A Familiar Face Returns to Ibrox.

Last updated : 19 October 2009 By Ron De God
The 41-year-old will bring Romania’s champions to Ibrox on October 20 and the manager and his team can’t be taken lightly, despite the fact I fully expect Rangers to pick up three points.

For this is a manager and a team on the up and both will want to build on their growing reputations.

You’ll maybe remember Petrescu for being part of the Steaua Bucharest team that defeated Rangers in the European Cup quarter-final in 1988, or perhaps his eight years in English football, the goal against England in France '98, or the various lookalike captions featuring him and David Duchovny’s FBI character in the X Files.







He played in a backline that included Chris Woods at Sheffield Wednesday for a season but moved to Chelsea in 1995 where he enjoyed five years of success before falling out with manager Gianluca Vialli.

But Petrescu’s career began to go downhill after leaving Chelsea.

He was relegated with Bradford City under Jim Jeffries before being signed by Gordon Strachan.

He spent a season at Southampton with Strachan but left to play out the final days of his career with National Bucharest in the capital before moving to the dugout after the summer.

Petrescu didn’t get off to the best of starts in management and he walked out after just four months with Rapid Bucharest before getting his career back with Sportul Studenţesc.

He moved to Wisla Krakow after two seasons and took the Polish outfit to second place and the UEFA Cup in his first year but was sacked the following season after a poor run of results.




But sometimes a club and manager are just made for each other and this seems to be the case with Petrescu and Unirea who have both achieved marked success since he took over.

Based in a town of just 17,000, he took the newly promoted team to the 2008 Romanian Cup Final, and the following year he managed the club to its first league title.

Petrescu is a young ambitious manager who isn’t afraid of upsetting people.

He sold 24 of the squad he inherited and brought in 22 new faces after taking over and, in Romania, Unirea are the only club where the manager has the final say on the buying and selling of players.

He models himself on Sir Alex Ferguson and is nicknamed “Mister” because of “his seriousness and British-style coaching discipline.”

Just like Walter Smith, Petrescu has suffered from having little money to spend in the transfer market due to the club’s financial constraints but recently the young coach said he had news for anyone who thinks his team were just happy to make up the numbers in Europe’s top club competition.

He said, “Some Romanian players actually… they are only waiting for the final whistle to swap shirts with the big stars. Not my team. We'll go everywhere to win.”

A warning then against any complacency tomorrow when the Wily Old Fox goes up against Fox Mulder.