Kenny Miller Rangers Exclusive: What Really Happened At Hampden With Lee Wallace | OneFootball

In a wide-ranging interview, Kenny Miller speaks exclusively to Ibrox Noise and Canada Crypto Casino about his Rangers spells and being one of the only players to play for both sides, including revealing what really happened all those years ago at Hampden with Graeme Murty and Lee Wallace.

You were at Rangers three different times. Was there any one particular spell that was more important to you than the others?

Every spell at Rangers had kind of a different significance, I suppose you could say. When I first went there, I was a young player. I was that young Hibs player who broke through into the first team and earned a move after the first real year he played as a first-teamer in the SPL. So that itself is a situation where you’re going to a massive team, you’ve got something to prove.

I walked into a huge club the first time I joined Rangers. The squad list at the time was ridiculous. Back in 2000, the kind of money around the Premier League back then had just really started to kick off. Rangers and Celtic could really compete with other top leagues for player signings. With Dick Advocaat as manager, we had Dutch internationals like Arthur Numan, Ronald de Boer, Giovani van Bronckhorst. Jorg Albertz, Claudio Reyna, Lorenzo Amoruso, as well. We had Andrei Kanchelskis and Tore Andre Flo who just signed for £12 million.

That first spell was tough for a young player to break through and make an impact. And the third spell, coming back as an older player, I’m going back there to try and help the team build itself back up into the top flight after the demotion. But for me, the main spell, the most important one, was the second one.

I’d just played for Celtic at the time of my second Rangers stint, as well. So when I went back in 2008 after all of that, I felt like I had unfinished business. When I joined the first time in 2000, as much as we had all of those top European stars, we never won anything that year. That’s a club that expects to be competing for league titles and trophies, and winning their share of them. So, after not winning anything, I went back with a real focus in mind.

I was going back as an international player as well. Wearing the number nine for Scotland, a more experienced player and the fact I’d played for Celtic as well at that stage meant I had a lot of people to convince that I was going to be a good signing and would help them deliver league titles. Celtic had won three in a row by that point. And a big turning point was the first Old Firm game. We played them at Celtic Park and won 4-2, and I scored two goals. It was a big, big game for me and it was my first goals back at Rangers as well.

That 2008-2011 period was a big spell for me to deliver success to the club personally. We went and won three league titles, the Scottish Cup, the League Cup… it was doubles every year over that period, as well. Not to mention my first trophy in Rangers colours, full stop. I played pretty well over those three seasons, and had a decent enough goal return. I’m not sure if most important is the right way to describe it, but going there after playing for Celtic and finally winning silverware as a Rangers player, it was a really important spell for me, for sure.

As one of only three men to play for both Old Firm teams, how do you handle everything that comes with that?

Well, when I went to Celtic I was only a young player in the history of Rangers. I spent about 18 months there, but it was only really one proper season because I went on loan to Wolves. I had a little taste of the top level during my first spell at Rangers, one game in the Champions League against Monaco. But the real opportunity to play at that top level for a prolonged amount of time came at Celtic.

I’ve always viewed myself as someone who wanted to win, and who wanted to compete at the top end of the game. I went to Celtic because it was a chance to go and do that, even with a bit of Rangers on my resume at the time. And no matter what, you’re always going to have to work on convincing people that you’re worthy of playing for teams like Celtic or Rangers, even if you didn’t play for their main rivals.

I didn’t feel the pressure too much going to Celtic, maybe because I was a younger player for Rangers for a very short amount of time. It was when I went back to Rangers in 2008, that’s when I really felt that. But I’ve always been someone with a strong mentality. And if you play for Celtic or Rangers, let alone both, you have to have that mentality and a strong, thick skin because you’re constantly being judged and you’re under scrutiny for every touch, every performance.

You’re always likely to be getting some level of criticism if you’ve not been doing your job as well as you have shown you can, any given week. You’re under the microscope, even when the team has been successful, at a team like Celtic or a team like Rangers. And when you’ve represented both, I think that does go up a level or two. But I always tried to focus on the job, and I felt like I gave it everything all the way through my career. I always felt at the time that this would be recognised, and I think for the most part it was.

And when the goals come and the trophies follow, I think that’s all the fans of football clubs really look for. They want success to be delivered, and they want to be competing at the highest possible level. So, when you’re delivering that as a team, you’re usually viewed as doing a good enough job and being worth the trouble even if you’ve also played for a rival.

What really happened with you, Graeme Murty and Lee Wallace all those years ago?

Of course, that’s something I’ve been asked about a lot. It’s incredible to think that it’s actually seven years ago now. But what I would say is that I do feel, even to this day, that it really did hurt, the way I had to leave the club. Especially after spending so long as a player at the club. It was an association over three spells that lasted from 2000 to that day in 2018. I think it shows how I felt for the club.

Any time I was away from Rangers, I was always kind of looking to see if there’d ever be an opportunity to get back. I’ve been fortunate enough to represent them three different times. But it hurt, the way it went down the last time I left. And I know Lee was involved in it as well – I felt for him because he’s very much like me. He loved representing that club, being the captain of that club. I know how much it meant to him. It felt like all of those things were kind of thrown against us at the end, just for demanding better at Rangers.

Lee was there another year, and he was one of the best footballers in that club. And the limited game time he actually got the following year because of the circumstances… it wasn’t because of his abilities, that’s for sure. It wasn’t right how he was treated, either. And the way I left, having to go into a training ground to get your stuff when nobody else is around and nobody can see you, a black bag over your shoulder. That hurt a lot, because over three different spells from 2000 to 2018, I knew the kitchen staff, all the other staff in every part of the club. And I never really got the chance to say goodbye to them. That was not nice.

What happened on the day… it felt like the demands and the standards, everything that you’ve been told comes along with representing clubs like Rangers and Celtic, it felt like it was kind of used against us. I mean, what was the demand at the time? We’d lost four-nil to Celtic in the Scottish Cup. It could have been six or seven. Two weeks later, after everything that went down, there was a 5-0 loss to Celtic at Celtic Park and it could have been eight or nine.

The performances were unacceptable, the results were unacceptable. It made us realise, as a group, that we had to be better. It seemed like we were kind of being held up as scapegoats to mask a really poor result. But ultimately it was unfair, the way we were treated. For me, we had to move on. You move on. It’s sad how my Rangers career ended, and there’s always a disappointment there over how I had to leave that club. But they will always be a big part of my career.