Background and career
Alistair Murdoch McCoist (; born 24 September 1962) is a Scottish former footballer who has since worked as a manager and TV pundit. McCoist began his playing career with Scottish club St Johnstone, before moving to English side Sunderland in 1981. He returned to his homeland two years later, signing with Rangers. McCoist had a highly successful career with Rangers, becoming the club's record goalscorer and winning nine successive league championships between 1988–89 and 1996–97. He later played for Kilmarnock. McCoist was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame in 2007. He is also a member of the Scottish Football Hall of Fame, having gained 61 international caps. A prolific striker, he is the fifth-highest all-time goalscorer in the top tier of the Scottish football league system, having scored 260 times for Rangers and Kilmarnock between 1983 and 2001. Towards the end of his playing career, McCoist started a media career. Between 1996 and 2007, he was a team captain on the BBC sports quiz A Question of Sport. He began to scale back his media commitments in 2007, when he became an assistant manager to Walter Smith at Rangers. He succeeded Smith as Rangers manager in 2011, but the club then suffered from serious financial difficulties. Rangers went into liquidation in 2012 and the club was placed in the fourth tier of Scottish league football. McCoist helped them win successive promotions to the second tier, but after a poor start to the 2014–15 season McCoist handed in his 12 months' notice in December 2014 and was placed on gardening leave. In September 2015, McCoist and Rangers mutually agreed to terminate his contract.
Born at Bellshill Maternity Hospital and raised in East Kilbride, McCoist attended Maxwellton Primary and Hunter High School. His high-school team coach and chemistry teacher was former Clyde and Scotland forward Archie Robertson, who was acknowledged by McCoist for his guidance and influence, but who died in 1978 just as his protégé's career was taking off. Upon leaving school, McCoist had a short spell working as a clerical assistant in the Overseas Development Administration (now the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office) branch office at Hairmyres. The role offered flexible working arrangements, allowing him to organise his hours around his football career.
McCoist's first professional club was St Johnstone, having signed from Fir Park Boys Club in 1978. He had been denied a move to St Mirren because Alex Ferguson thought he was not good enough. "When I was 14, 15, Sir Alex used to pick me up from school. I used to go to Hunter High in East Kilbride, and he stayed up in Greenhills, I think it was, in East Kilbride. And he used to pick me up – myself and another lad, Stevie Cowan, who he did sign at St Mirren and went to Aberdeen with him. We'd train with the S-forms, and Sir Alex would take the training with the first team and the reserves. And then Stevie and I would wait, and Sir Alex would give us a couple of quid and we'd nip round to the chippie in Love Street. We'd go back and wait for Sir Alex finishing, and then he would drop us off at the house." McCoist made his debut for St Johnstone on 7 April 1979 in a 3–0 win over Raith Rovers. He did not score his first goal for the club until he scored Saints' final goal in a 3–0 win against Dumbarton in August 1980. He went on to score 23 goals in 43 appearances that season, including a consolation against Rangers in a 3–1 defeat in a Scottish Cup replay. Due to his form with both St Johnstone and the Scotland under-18 side, McCoist gained the attention of several English clubs, including Sunderland, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Middlesbrough and Tottenham Hotspur. He started the 1981–82 season with four goals in five League Cup games, including the opening goal in a 2–0 win over Celtic at Muirton Park and the consolation in a 4–1 defeat in the corresponding fixture at Parkhead.
Sunderland manager Alan Durban signed McCoist in August 1981. The £400,000 transfer fee spent on the striker made him Sunderland's record signing. McCoist's time at Sunderland was unsuccessful, however: he scored nine goals in 65 appearances for a side struggling at the foot of the English First Division. He managed two goals during the 1981–82 season, his first coming against Nottingham Forest and his second a curling effort from the edge of the box against Southampton. Three goals in three pre-season games against Dundee, Dunfermline Athletic and former team St Johnstone were followed by a goal against European champions Aston Villa on the opening day of the 1982–83 season in a 3–1 win. He followed this up with a goal against Brighton & Hove Albion, meaning he had matched his previous season's tally midway through September. October 1982 proved to be the highlight of McCoist's spell with Sunderland, as he scored five goals in as many games against Norwich City, Southampton, Manchester City, Everton and Wolverhampton Wanderers. With seven goals scored by the end of October, McCoist failed to score another goal in a Sunderland shirt. Despite this, he finished third-top scorer for Sunderland in 1982–83, one goal behind Nick Pickering. In early 1983, Alan Durban invited McCoist into his office and informed him that Rangers' John Greig had called him with an interest in signing the player. "He said, 'Do you fancy it?'" recalled McCoist. "And I said, 'Aye. I've got to be honest with you.' He said, 'I think you should go, for the simple fact that I don't think I'll be here in three or four months.' Sure enough, he got the sack relatively soon after that."
At the end of the 1982–83 season, McCoist returned to Scotland and joined Rangers for a fee of £185,000. On his dream move, McCoist recalled: "I met John Greig and Tommy McLean at the Crest Hotel, at the roundabout in Carlisle. I went to a payphone and phoned my wee grannie in Thornliebank. First person I phoned. I can still hear her – obviously not with us now – but I can still hear her voice down the phone. You could have given her a million pounds and it wouldn't have meant just as much." During his fifteen years with Rangers, McCoist achieved an array of honours, including ten league championship medals. This began with a title in the 1986–87 season and included the whole "Nine in a Row" period between 1989 and 1997. He also won a Scottish Cup winner's medal and nine Scottish League Cup winner's medals. He was the first player to be Europe's top goalscorer twice in a row (in 1992 and 1993), and in 1992 won Scottish football's two most prestigious Player of the Year awards. McCoist made his competitive debut for the Ibrox side against St Mirren on the opening day of the 1983–84 season, and scored twenty goals that year. Nonetheless, he got a tough time from the supporters. "When I look back, do I regret it? No, because it actually made me stronger. If I didn't handle that at all, I wouldn't have stayed at the club and I would have been away down the road. At that time, Jock Wallace probably would have sold me." McCoist scored a hat-trick in the League Cup final victory over Celtic in March 1984. With Rangers still a team very much in the doldrums, he managed 18 goals the following season. McCoist scored 24 goals in the 1985–86 season. He made his international debut against the Netherlands in 1986, the same year Graeme Souness arrived at Rangers to begin the Ibrox revolution. "He certainly transformed Rangers Football Club, but he also transformed Scottish football," said McCoist of Souness' time at Ibrox. "Two of his first three signings were Terry Butcher, the England captain, and Chris Woods, the England goalkeeper. The whole place just erupted into a new level." McCoist scored another hat-trick in the Glasgow Cup final against Celtic to bring further accolades his way, and he was an ever-present in Rangers' title-winning side of 1987, scoring 34 goals along the way. McCoist's tally of 31 goals in 1987–88 could not prevent Celtic regaining the league title and, although Rangers recaptured their crown in 1988–89, McCoist played only 19 games. That title win was the first of nine-in-a-row, but McCoist found himself in and out of the first team for the first three of those successes. During the 1990–91 season, Mo Johnston and new signing Mark Hateley were the preferred front pairing, and when McCoist attended the Cheltenham Festival when the players were given free time prior to back-to-back games against Celtic, he was dropped from the match squad by Souness and forced to apologise, for breaching team discipline, in a press conference. He returned to the team for the second of the matches after Hateley was sent off in the first, but Rangers lost both without scoring and his future at the club seemed uncertain. When Walter Smith took over from Souness in April 1991, McCoist returned to the fore and came back from a hernia on the final day of the season as the club won the title. Despite starting the next season on the bench due to further minor injuries, McCoist won both the Players' Player of the Year and the Sportswriters' awards. During this 1991–92 campaign, he scored 34 times in the league, forming an effective partnership with Hateley (Johnston had since left the club) as Rangers completed a domestic double. Those goals made him the top European goalscorer of the season (he received a golden boot trophy from sponsors Adidas, though it is not counted in the official European Golden Shoe listings due to the award being suspended by organisers at the time), ensuring his position with two long-range strikes in the final fixture of the season away to Aberdeen, a match he later admitted he had barely been in a condition to play, having spent the previous night drinking with students in the team hotel. He had scored the only goal of the Scottish Cup semi-final, an Old Firm meeting in which Rangers played 85 minutes with only ten men, and rounded off the season with the decisive goal in the 1992 Scottish Cup final. Regarding the Golden Boot, McCoist joked: "There was some wee Romanian guy. You know what it's like: I think he needed to score nine in the last game of the season to beat me. I think he got eight. It was one of those ones. I think he scored his seventh in the 98th minute and scored his eighth in the 114th minute. You're never sure with that mob." He repeated that scoring feat a year later in 1992–93, with the same goal tally in the Premier Division, despite missing the last seven matches of the season after breaking his leg playing for Scotland against Portugal in April. He also missed the 1993 Scottish Cup final (having scored the winner in the semi-final to put Rangers through) but still scored a career-best 49 goals from 52 appearances overall for the campaign. After a six-month absence, he returned from the injury by coming off the bench to score an overhead kick to win the 1993 Scottish League Cup final against Hibernian. As for McCoist's renowned strike partnership with Hateley, the Englishman said: "Alistair was the perfect partner for me. As a finisher, he was an unbelievable goal scorer. He linked with me. All the goal scorer does is he looks at the leader of the line and makes sure he's offset, fifteen yards away. It was a great partnership" His appearances were limited over the next two seasons as a result of other niggling injuries (37 games and 12 goals, less than his typical output for one campaign), and also had to compete with a string of new signings between 1993 and 1995, including Gordon Durie and Brian Laudrup, for the forward positions. After recovering his fitness, he played more regularly in the 1995–96 season, scoring 16 league goals and in an Old Firm Scottish Cup semi-final victory (as he had done in 1992 and would again in 1998), though he again missed the resulting final. A tenth Premier Division winner's medal (the completion of nine-in-a-row) and a ninth League Cup win (scoring twice) followed in 1996–97. His last appearance in a Rangers jersey came in the 1998 Scottish Cup final in which he scored during a 2–1 defeat by Heart of Midlothian. At Rangers, McCoist became the club's record goalscorer, netting 355 goals in all competitions. In addition to this, he holds the club record for number of league goals scored and the number of Scottish League Cup goals scored (with 251 and 54, respectively). He also held the title for the most goals scored by a player in European competitions (21), until his total was overtaken by Alfredo Morelos. McCoist is also third in the all-time appearance table for Rangers, having made 581 appearances for the club. Reflecting on his time at Rangers in 2018, McCoist said: "My extended family was those boys that I worked with and played with and coached and managed and worked under. It was the greatest experience of my life and I was very, very privileged to play there, coach there and manage there. It was a dream come true."
McCoist finished his career at Kilmarnock, where he spent three seasons alongside long-time Rangers teammate Ian Durrant. After recovering from another broken leg in 1999 (sustained in a match against Rangers) during the last months of his Killie spell, he was an unused substitute in the 2001 Scottish League Cup final defeat to Celtic, then had a penalty saved by Stefan Klos at Rugby Park in what proved to be his final match against his old club. He was denied a cameo appearance from the bench at Ibrox by his manager Bobby Williamson a few weeks later as Kilmarnock were already losing heavily – instead he received an ovation from supporters on the field after the final whistle. His final game at the age of 38 was at home to Celtic on the last day of the SPL campaign on 20 May 2001, a 1–0 win which enabled Kilmarnock to qualify for the following season's UEFA Cup. Coincidentally, McCoist was substituted off in that match while fellow striker Kris Boyd came off the bench to make his debut; he too went on to be become the club's joint-second league goalscorer of all time, level with Eddie Morrison on 121 goals.
