Gio must take his lead from Fergie and embrace a rebuild
CHANGING OF THE GUARD VITAL IF RANGERS ARE TO PUSH ON AND REACH CHAMPIONS LEAGUE
SIR Alex Ferguson was the master when it came to the art of building a squad. Across his 27 years as the manager of Manchester United, you can identify at least four or five different teams he assembled.
There was the original group who won the club’s first Premier League title in 1993, featuring the likes of Steve Bruce, Gary Pallister, Peter Schmeichel, Paul Ince, Andrei Kanchelskis, Mark Hughes and Eric Cantona.
Senior players like Ince, Kanchelskis and Hughes were then moved on to accommodate the ‘Class of 92’ as exciting young talent like Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Paul Scholes and Gary Neville burst on to the scene.
You then had the Treble-winning team of 1999, with Dwight Yorke, Andy Cole, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Teddy Sheringham doing the damage up front as United ruled Europe.
There was the team who won three league titles in a row between 2007-2009, built around exciting young talent like Wayne Rooney, Carlos Tevez and Cristiano Ronaldo in their pomp.
That team was eventually broken up, before the arrival of Robin van Persie provided the spark for one more league title in Ferguson’s final season in 2013.
Ferguson was so clever when it came to just adding one or two key players every year or 18 months to avoid the need for any major rebuild at any point. He allowed his squads to evolve and wasn’t afraid of change.
He wasn’t scared to move key players on if he felt it was the right thing to do. He spoke about this in an interview with Harvard Business School in 2013 which detailed some of his views on being a successful leader.
Ferguson spoke of ‘daring to rebuild the team’ as and when necessary. It’s something which helped set the foundations for his relentless success at Old Trafford.
‘I believe that the cycle of a successful team lasts maybe four years and then some change is needed,’ explained Ferguson.
‘The hardest thing is to let go of a player who has been a great guy — but all the evidence is on the field.’
I firmly believe this is the position in which Rangers now find themselves. The cycle of this team is now at an end after being built over the past four or five years.
It is inevitable that there is going to be an exodus of senior players from Ibrox this summer, with Allan McGregor and Connor Goldson chief among them. Steven Davis also looks likely to depart. Clubs will undoubtedly be interested in the likes of Joe Aribo, Ryan Kent and Alfredo Morelos.
All three of them could easily go for the right price, especially since they are now entering the final year of their contracts. The club shouldn’t have allowed them to run down their deals.
It could also be the perfect moment to cash-in on the outstanding Calvin Bassey, who was superb in both the Europa League and Scottish Cup finals.
Bassey was moved from left-back to centre-back more through necessity earlier in the season, but he has been a revelation. Right now, he’s Rangers’ top asset.
You’ve then got the likes of loan players such as Aaron Ramsey and Amad Diallo who will now head back to their parent clubs after an underwhelming contribution at Ibrox.
So there is going to be a major rebuild at Rangers this summer. But it’s not something the club should fear. It’s a natural process that this team has reached the end of the road.
Instead of fearing the idea of losing several key players, Rangers need to be proactive in this process and act quickly and decisively.
Why? Because they still have a chance of reaching next season’s Champions League, which would have a transformative effect on the club’s finances.
Rangers will enter the competition at the third qualifying round, with those ties scheduled to be played in early August.
Giovanni van Bronckhorst needs to ensure that Rangers have their house in order by then and have clearly established what their squad will look like for next season.
I suspect it will be pretty much unrecognisable from the team which has contested two major finals against Eintracht Frankfurt and Hearts over the past few days.
Rangers can’t afford to sit and twiddle their thumbs. When it comes to the Champions League qualifiers, they only need to look at what Celtic did over a number of years.
Almost every season without fail, you had all this uncertainty around key players in terms of hanging around to wait and see if the club managed to reach the group stage.
They don’t have that this time around. Ange Postecoglou can plan ahead with clarity and certainty.
He knows the club have Champions League football to look forward to next season and can offer that to any new recruits and also to players who might want to extend an existing deal.
Rangers don’t have that luxury. But they still need to be decisive and avoid repeating some of the mistakes that Celtic made in the transfer market.
They had the likes of Odsonne Edouard, Kris Ajer and Moussa
Dembele, to name just a few, who hung around for a period to see if the club could get through the qualifiers and into the Champions League.
Celtic became notoriously slow with getting their transfer business done every summer. It became a running circus year after year that they would go into the European qualifiers with a half-baked squad.
They would then go and make some panic buys late in the window — Shane Duffy, Diego Laxalt, Albian Ajeti — to try and save face.
This is where the likes of sporting director Ross Wilson has to earn his money for Rangers. As soon as the final whistle was blown at
Hampden on Saturday, he had to turn his focus on to the inevitable rebuild.
Van Bronckhorst has already expressed a desire to sort out the future for some of the players. He doesn’t want the uncertainty to bleed into the start of next season.
I thought Van Bronckhorst handled himself well over the past week or so. Granted, he will know that Rangers will never get a better chance to win a European trophy than they did against Frankfurt.
But they bounced back in the best way possible by winning the Scottish Cup just three days later. It won’t heal the pain of Seville, but it at least sends Rangers into the summer break on a winning note with some silverware.
When they return for their pre-season in a few weeks’ time, the rebuild must be well under way by then. If they drag their heels, it will ruin their chances of reaching the Champions League.