Ally McCoist, Scottish footballer and manager
Alistair Murdoch McCoist, (; born 24 September 1962) is a Scottish former footballer who has since worked as a manager and pundit.
McCoist began his playing career with Scottish club St Johnstone before moving to English side Sunderland in 1981. He returned to Scotland two years later and signed with Rangers. McCoist had a highly successful spell 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 Scotland Football Hall of Fame, having gained 61 international caps. A prolific striker, he is currently ranked as the fifth highest goalscorer in the top tier of the Scottish football league system all time, having netted 260 times for Rangers and Kilmarnock between 1983 and 2001.
Towards the end of his playing career, McCoist started his media career. Between 1996 and 2007, he was a team captain in the BBC sports quiz A Question of Sport. McCoist 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. The company running Rangers was put into liquidation in 2012 and the team were then 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.