Little haste from Ibrox regime without a clue
AND there we were thinking Rangers might actually have something approaching a solid plan this time round. Until Friday teatime, that is. And that statement. It is anyone’s guess what senior management hoped to achieve with the needless, perplexing admission on their official website that they have done diddly-squat about finding a new manager more than two weeks on from calling a halt to the ever-worsening embarrassment that was Pedro ‘I’m a f ***** g tough guy’ Caixinha’s time in charge.
If it was some kind of plea for patience, it does not appear to have worked.
Rangers supporters have been more than patient over the past five years or so. They understand the need to take time in finding exactly the right kind of manager in the wake of all that time and money squandered under Caixinha and his predecessor Mark Warburton. They have given this board a far easier ride than it deserves.
What they got in return on Friday was an indication that the custodians of their club don’t really know what they are doing.
Since early July and that still-incomprehensible Europa League loss to Progres Niederkorn of Luxembourg, it was pretty clear the gamble taken on Caixinha was not going to work out. That result alone, as stated on this very page, was a resignation issue, far less the weeks and months of nonsense that followed.
Mark Allen had already been appointed director of football by that point. His official starting date was the beginning of August, but he was working behind the scenes on setting up a scouting network and taking a look at the infrastructure of the club.
Should he not have been involved, too, in drawing up a plan of attack for the likely — some might say inevitable — moment when Caixinha, a loose cannon whom previous club Al-Gharafa seemed happy to get shot of, finally had to be removed from office?
Should there not have been a list of options, or at least some kind of template for his successor, drawn up? The writing was on the wall there and then.
Going by that statement from Friday evening, the only concrete thing we really have to work with, it seems the Rangers board are just hanging around waiting for people to write in saying they fancy a wee shot at it and will get round to sifting through the inbox when the emails and letters dry up towards the end of the week.
That’s not what should be happening. It is hard to believe it
is what is happening. But that is the message being conveyed by the only meaningful correspondence on the matter released by Ibrox High Command so far.
Allen is back in the bunker underneath Auchenhowie, finally getting round to clearing out the stuff left behind by previous inhabitants such as Imran Ahmad and Philippe Senderos, restocking the larder with spam, alphabetti spaghetti and other non-perishables for his new lodger, Carlos Pena.
He did come above ground to pose for a photo with his new coaching team the other week. Even went as far as to speak to the club website, the kind of English-language propaganda outlet that Russia
Today could only aspire to be. But he didn’t take questions from anyone else. Certainly offered little to clear up what the precise remit of his job actually is.
Until the ticking timebomb that was Caixinha went off, it was easy to forget that Rangers had actually got round to appointing a director of football at all.
Maybe Allen and others are beavering away profitably in the background. Maybe they are chipping away at an agreement for Derek McInnes. Maybe they are waiting to see how Australia and Northern Ireland get on in the World Cup Play-offs before moving for their managers.
That is not what the official lines of communication suggest, though. And the longer this goes on, the longer it resembles the lengthy search that somehow finished with Caixinha’s name on top of the pile.
Why did Rangers even put that statement out on Friday? All it succeeded in doing, if a brief meander around social media is anything to go by, was bring a number of supporters tired of being left in the dark and fed drivel from sources official and otherwise out of the woodwork.
Indeed, it is difficult to figure who is standing up for the interests of Rangers fans these days.
The directors may say the right things, but it is impossible to ignore the fact that Dave King, Paul Murray, Alastair Johnston and Andrew Dickson were all in positions of influence back in 2009 when everything was thrown at discrediting the supporter-led ‘We Deserve Better’ campaign, established to draw attention to the ruinous direction the club was going in under Sir David Murray.
Club 1872, the second-biggest shareholder in Rangers behind King, has a new board, but little sign of fresh momentum amid concerns that, comfortably housed inside Ibrox, they are not quite as independent as they claim.
Managing director Stewart Robertson, meanwhile, is seen and heard from about as often as Allen.
From a football perspective, Rangers fans want to see someone leading from the front. That involves statements of intent rather than ones suggesting the board are sitting around watching ‘At The Races’ and waiting to see what the postie turns up with.