great. I'd been in a bit of trouble before that, but I think being made captain by Dick was the making of me as a man. Maybe another manager wouldn't have liked me, I was just lucky that Dick did."

Advocaat made Ferguson Rangers' youngest captain. Since then he has twice been separated from the role. Each time, the club's fortunes have nose-dived. After proving Rangers' key performer in a treble-winning season under Alex McLeish, the midfielder was effectively exiled to Blackburn Rovers. The debt-ridden Ibrox club cashed in on him to the tune of £6.5m in August 2003. Across the next 18 months, they won nothing. Months after a return to his football love was engineered for £4m, the championship was again residing at Ibrox.

Just as challenging for Ferguson was the arrival of Paul Le Guen in the summer of 2006; a manager who, unlike Advocaat and McLeish, didn't rate him. The Frenchman perceived him as a destructive agitator and a unhelpful warper of the team shape in rampaging round the park to get involved in every corner, resulting in him being deposed as captain in January 2008. It was not coincidental that the Frenchman's ill-starred eight-month tenure at Ibrox ended days later.

On returning to the Ibrox helm later that month, Smith immediately reinstated Ferguson as team leader. Unlike Le Guen, he recognised that for Rangers to flourish, Ferguson had to be a central figure. The 18 months since have demonstrated incontestably that, when he is around to collect and make both simple and telling passes in midfield, hold a defensive line and snap into tackles and gallop forward in support of a single striker, anything seems possible for his club.