{"id":907853,"date":"2026-04-21T00:56:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T00:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/907853\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T00:56:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T00:56:25","slug":"i-planned-to-retire-at-rangers-after-signing-a-bumper-deal-but-worst-period-of-my-career-changed-things-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/907853\/","title":{"rendered":"I planned to retire at Rangers after signing a bumper deal – but worst period of my career changed things forever"},"content":{"rendered":"

The former Gers star admits he would’ve handled things differently as he recalled the manner of his controversial exit<\/p>\n

20:24, 20 Apr 2026Updated 20:47, 20 Apr 2026<\/p>\n

\"Steven<\/p>\n

Steven Whittaker is mobbed by his Rangers teammates(Image: SNS Group 0141 221 3602)<\/p>\n

Steven Whittaker thought he was going to end his career at Rangers<\/a> after penning a bumper deal.<\/p>\n

But less than 12 months later, the three-in-a-row title-winner ripped up his contract and departed as an Ibrox<\/a> hate figure. Almost 14 years on, Gers fans still hold a grudge over the way he and Steven Naismith walked out on the club in 2012.<\/p>\n

Whittaker and the rest of Ally McCoist’s <\/a>squad took hefty pay cuts during the Light Blues’ financial meltdown.<\/p>\n

However, after refusing to transfer their contracts to Charles Green’s new company, Whittaker<\/a> and Naismith further damaged their reputations in the eyes of supporters with an infamous press conference announcing their exits.<\/p>\n

It was a bitter end to what had been a hugely successful five years in Govan. Looking back, Whittaker wishes things were handled differently during his most turbulent period in football.<\/p>\n

He told the William Hill Warm-Up podcast: “A horrible time. Probably the worst in my career.<\/p>\n

“The season before, me, Greegsy (Allan McGregor), and Steven Davis had signed new five-year deals. So I went into that, it would have taken me to 33-years-old, in my head I was retiring at Rangers.<\/p>\n

“Then, within a season, that flips and you’re thinking, ‘Well, what’s happening here?’<\/p>\n

“You constantly adapt and I think it was hard for Coisty at the time trying to manage through that. It was hard to play through that.<\/p>\n

“There are situations that occur when you think, I should have done this and that better.<\/p>\n

“But it’s all hindsight. You look back and think you definitely could have handled certain situations better, which would have put you in a better light or allowed other people to understand.<\/p>\n

“You won’t understand unless you were in that changing room day-to-day seeing how it was handled.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former Gers star admits he would’ve handled things differently as he recalled the manner of his controversial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":907854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4100],"tags":[255245,12631,255246,94,1946,1638,7081,79,160913,99727,16,15],"class_list":["post-907853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-allan-mcgregor","tag-ally-mccoist","tag-charles-green","tag-football","tag-rangers-fc","tag-scottish-premiership","tag-scottish-professional-football-league","tag-sports","tag-steven-davis","tag-steven-whittaker","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116439979870242127","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=907853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/907854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}