Step into unknown with Mark is just the ticket for Ibrox fans
WANTED. A football strategist a nd youth development guru. Ability to shift season tickets essential. Former players need not apply.
Rangers don’t have to advertise for a new manager. People come to them.
But make no mistake, it’s not enough for the next coach at Ibrox to be good. He must also break the established mould.
This is why Mark Warburton is the clear frontrunner for the post.
He led unfashionable Brentford to the Championship and finished sixth the season after. All of this on a smaller budget than his rivals.
But there is one reason above all others Warburton i s now the strong favourite.
Rangers and their supporters crave a l eap i nto the great unknown. Something completely different.
Aberdeen fans find the i dea appalling and mildly arrogant — but Derek McInnes really should be top of the Ibrox list.
An intelligent, highly- capable manager, he delivered Aberdeen’s f i rst trophy i n 19 years and launched a credible title challenge to Celtic. He knows the Scottish game inside out, has an eye for a bargain in the transfer market and knows Rangers because he played there for five years.
There are no guarantees he would take it. Many — including former Dons and Rangers defender Neale Cooper — think he would be mad to even consider it. Assuming his compensation bill could be met.
Even so, McInnes has been championed by one or two of the club’s key shareholders. He has his admirers.
The problem i s not i n the boardroom, but the stands. Future prospective season-ticket holders are lukewarm — at best — on the idea of another Scot at the helm.
Rangers t hought t hey had Olympiakos coach Vitor Pereira all but done. Supporters would have taken him in a heartbeat because he is Portuguese — and being foreign is always a vote winner.
Old faces on the scene l i ke Stuart McCall and McInnes do nothing to get the pulses racing.
And Rangers directors — with an eye on season-ticket sales — know it.
If a bad experience with Ally McCoist brands other Scots managers guilty by association, that’s an absurd state of affairs.
But amongst supporters there is a palpable yearning for a new direction. For the club to move away from the old tradition of appointing former players and try a new strategy.
The time to gamble on the unproven was actually three years ago, when the Third Division offered some margin for error. To do so now, when promotion next season is imperative, is a bold strategy.
But thinking outside the box is what f ans want. The reason Warburton, a coach with a colourful back story but no experience of Scottish football, is now in pole position to be the new manager of Rangers.
In a radio interview this week, the former city trader owned up to i nformal talks with the Ibrox board.
People who talk about jobs don’t usually get them. And not everyone in the selection process is 100-per- cent convinced Warburton is the man.
Unemployed and free, however, he ticks more boxes than most. Crucially, supporters want him.
The cost of appointing him and right-hand man David Weir could prove an issue. They would be more expensive, surely, than the £850,000 a year paid to McCoist.
Some on the Ibrox board hope t hat if t he Englishman is desperate enough to go on national radio touting himself for the job, he might be desperate enough to do it for less money.
So f ar as s upporters are concerned, the time for haggling has passed. They want a new manager.
Time is quickly slipping away. Championship rivals Hibernian have al r eady s i gned James Keatings from Hearts and Queen of the South’s tricky winger Dan Carmichael.
In contrast, Rangers are shipping out a dozen players, have no manager, no team and face a General Meeting on Friday, where Mike Ashley will ask shareholders — against board advice — to pay back his £5million loan.
The Dave King era has yet to deliver on the early promises. The chairman is expected to raise his head above the parapet soon to drum up season-ticket sales.
But it’s not words supporters crave most right now. It’s action.
A resolution of the Stuart McCall situation. A chief executive. New players, Ashley out of their hair and an announcement on how the club will be funded in future.
Most of all, a confident, idealistic new manager with a solid plan. Experience of Rangers i s not required.