Barry Ferguson reveals brutally honest Rangers sit down with Jack Butland and how 'sore' star responded

Daily Record

4 days ago

The Ibrox icon dropped the goalkeeper for Liam Kelly during his stint in the hot seat
Barry Ferguson admits the most difficult 20 minutes of his stint in charge of Rangers was the heart-to-heart with Jack Butland when he took the keeper out of the firing line.
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And Ferguson has revealed how he was bursting with pride last Tuesday night when his one time Birmingham City team mate roared back to top form and kept the Ibroix side's Champions League alive.
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Ferguson returned to the stadium for the first time since his spell as interim boss as Butland pulled off a string of superb saves to stop Panathinaikos from storming into a potentially unrecoverable first half lead.
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The pair held a full and frank discussion back in April when, after a string of costly goalkeeping errors, Ferguson chose to promote Liam Kelly to his starting line up for a last 16 Europa League showdown with Athletic Bilbao.
Speaking exclusively on tonight's edition of our agenda setting online show Hotline Live, Ferguson piles praise on his former No.1 for rediscovering the kind of form which almost led to an England call up at Euro 2024.
And he admits the decision to leave the 32-year-old on the bench for most of last season's run-in was one of the toughest choices he had to make during his own three months in the hotseat.
Ferguson said: 'Look, first and foremost, I was at the game last Tuesday and I thought Jack was immense with some of the saves he pulled off.
'But if I take you back to that, it was probably one of the hardest decisions I had to make. And it wasn't knee-jerk.
"I took a couple of days, I sat on it, and I just felt I had to make the change because Jack was going through a difficult time, as every professional footballer does - you go through tough times in your career.
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'I just thought it was the right time to take him out of the firing line for a number of weeks. Kells came in - Liam Kelly - another really good goalkeeper and he did great for me.
'But, if I go back to that time, I've got to think first and foremost of Jack Butland as a person - how is he going to react? I had to be really honest with him.
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'And it was a tough 20 minute chat I had with him. I've got to be honest with you.
'He was sore. But one thing I will say about Jack is that he understood the reasons why I did it.
'Obviously I made the decision to bring Liam in and the one thing I'll say about Jack Butland is, if you remember back to that Bilbao game, Kells has made the penalty save and who was the first guy up congratulating him when that whistle went?
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'And that tells you everything you need to know about Jack as a guy.
'I've known Jack a long time since he was a young player at Birmingham. So when I made the decision I had to think about how he's going to take it. I've got to be careful, I have to think of him.
'But he took it on the chin. He went and he trained hard. And see, day by day, as the weeks went on you could see the real Jack Butland, the top goalkeeper that he is, starting to return to how he was in the first season. Because he was immense when he came up in his first season.
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'My intention was always to bring Jack back in at some stage and he came back in for the last two games of the season and his performances were at a high level again.
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'I listened to his interview yesterday on Sky Sports. He went away, he worked hard and he had a lot of thinking to do over the summer.
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'And it looks to me as if Jack Butland has come back prepared to show everybody what he is - and that's a top goalkeeper.
'On Tuesday night I was absolutely buzzing for him. I was.
'I don't like using the word 'dropped'. I left him out, that's what I'll say about it.
'But on Tuesday night some of the saves he made, that's the Jack Butland that I know and I was absolutely delighted for him.'