Murty had no chance... but will the next man be given the power he needs to fillet Rangers from top to bottom?
ANEW manager doesn’t fix this. The problems of Rangers, as a football club, run much deeper than the identity of the poor sap in the technical area.
Rancid leadership at boardroom level, a complete inability to understand the basic elements needed to be good, to even be competent, have left the Ibrox outfit teetering betwixt chaos and crisis. Again.
Where once there was at least hope, now even that appears to have evaporated from an organisation bereft of ideas beyond cheap publicity stunts and bear-baiting statements.
Awful on the field of play, they have become more than a touch classless in their dealings with the wider footballing community. The concept of dignity, especially in defeat, appears to be a stranger to the current leadership.
For the first time in the living memory of most in the building yesterday, not a single member of the Rangers football department fronted up after the game.
No manager. Sorry, interim head coach. Not a player, either. It’s genuinely unheard of.
This will, of course, be a minor concern to supporters far more worried about their team’s lack of presence on the park, never mind some conscious decision to shy away from the cameras. Breaching official SPFL ‘media requirements’ will even play well in some dark corners.
But hiding away from scrutiny is not a good look for any organisation. Least of all one with countless customers entitled to an explanation.
Many of those same fans would have forked out over £120 — plus VAT — for the official Rangers Player of the Year dinner at a swanky Glasgow hotel last night. No, you couldn’t make it up.
That these committed diehards will always support the club is without doubt. That they could be happy with anything, absolutely anything, going on at Ibrox at the moment is a theory that belongs to the realms of fantasy.
If there has ever been a head coach more badly abused by his employers than Graeme Murty, get that man a hospital bed.
Twice in quick succession, Murty has seen his authority undermined ahead of games with Celtic. And that’s not counting the dressing-room insurrections given encouragement by those who should know better.
Bravely trying to pick up the pieces left by the Pedro Caixinha experiment, which, even from an early stage, pretty much everyone other than the board identified as a truly farcical appointment, Murty has not been a success.
Among his notable scorelines in combat with the great rivals is a 4-0 thrashing in a semi-final and now a record league loss of 5-0.
Never, in 127 years, had Celtic won a league encounter with Rangers by such a massive margin. And it could have been much, much worse for the visitors.
So, no, the Murty appointment has not worked out. But, dammit, he wasn’t given much of a chance.
What makes you think, then, that the next man will be treated with greater respect?
Where is the evidence that, under a director of football already making signings united by a headline-generating quality above all else, the new ‘gaffer’ will be granted the kind of autonomy needed to completely gut Rangers from top to bottom?
So go ahead. Distract the punters from the shares issue farrago and the horrific lack of cohesion within the squad. Prepare the Blue Room for an appointment that will divert attention for a little while.
But don’t pretend it will make a difference. Clubs are built from the bottom, in the shape of the support base, and through astute decision-making at the top.
Until Rangers get the second half of that formula right, the stooge left isolated on the touchline will never be allowed to get it right.