Modern football has changed. Every step, sprint, jump and calorie is measured as clubs like Rangers attempt to squeeze every ounce of talent out of their well paid employees.
Players like Jack Grealish stick out like a sore thumb, a throwback to a time when footballers were regularly seen in local nightspots, and regularly found themselves in trouble too.
The difference now, is that everything is instant. If a high-profile Rangers player so much as looks at a pint of lager, it is all over social media before they can take the first sip.
Compare and contrast to when Rangers legend and former striker Ally McCoist was at his peak when the print media was king and it was a little bit easier to get away with misadventure, even then, he still managed to find himself in bother.
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Rangers legend Ally McCoist recalls angering Graeme Souness
Previewing the Cheltenham Festival on the Talksport breakfast show at 7:55am, McCoist could help but recall one of many times he found himself in the office of the Rangers manager, and on the end of a one-way conversation with Graeme Souness.
“I reckon the first time I came here was the eighties,” Rangers record goalscorer McCoist told co-host Alan Brazil.
“In fact, I know it was, Graeme fined me, and it wasn’t the only time either!”
McCoist, along with Ian Durrant, spent much of their time under Souness skating on thin ice.
Think Alfredo Morelos being dropped under Steven Gerrard, but multiply it a few times, then add alcohol.
Souness regular preferred the combination of Maurice Johnston and Mark Hateley and McCoist looked to be leaving Ibrox on numerous occasions but it was Super Ally who prevailed.
Old Firm incident that saw Souness want to ‘kill’ McCoist
McCoist wasn’t joking when he said it wasn’t the only time with the former Rangers No.9 being lucky to escape with his life after one Old Firm derby in which he couldn’t bite his tongue:
“I wish a had a pound for every time Graeme was going to kill me, and I mean literally kill me, man,” the Gers legend told previous Talksport co-host Laura Woods in 2020.
“We played a game at Parkhead and we got beat 2-0, I think Frank McAvennie scored two goals, Graeme was player-manager at the time and he came in [to the dressing room] and I can see he’s raging.
“He’s absolutely raging, he’s been through everybody and he’s turned to me and got his finger right in my face and he says: ‘You are a disgrace! You are this, you are that…’
“He says: ‘You were the worst player, the worst player on that park today’.
“I can feel my wee teammate Durranty [Ian Durrant] nudging me just to say: ‘Shut up, don’t say anything, just take it’. But I could’nt stop myself.
“I’m sitting there shaking my head, right, I wouldn’t open my mouth, I was just sitting there shaking my head and of course he’s got to come back to me.
“He says: ‘You’re shaking your head? You’re shaking you’re head?!’
“And I said: ‘That’s right, I am shaking my head, because I wasn’t the worst player, you were!’ And I pointed right at him.
“Well, there was about four other players all holding him back, he was gonna kill me!”
McCoist spent as much time on the front pages as he did the back pages when he was a player, but there was one thing that always gave him a little more rope than some of his teammates.
The small matter of 40 goals a season.
