Tight rein but McLeish hopes for new reign

The transfer market may be depressed, but not the property market. Alex McLeish's best intentions of keeping the chequebook under lock and key have been undone, not by footballers but by bricks and mortar.

The sum of £1 million would have barely turned a head at Ibrox in summers gone by. This time, though, it was the Rangers manager's domestic purchase that raised eyebrows. With estate agents being even more indiscreet than the football variety, it was not long before the price tag on McLeish's newly acquired home in Glasgow's leafy suburb of Bearsden became public knowledge.

The house is barely 10 minutes' drive from Rangers training ground at Milngavie – the £14m complex the club moved into last summer – and offers sumptuous views over a loch. It is the kind of place people search for to call "home": McLeish may have done exactly that in both his professional and personal life. His own statement of intent came barely a month after Rangers offered theirs: a three-year extension to his contract was not merely reward for beating Celtic in the Scottish Cup final in May, but evidence that the club believe McLeish has what it takes to wrest power back from their Old Firm rivals.

Martin O'Neill's pursuit of a third successive championship, when the Scottish Premier League begins on Saturday, will be tempered by the knowledge that McLeish offers a more formidable obstacle than the one set by his predecessor, Dick Advocaat. Each time, Celtic have had the League wrapped up by Easter as Rangers imploded amid expensive internecine feuds.

Advocaat spent £84m in transfer fees in his three-and-a-half-year tenure before McLeish replaced him last December. True, it bought two initial titles, but the hidden cost came amid the dressing- room unrest which consumed Rangers once those millionaire egos buckled under the Celtic revival created by O'Neill's arrival in June 2000.

McLeish has swept all of that away. The fresh spirit he injected brought tangible success, in the shape of two trophies in just six months. The fact that he overcame Celtic on each occasion (the CIS League Cup semi-final was the other) to create an unbeaten record in four Old Firm encounters with O'Neill has thrown down the gauntlet for this season.

Yet unlike Graeme Souness, Walter Smith or Advocaat, this Rangers manager will be operating under a rigid budget. A £22m loss last year has pushed the club's debt to around £50m. The timing could not be worse, with the absence of once-perennial Champions' League income and television revenue now that Sky has switched to the Nationwide League instead.

The £6m purchase of Mikel Arteta, the young Barcelona midfielder, was the only spending undertaken at a club used to largesse. McLeish has to sell before he can make further improvements to his work in progress at Ibrox.

Unsettled Tore Andre Flo – linked with Udinese and Fulham – is seen as the most saleable asset, though not at the inflated £12m paid to Chelsea. Ruthless pruning, however, has already removed the previous record fee, Andrei Kanchelskis, from the wage bill on a free transfer, though not before the under-achieving Ukrainian swallowed up almost the same amount in wages during his four years as went on his £5.5m fee to Fiorentina.

"The new chairman [John McClelland replaced David Murray, who stepped aside after 14 years but remains the majority shareholder] has told me that he wants Rangers to nurture our own talent," McLeish said. "We now have the infrastructure to do that with the set-up that we have at our training complex.

"The most successful teams have grown up together: Ronald de Boer [who cost £4m from Barcelona in 2000] was a member of the Ajax side who won the Champions' League with home-grown kids like Patrick Kluivert and Edgar Davids. The backbone of Sir Alex Ferguson's Man-chester United side came from the club's youth policy, and that also happened in his great side at Aberdeen in the 1980s, which I played in."

McLeish has grown since that day at Hampden Park in May, but so too have the expectations. "I did not come here simply to get a better wage, or to be able to tell my grandchildren I managed a big club but things didn't work out. I have to win things and I believe I can.

"People said Celtic were on their way to another Treble last season, but we ended up winning two-thirds of the domestic trophies. Martin O'Neill is a shrewd manager and he'll use the Cup final to tell his players they have to hold back our challenge."

Celtic have already withstood one challenge to O'Neill's empire: by simply keeping their manager at Parkhead. Leeds United had to look elsewhere when it became clear that the Northern Irishman had no intention of trading in a club in which he has a share investment worth £1m for another who are seized by mountainous debts.

Though many supporters at Parkhead have allowed their daydreams to focus on the Champions' League, and a repeat of epic nights like the 4-3 win over Juventus, O'Neill prefers to focus on a more familiar horizon. Only one Celtic manager has achieved three successive championships: Jock Stein in the late 1960s. O'Neill does not share the opinion of those in England that there is nothing to keep him in Scotland.

"I have no doubts that this title race will go down to the wire," he declared. "I said that last season and I meant it, and though it did not work out that way, I have never found any game in Scotland easy. It might look easy to win matches but a lot of effort goes in. We want to win the title but we won't do it without hunger and drive in abundance. I'll find out in the next few weeks if that determination is still there from my side.

"Rangers are a good side and Alex has them well organised, so I have no doubts the challenge will be massive. We were challengers two years ago and now they are chasing us, but we never take anything for granted."