The contrasting approaches of Old Firm duo to January window sum up the void between them

MAYBE we should trust in vice-chairman John Bennett’s public statement that this Rangers squad, its since established roles as the worst-ever outfit to stink out the Champions League and Premiership also-rans notwithstanding, is the strongest he has seen in his time at the club.

Maybe he’s right, you see. Maybe it doesn’t need any additions. Maybe all those previous boasts from Bennett of ‘quality and not quantity’ being sourced in the transfer market really will come good.

However, going by long-doomed manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s latest pronouncements, the upcoming January window looks more like it is shaping up to be another affair best watched through the cracks of the fingers. Much like those illfated excursions in Europe, truth be told. Or St Mirren yesterday.

Listen, it will take something special to top last January’s efforts, delivering Aaron Ramsey, Amad Diallo and Mateusz Zukowski. One injury-prone guy not fit enough to play in the first-team, another guy not good enough and a third who went on to enjoy the public profile of the snow leopard.

However, Bennett is big on raising the bar. And when it comes to sporting director Ross Wilson and his management of the playing assets, it feels like almost anything is possible.

Who knows what he will pull out of the hat this winter in the wake of last year’s front-step photocalls and all-round backslapping over the past-it Ramsey? A short-term deal to put Gazza back in the spotlight? A call to John Greig to see if he fancies dusting off the boots and taking a bit of the heat off James Tavernier before the current captain’s leg falls off or he drops dead with exhaustion?

Or maybe Wilson won’t bother phoning anybody. Asked on Friday if the club are considering additions in attack thanks to the current side being unable to hit a cow on the backside with a banjo, Van Bronckhorst’s response was hardly a firm statement of intent.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Not at the moment. The window is still closed for one-and-a-half months.’

Mmmm. More of that trademark dynamism there, Giovanni. The kind of rallying call needed to restore long-lost confidence in a set-up that would surely be Kings of Europe if the sense of purpose in the football department matched the cold-eyed determination of the board and the marketing bods to milk the gullible public for every single penny they’ve got.

Compare and contrast that approach with the noises coming from across the city of Glasgow at champions Celtic.

Ange Postecoglou (below) and his agent put together a whole new team in the summer of 2021 and went back into the market in early January to sign Matt O’Riley, Daizen Maeda, Reo Hatate and Yosuke Ideguchi.

The first three certainly made for strong business at good prices and secured a title that Celtic, given the rubble they were rebuilding from, had no right to win. Postecoglou, by all indications, plans to repeat the dose this time round.

‘We are well underway with our planning for January,’ he said recently. ‘It was really beneficial for us last year to do our business early. That helped us in the back half of the season. I think we’ll have to do something similar this January.

‘Our strategy is already in place and, hopefully, it all comes together. We are looking everywhere in our recruitment.

‘Mark Lawwell is in the building now and the reason I brought him in is he knows what I am looking for. The brief is to scour the world for that.’

A little more convincing, more reassuring, than ‘erm, I’ve no idea what we’re up to. We’ll see when it comes round’, don’t you think? There certainly appears to be a decent relationship between Postecoglou and his recruitment chief Lawwell. They know each other from working within the City Group collection of clubs — Postecoglou at Yokohama F Marinos and Lawwell at Manchester City — and look to be on the same page in terms of identifying targets in the market as well as selling big players on for the right price at the right time. Van Bronckhorst (left) stated recently, though, that Rangers also have a joined-up policy in which he plays a central role — even though no cover at right-back, no right-winger at all, a lack of creativity in midfield, no obvious big-ticket assets and practically an entire team of players out of contract in the summer might lead you to suspect otherwise.

There has always been a feeling Van Bronckhorst has never stamped his feet or shouted loudly enough to get new recruits. That he has just taken nonsense signings such as Ramsey and Diallo — or no one at all, as in the aftermath of qualifying for the Champions League — and got on with it regardless.

In different circumstances, it could be argued that he created a rod for his own back by admitting that he has been at the heart of a puzzling transfer policy. However, his goose is cooked anyway. He can’t possibly be here for much longer given the paucity of performances on the field and the humiliation of that European campaign. Particularly when it unfolded with the, ahem, strongest Rangers squad in recent times at his disposal.

For all the talk of collective responsibility, though, there didn’t seem much of that in evidence before the latest instalment of his death by a thousand cuts in Paisley yesterday when the Dutchman was asked for an update on contract talks with Alfredo Morelos and Ryan Kent, who, in a ringing endorsement of Rangers’ long-term planning, will soon be free to walk for nothing when they could have gone to Lille and Leeds for £30million all-in.

‘You should ask Ross,’ he replied, leaving what felt like a telling silence. ‘Ross is speaking with the players and the agents, so I think he is best to ask what the situation is.’

Chance would be a fine thing. The last time Wilson took questions in a properly public forum, Neanderthal Man had just taken the title from Homo Erectus in a last-day thriller spoiled only by a typically erratic display from Willie Collum and a sabre-toothed tiger invading the park.

Something tells you that there is little chance of Wilson flashing the pearlies for the cameras this January, though, and telling everyone who will listen on Rangers TV just how all those calls to the contacts that got him Ramsey paid off again.

It is more likely to be spent reflecting on the cost of Van Bronckhorst’s surely-imminent severance package — and maybe even counting his own, if there’s any justice — as Celtic and all their new signings disappear into the distance.