RECRUITMENT CONCERNS NOW ALL ON GERRARD
IT is hardly likely to break Steven Gerrard’s heart that he no longer has the pleasure of Mark Allen standing beside him in full, monogrammed training kit during pre-season or high-fiving all and sundry in the technical area in the wake of big wins against the likes of Celtic or Legia Warsaw.
The pair always did seem strange bedfellows. Gerrard is street-tough, self-critical and straight-to-thepoint. His outgoing director of football, to put it politely, came across as a peacockish flannel merchant from the corporate class.
What the manager cannot avoid now, though, is that Allen’s departure means there is no longer any deflector shield from criticism over a squad that simply doesn’t look strong enough to maintain a title challenge.
The way the board respond to Allen’s exit is also likely to offer some insight into whether or not their longer-term strategy extends to anything more than just lumping all their eggs in one decidedly expensive basket, closing their eyes and praying the former England captain and his backroom team somehow come up trumps in time.
The sanctioning of a £7million transfer fee for Ryan Kent at the end of another confusing, jumbled-up transfer window that had already seen five other wide players recruited suggested that it doesn’t.
Of course, the exact rationale for Allen becoming the latest to show he does do walking away is unclear. One part of the official statement covering his departure states it is for family reasons. Then, it reveals he is exploring other options.
Reports elsewhere, though, point to friction behind the scenes and concern over the amount of deadwood on the playing staff. And it is very easy to believe them.
Including players out on loan, Rangers now have nine wide attackers. They have an entire team of central midfielders. Out of all those players brought in over the summer, the only one deemed worthy of a start in the 2-0 Old Firm loss to Celtic was Joe Aribo.
Any kind of injury to Alfredo Morelos or 36-year-old Jermain Defoe will leave one centre-forward having to handle the hefty load of domestic and Europa League commitments on his own.
And at left-back, with the rightfooted Jon Flanagan out after hernia surgery, it is a choice between Andy Halliday and the underwhelming Borna Barisic, who, having cost £2.2m, ought to have been punted while his continued involvement with Croatia gives him some kind of sell-on value. Whether you blame Allen or Gerrard or both, this all points to pretty poor management of resources.
Allen will be no loss. He did help restructure the training facility, scouting team and academy, but it was a bit like rebuilding Hiroshima. Anything would have been an improvement.
With Morelos and James Tavernier recruits from previous regimes, not one player from the near 40 he signed would turn a substantial profit right now. That cannot go on.
Turning over players for big money on a regular basis has to be an integral part of the model for Rangers. As does producing home-grown talent. On Old Firm day, the only academy product in the 18 was 37-year-old goalie Allan McGregor.
It is unthinkable that Rangers will not appoint another director of football to try succeeding where Allen failed, given how vital they claimed the post to be prior to the Welshman’s appointment.
Otherwise, what would that say about the board’s confidence in their own judgment? Certainly, there are individuals within the club promoting current head of scouting Andy Scoulding as a serious candidate. Gerrard would probably be supportive of him, too.
Although appointed by Allen, the current manager knows Scoulding well from Liverpool and England. Indeed, it was Scoulding who invited Gerrard as a guest along with Jordan Milsom and Tom Culshaw to Ibrox for the 3-2 loss to Celtic at Ibrox in March 2018 that effectively paved the way for his eventual arrival as boss.
The only trouble with Scoulding being promoted to such a prominent role is that it might make the club seem just a little too much under the control of Gerrard alone. Too heavily populated by his people.
Milsom, a former colleague at Liverpool, is now head of performance. Culshaw is also on the staff as a technical coach along with another ex-colleague from the Reds’ academy, Michael Beale. Last week, it emerged that Anfield physio Matt Konopinski is also leaving a job at the FA to join Rangers.
Would the new director of football being yet another former Liverpool employee with a close connection to Gerrard not pose a threat to the blueprint detailed by Ibrox managing director Stewart Robertson more than two years ago?
‘We see that, sometimes, when managers leave, a lot of the structure leaves with them. That is no use,’ he said. ‘The director of football gives you that continuity.
‘It means if a manager or a coach does leave, you are only replacing that one person and the club’s philosophy continues unbroken.’
Mind you, perhaps everything rests so much on Gerrard, anyway, that having a more independent eye doesn’t really matter any more.
Millions were squandered on Pedro Caixinha’s disastrous reign. Even more has been ploughed into Gerrard’s vision on the back of shareholder loans converted into equity.
If he can’t lift the title within the remaining two-and-a-half years of his contract — or sooner — it is unlikely to matter who he might take with him when he leaves because this business model surely cannot continue much longer without meaningful returns.
While there may be some positives to turning round in the dugout and no longer having a former television executive offering you a fist bump, the pressures now bearing down on Gerrard look like showing him how life as a manager can be lonelier than he ever imagined.
He has an institution’s future as a competitive force on his shoulders — with an imbalanced squad that simply isn’t strong enough, as it stands, to stop Celtic winning Nine-In-A-Row.
Now Allen has gone, that’s all on the manager.
Too many costly recruitment errors have been made in the post-Caixinha rebuild. The closing, tumultous months of Brendan Rodgers’ time at Parkhead, coupled with supporter unrest over Neil Lennon’s return to the dugout, created a window of opportunity that now looks to have closed.
Maybe that’s why the selfproclaimed ‘conductor of the orchestra’ has stepped away from the rostrum. Whatever the truth, it just means, sooner or later, Gerrard and everyone else at Rangers will have to face the music themselves.