Gio is finished at Rangers and his directors at Ibrox should follow him out the door

GIOVANNI VAN Bronckhorst is done at Rangers. Incredible as it seems just a couple of weeks after negotiating PSV Eindhoven to reach the Champions League, he’s gone past the point of no return. This was the week of the great temperature change, that moment with all managers when the mercury drops below a level which anyone is capable of tolerating longer term. He might hang on for a bit. He might not. But he’s highly unlikely to be around beyond the end of the season.

Four-goal hammerings at the hands of Celtic and Ajax don’t help, two displays so shocking in their ineptitude that they, alone, could be argued to have sunk the Dutchman below the waterline.

It’s his words that are likely to finish him, though. Much has been made of his concession after Wednesday night’s disaster in Amsterdam that Rangers cannot compete at European football’s highest level unless they have hundreds of millions to spend.

He’s right, of course. It’s just one of these things an Old Firm manager cannot say, however, unless he is prepared to deal with the consequences.

Rather like informing the company CEO you’ve done the sums and realised the futility of devoting your life to the broken model of pure market capitalism or mentioning, over the morning toast and marmalade, to the other half that the sheer nature of the human condition tells you we are not built to be monogamous animals.

Valid arguments. Just best kept to yourself, really, if you want to remain within the boundaries of mainstream society instead of ending up on a beach in Goa with the thousand-yard stare, tuning into all the rest of life’s great secrets through the hole of a conch shell.

For the more perspicacious observer, though, it was the admission made before the game in the Johan Cruyff ArenA by Van Bronckhorst (right) that really made the ears prick up.

Unusually defensive, he responded to a question about the failure to sign anyone between banking £30million-plus by beating PSV and the closure of the transfer window by saying: ‘Seems like we have loads of money already in the bank, which is not the case.’

This wasn’t just a revelation. It sounded suspiciously like a coach, stuck with an insufficiently strengthened squad, moving the spotlight towards those higher up the chain.

Van Bronckhorst’s problem is, though, that he played along with the party line that the business done at the start of the window was all Rangers had to do. For too long, he has accepted the shoddiness above him at board level.

He pretended a January window that delivered two brainless loan signings in Aaron Ramsey and Amad Diallo was fine. He must have known that signing two guys mid-season who didn’t play first-team football was stupidity.

Likewise, he must have known the need to bolster his squad when that Champions League bounty was guaranteed. It did look weeks ago as though Rangers had reinvested a lot of the £30m brought in by the sales of Calvin Bassey and Joe Aribo well.

Sadly, most guys they signed don’t play and others such as Ryan Kent and Alfredo Morelos — months away from being able to agree pre-contracts — have switched off.

For all the money spent, Rangers still don’t have a right winger, still don’t have proper cover at right-back, lack creative midfielders and have a goalie in Jon McLaughlin backed up by a 40-year-old deemed not good enough for the first XI any longer.

Van Bronckhorst had to do something about some — or all — of these issues. Not step up after the market has closed and tell supporters juiced until the pips squeak by this Rangers regime that there’s no money in the piggy bank. Punters are angry at Van Bronckhorst for stating his team can’t be expected to compete in the Champions League after paying £180 for a three-match package to watch it. However, the board are unlikely to appreciate him telling the truth about the state of the finances either. They don’t seem terribly keen on anyone telling the truth about anything. Kim Jong-un speaks in public more often. And probably gives out more information.

It’s just that Van Bronckhorst is no longer in a strong position to start with the bold statements. The buzz from last season’s Europa League final has evaporated. Signings, tactics and performances had already put his jacket on a shoogly peg before someone slipped the truth serum into his jenever back in the Netherlands.

Yet, if he really is back where he was in April before beating Braga — i.e. well down the path towards the exit door — the same can be said of the directors.

The Road to Seville did save Van Bronckhorst’s bacon, but it took the board’s feet from the fire too. Back then, punters were spitting blood over the club taking on the role of chief support for the Big Ange Homecoming Walkabout Super Series. Otherwise known as the Sydney Super Cup, in which there would be a friendly against Celtic.

That was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back, though. Until then, the cloth-eared amateurism of the Rangers board had known no bounds.

There was the night against Malmo, the grand return to Champions League competition, where punters with tickets couldn’t get in. Managing director Stewart Robertson called it ‘a shambles’, but that came three months after a statement that originally pointed the finger at the fans themselves for causing all the trouble.

From there, it was one thing after another. The underwhelming 150th birthday celebrations, with the club selling a ‘Limited Edition Gallant Pioneers’ kit for £105 and then failing to wear it, as advertised, in a game with Aberdeen. Edmiston House, which still isn’t finished. Staging ‘Flag Day’ after ‘55’ — and being unable to run the flag up a pole the right way.

And all the while, supporters have been merrily milked rotten for 227 different, exorbitantly-priced strips from a company that had to apologise for the standard of merchandise in its first season, Champions Walls, £7 chocolate bars, deals with bust NFT/cryptocurrency companies and, now, day trips to European games that don’t take you to the city where the match is being played.

Pay £600-plus for a jaunt to Ajax and then get an email telling you the plane will actually be going to Brussels and you’ll be getting dumped at Prestwick on the way home. Gee-whizz.

These things don’t generate big headlines, but they matter. Because fans can and do decide how long boards and managers survive. Rangers, right now, just feel like they are drifting into a perfect storm of their own making.

Sure, you could have put the kettle on for Dave King reappearing after Ajax. He no doubt has more explosive bombs to drop as civil war reintensifies in the months ahead, too, but his current question about where the money raised of late is going — close to £100m when you count transfer fees, Europa League payments and Champions League finance — is valid.

Douglas Park, a silent enigma as chairman, is unlikely to tell. What is his plan for Rangers? What does he stand for other than falling out with the league and everyone else over a cinch sponsorship deal?

Ross Wilson is surely one bad transfer window away from being emptied as sporting director and the one just gone is starting to look like it might well be it. Then, we come to Robertson.

What does this guy do? Has anyone seen him of late? Checked he’s all right?

Last season, he was the front for the crazy — and since ditched — plan to charge newspapers, in particular, £25,000 a season for access to press conferences. ‘They’ve had a good run at it for a number of years,’ he reasoned. Well, so has he.

Van Bronckhorst is now on borrowed time at Rangers, but he can’t possibly be the only one. Ibrox needs a clear-out and the problem for those at the top is even the hardest of the hardcore are starting to see it.

Two hours on a bus from Brussels to Amsterdam, after all, gives you plenty of time to think about what’s gone wrong.