TO suggest last week was not a great one for Rangers would be a complete understatement.
Off the field, with the “big tax” verdict finally delivered by the Supreme Court, the “strip the titles” campaign quickly began to gain momentum, certainly with non-Rangers supporters from all over the country, and of course at the same time Dave King was tying himself in knots with his latest statement surrounding the EBT years.
An awful lot has been said about this, and it won’t be going away any time soon, but if I were a Rangers fan it would be issues on the field which would be concerning me more and not the smoke bomb Mr King threw on Friday in a bid to mask a truly humiliating result in Europe last Tuesday.
When that Europa League tie with Progres Niederkorn was first drawn out the hat, I suspect every single person connected with Rangers would have been rubbing their hands – a part-time team from the backwaters of Luxembourg who had never won a European tie! Result. The last time they had even scored a goal in Europe, The Human League’s Don’t You Want Me Baby was No.1 in the UK charts, which incidentally might have been what Pedro Caixinha was saying to the Rangers punters in that now-famous Luxembourg bush.
But, really, it was as good as a bye for a Rangers side who, this summer, have undergone more bodywork than a Kardashian.
Plus, Niedercorn hadn’t even started their season yet so the old fitness/summer football excuse couldn’t be applied.
For one of our biggest clubs, with the second largest budget in the country, to crash out in the first round of qualifying to that team was a disgrace. Once again the finger of blame is being pointed firmly in the direction of the manager, but questions will be, and must be, asked of the men who recruited him.
When Caixinha was first announced as the new Rangers manager, his Wikipedia page must have taken more hits than Audley Harrison as everyone looked up the new man in charge at Ibrox to see what he was all about.
To suggest both sides of Glasgow would have been decidedly underwhelmed by his cv would be about right. Just how Stewart Robertson, Graeme Park and Andrew Dickson came about this decision is mind-boggling.
The most important person at any football club is always the manager. Instead of spending millions of pounds bringing players in, they should have got the best possible candidate for the job and, I’m sorry, Caixinha wasn’t it. Someone such as Alex McLeish would have jumped at the chance to become Rangers manager again.
He has won trophies and knows the club and Scottish football inside out. However, surely going after and paying the compensation to Aberdeen to get Derek McInnes was a no-brainer – a guy who has at least taken the challenge to Celtic the last few seasons and been competitive on a fraction of Rangers’ budget. He was undoubtedly the best candidate on paper. Crucially, both men also know how to win trophies in Scotland.
Instead, Rangers recruited a journeyman coach plucked from that well-known football cauldron of Qatar – a league that is essentially a watering hole for ageing superstars to take one last drink and line their pockets.
Nothing wrong with that, of course. People need to look after themselves. But to go from that docile environment of playing in front of 1000 fans to coming to Glasgow to perform in front of 50,000 demanding supporters where winning is the only thing that matters . . . well it’s a monumental leap.
That is a totally different kind of pressure. He has shown nothing so far to suggest he is capable of handling it.
Caixinha’s tactics on the pitch have also been questionable. From opening up to a rampant Celtic at Ibrox and getting battered a record 5-1, to playing two sitting midfielders against the minnows of Niederkorn when one goal would have killed the tie. Then there’s the 7.00am boot camps for unwanted players to banishing experienced pros to train with the Under-20 squad, including the club’s most valuable asset in the now-departed Barrie McKay –it all reeks of someone completely out of his depth and panicking.
Trust me, treating players like that is not good for team spirit nor morale in the dressing room. I have seen this with my own eyes, having been on both sides of it.
Already the pressure is cranking up on Caixinha but, with so much money currently invested in his Rangers vision, he will get time to see if his eclectic mix can gel.
Bruno Alves and Graham Dorrans will undoubtedly make a difference to the spine of the Rangers team, but it will take more than backbone to appease an already exasperated and embarrassed Ibrox support.
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