Despite his Celtic experience Kenny Dalglish believes that a Director of Football and first team coach system is the best way to run a club.
In 1999 Allan MacDonald brought in Dalglish to run the club with John Barnes the choice to take charge of first team duties.
One of the first moves was to pay West Ham £5.25m for Eyal Berkovic, midway through the season £5m and a five year contract was invested in signing Rafael Scheidt from Brazil.
Those signings were made at a time when Celtic’s turnover was £34m in 1999 and £38.5m in 2000 with neither player making a playing contribution with a token £1m brought in from the sale of Berkovic. The Scheidt deal was written off as soon as Martin O’Neill took charge.
Barnes and Dalglish were up against the tax scam operated by Dave Murray but results were poor with signings like Olivier Tebily and Dmitri Kharin offering little although O’Neill managed to get the best out of Stan Petrov and Bobby Petta.
Dalglish took over as caretaker manager after Barnes was sacked but under O’Neill there was only going to be one influence on the club.
As Sevco toil to put together a similar structure Dalglish has no real regrets about the set up he created at Celtic.
“Everybody wished it had worked a lot better but that wasn’t because there was a problem with my role or John’s role,” he told the Daily Mail. “It didn’t work because we didn’t win enough games. Henrik Larsson breaking his leg early that season didn’t help either.
“Rangers have got to put in place the system they think is going to be best for them. That’s why Celtic have been successful.
“They are flying because Peter Lawwell does his job as chief executive, Brendan Rodgers does his job as manager and the coaches and players do their jobs. If everyone plays their part and plays their part well then it usually ends up being a happy story.”