Ibrox directors can’t afford to misjudge the mood of fans as gravely as their manager
THE manager of Rangers is well paid to do a thankless, torturous job. The football equivalent of juggling plates in the air, the ideal candidate must have the skin of a rhino and an eye for a bargain.
He will know how to extract the maximum from limited resources. How to manage demands and expectation. How to judge the mindset of supporters and take them along for the ride.
There will be times — after a 4-1 defeat to Hearts perhaps — when he will know when to raise two hands in the air, offer an apology, admit to his mistakes and promise blood, sweat and tears by way of atonement.
No one expects the manager of Rangers to have all the answers. If he did, he would be Donald Trump’s hairdresser.
But in an ideal world, the man in charge will quickly gauge the mood of the fans and know precisely what tone to adopt.
On Thursday, Mark Warburton, the current Rangers manager, weighed up his options and came out fighting.
Humility might have been the safer course. Instead he misjudged the mood of supporters.
Some of what the Ibrox boss had to say made sense.
Rangers cannot compete financially with Celtic right now. Not when the Parkhead club have Champions League money pouring out of cracks in the wall.
To even try by spending money they don’t have would be disastrous. We all know how that ended before.
There is now a sizeable gap, no quick fix and no point in denying it.
Somehow Rangers must find a way to make themselves competitive by spending what cash they have wisely — and even that offers no guarantee of success.
It’s a thankless conundrum and to pretend otherwise would be foolish.
Rangers directors no doubt hoped their team would compete for the title in their first season back in the top flight.
Most of all the marketing genius who dreamed up the ‘Going for 55’ hashtag.
But that doesn’t mean the Ibrox board expected it. Nor, for that matter, demanded it. What they do demand and expect is to finish a comfortable second in the SPFL Premiership.
The 25-point Celtic advantage they can live with. It’s the narrow two-point lead over third-placed Aberdeen which poses the problem. That, plus one or two contradictions in Warburton’s explanation.
Asked if Rangers shouldn’t expect to be a comfortable second in the Premiership, the Englishman responds with one word. ‘Why?’
To outsiders, the answer to that seems obvious.
Rangers have a playing budget two or three times higher than Derek McInnes has to spend at Aberdeen. More where Hearts are concerned.
The Ibrox manager is quick to justify being second best to Celtic by pointing to the huge fees and salaries shelled out across the city.
He can’t complain, then, when people ask why Rangers can’t shake off Aberdeen and Hearts when they spend more on fees and wages than either of those clubs.
Outwith Celtic, no other team in the league could spend £1.8million on a striker (Joe Garner). Not Aberdeen. Certainly not Hearts.
Neither can either of them pay the kind of salaries handed out to Joey Barton, Jordan Rossiter, Niko Kranjcar or Clint Hill. Exaggerated figures or otherwise.
Warburton believes it is disrespectful to Aberdeen or Hearts to expect Rangers to lord it over two ‘battle-hardened’ Premiership rivals.
But the Hearts outfit who beat his team 4-1 on Wednesday were not battle-hardened. They hardly knew each other. Head coach Ian Cathro signed nine new players in January. The four defenders who started against Rangers can muster just 12 appearances between them.
Cathro fielded a debutant striker in Esmael Goncalves and introduced two new Greek signings as late substitutes to see the game out.
The Rangers boss further denies that a worrying trend is developing for his team in away games.
But in the last two campaigns, the Ibrox side have won just once on their travels against their top-four rivals in the Championship and Premiership. That was last season against Raith Rovers in Kirkcaldy.
Since then, they have lost twice at Tynecastle, shipped five at Parkhead and slipped to a last-minute defeat in Aberdeen.
Listen, Warburton may have no option but to gamble in the hope supporters will swallow results like this indefinitely.
But before they start selling season tickets for next term, Rangers directors have to ask themselves a blunt question.
Can they really afford to do the same?