WHEN David Murray announced two years ago this month that Paul Le Guen would be succeeding Alex McLeish as manager, the Rangers chairman lauded the Frenchman's capture as a "massive moonbeam of success for the club".
Le Guen had been coveted by t
he likes of Real Madrid and his stock had never been higher. In the two years since, however, Le Guen's star has fallen quicker than a bag of bricks.
Walter Smith patched up the damage at Ibrox and now has Rangers riding high in pursuit of four trophies, but the man who made the mess in Govan has done the same thing back home in Paris. In fact, it's much worse. Waste deep in a relegation battle as manager Paris St-Germain, Le Guen could barely bring himself to peak above the neck of his bubble jacket on Sunday night as he watched his team plunge into the drop zone. Alarm bells are ringing in the French capital.
PSG fell to 18th place, third from bottom, as a consequence of Sunday's 4-2 defeat at Lyon, the club with whom Le Guen made his name as a coach by winning the titles in a row from 2003/04 to 2005/06. His current team have now gone eight league games without a win and face the prospect of being relegated from the top flight for the first time in their history.
"I saw good things in Lyon," Le Guen insisted after the crushing defeat against the league leaders. "I have faith in the future. We have eight matches to go and are in a precarious situation, but there was nothing to blame the players for."
Le Guen knows only too well that the buck stops with him. After a torrid seven-month spell in charge of Rangers that jolted from drama to crisis, he must have thought he was returning to something of a safe haven a week later when he was named manager of a club he captained and played over 200 games for.
That was 14 months ago, when PSG were 17th in the table. Any assessment of his stewardship would have to conclude that, since he took charge, PSG have gone from bad to worse.
The final straw at Ibrox was his decision to drop Barry Ferguson and strip him of the captaincy. For Ferguson at Rangers, read Pauleta or Sylvain Armand at PSG. Le Guen dropped both the Portuguese talisman and the club captain early in the season, and in November, as if to prove a point, handed the captaincy to Mamadou Sakho, a 17-year-old centre-back making his debut.
Once regarded as a hero by the fans, Le guen has watched support for him evaporate by the week. A hardcore section of supporters have boycotted the first 15 minutes of every home match since December, while eight police vans were call to protect him at PSG's training complex a few weeks ago.
Victory in Saturday's League Cup final is unlikely to appease the disenchanted. Le Guen pulled PSG out of the nosedive just in time last season. He'll need a similar rescue plan this time if he's to steer them clear of trouble again – and save his job.
Off-form madrid stay defiantREAL Madrid, who lost 3-2 to Valencia at the weekend, are confident they can halt their slide in form and ward off a renewed title challenge from Barcelona.
Barcelona are only four points behind Real with nine games remaining after their 4-1 win at home to Valladolid, however Madrid defender Pepe insisted: "We aren't running out of gas. We played well, but we just couldn't get a result. We have to keep fighting because there is a long way to go yet. We have to play with more assurance and calmness."
The full article contains 653 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
