Manchester United can wait, warns Rangers manager Walter Smith

Walter Smith has fondly recalled his brief spell as the assistant manager to Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United and said the post reignited his passion for football. Smith had been in the wilderness after being sacked by Everton in 2002. Two years later Ferguson, a close friend, handed him a role at Old Trafford, following which Smith went on to manage Scotland prior to a return to Rangers. "It got me out of the house," said Smith of the United position. "It damaged my quest to get the golf handicap into single figures, but it was great and I enjoyed it. "It took me away from doing the things that football managers normally have to do, because I was back coaching again and it meant I didn't have to do press conferences and the like." Smith and Ferguson will be in opposing Old Trafford dugouts on Tuesday, when Rangers travel to face United in the Champions League. "I've spoken to Sir Alex since the [Champions League] draw," Smith said. "I speak to him even if we're not meeting in the Champions League." Smith's more immediate priority is lunchtime trip to Hamilton , for which the manager is adamant thoughts of Manchester should be dismissed from his players' thoughts. "We've got to do that because we have a league game which is important for us, so we have to make sure that we don't allow Tuesday's game to be uppermost in our minds," he said. "If you're looking at our performances, we've had a sluggish start to the season anyway so I hope to see that we're getting out of that kind of rut. "We have been OK in some parts of games. We just haven't had the consistency that's been required so I would hope that the thought of playing in the Champions League would be firmly at the back of everybody's minds and that we're focused on the game at Hamilton." The Rangers forward Steven Naismith believes thoughts of United comfortably winning on Tuesday are wide of the mark. "We're not under any illusions, it's going to be a massive task to get anything from the game," Naismith said. "But there have been results in the past. Look at Celtic, they took Manchester United to Parkhead and were minutes away from getting as win not so long ago. "At Old Trafford they'll have their fans, but if we can defend well you never know. They'll commit men forward so we can maybe hit them on the break and hopefully take our chances." Naismith, part of the Scotland team which struggled to defeat Liechtenstein in midweek, claimed that criticism of the national side has been over the top. "I can't believe there is so much negativity about the whole situation," he said. "In my eyes, if we can get to the European Championships by playing terribly in every qualifier but winning we'd take that. That's surely better than playing pretty football and not getting the points."