Recently departed Rangers midfielder, Andy Halliday, has revealed just how close he came to a premature exit from Ibrox after being labelled as a disruptive influence under Pedro Caixinha.
Speaking to Si Ferry’s Open Goal podcast, reported via The Daily Record, Halliday explained about the meeting with Steven Gerrard that saved his Rangers career prior to his first pre-season camp in 2018:
“I thought my career was finished at Rangers. It was Mark Allen and Pedro Caixinha who were trying to work to get me out the door.
“Gerrard pulled me in and said ‘By the way, you’re not scheduled to go to Marbella on Thursday’
“But then he went, ‘But it’s because when I came into this football club this is the list I got’ and showed me a piece of paper.
“It was all the players names with ticks, ticks, ticks and question marks. Mine just had a cross right through it. He’s like that, ‘When I came to this football club I got told you were a bad character around the dressing room given your relationship with the previous manager, I’ve not seen this in the first few days so what’s happened there?’
“I said: ‘What you’ve seen in the first two to four days is me. I had a disagreement with the previous manager that I felt as if never really warranted the argument we ended up having, and our relationship turned sour from then but I will always give 100 percent to this football club, I’ve always tried to be a good team-mate to my team-mates’ and stuff like that.
“And he just said ‘Well listen, you’re coming to Marbella with me, just keep up what you’ve done in the first four days because I’ve liked what I’ve seen’.
With Caixinha firmly out the door, Halliday believes that it was Mark Allen – the now departed Director of Football – that was responsible for labelling the lifelong Gers fan as a trouble maker.
He may not have been the most talented player to pull on the famous Light Blue jersey but he could never be criticised for giving anything less than 100% for the club he loves and will have been disappointed at the way his Ibrox career came to an end.
Playing over 150 games for Rangers is no mean feat and although, ultimately, his time at the club was a failure given the lack of major domestic honours, beating Celtic in an Old Firm game, scoring for the club you love and representing them against some of Europe’s most famous names is something that the vast majority of Gers fans can only dream about.