DICK Advocaat has revealed he was offered the chance to come back to Rangers as manager three years ago as a short-term replacement for Alex McLeish.

Advocaat, who will lead Zenit St Petersburg against Rangers next week in the UEFA Cup Final, says he discussed coming back with Sir David Murray in 2005/06 while he was in charge of the United Arab Emirates side.

However, negotiations did not develop and Advocaat took charge of the South Korean national team and Rangers opted for Paul Le Guen, whose term of office only lasted six months.

Advocaat, who watched Rangers in action against Motherwell on Wednesday night, said: "There was a period when there was something wrong at Rangers, when things were not going the right way at the club.

"There were some rumours about me then and I was not against it, but they decided to take another road.

"I spoke to David. He phoned me, or maybe I phoned him, but they took another decision and they didn't take me. So many things were happening and I was thinking, 'well, why not?'. It was four years or so since I had been at Ibrox.

"It was only for an interim period and, happily for me, it didn't work out because then I got the South Korea job. You must see how that works out."

The ever pragmatic Dutchman also insists that he should not have quit the Rangers manager's job in December 2001 - but he does accept he made a mistake in paying £2million for Tore Andre Flo.

He said: "Wherever I go in the world, Rangers fans tell me 'thank you for the great time you brought to us. They may also have different words for the way it was at the end but they remember the good times.

"I now regret I quit in the December. David Murray wanted to step down as chairman at the time, so I felt it might be right for me as well and I was also so tired.

"But we went through in Europe in Paris to the last-16 of the UEFA Cup and we still had the League Cup and Scottish Cup to come. Feyenoord knocked out Rangers, with Alex McLeish in charge, and went on to lift the trophy.

"When I work, I do everything. I do all the training, watch games and watch DVDs. And I was quite tired at that time. I also disagreed a lot with the way the debt was portrayed in the media.

"All the focus was on the debt but my view was that while Rangers had debts, they had some very talented, valuable players. You have debts and you have players, that's how I saw it. But nobody viewed it like that. The squad was so valuable that Alex came in and won a lot of trophies with those same players.

"They can blame me for one thing - buying Tore Andre Flo for £12million. At that time, Dwight Yorke and Andy Cole cost £12million for Manchester United and we could only, with a lot of pressure, get Flo. Unfortunately, he did not do it for us. I asked the board if we could do something and they could decide on the signing, but I was a big part of it."