The Rangers Board sit at the centre of the fans’ ire as a failure to improve the squad has cost the club dearly and the Gers’ biggest opportunity to exert dominance over Celtic.
No-one can take away from the level of investment those who’ve come into the club have given Rangers since 2015, with the club’s rise to a Scottish Premiership title and Europa League Final quite remarkable.
But at the same time, it is utterly delusional to use this as a defence against the negligent direction the club has gone in over the last few seasons on the park, if not off it.
Rangers continue to get it right in many ways when it comes to the club’s commercial operations, whilst the renovation of Ibrox, opening of Edmiston House and the return to profit are of course huge success stories.
But on the park things have so clearly stalled and after building Rangers up to title winners the level of negligence has rankled with Rangers fans now desperate to take the Board to task.
After securing 55 in 2021, Rangers were in a position of strength and had to build on it. With Celtic in free fall, our directors took the eye off the ball and consolidated their position.
This was a clear opportunity and perhaps the biggest one in our recent history which every single person in the background of the club failed to take.
Rangers Board surrender trophy momentum to Celtic
As we look back on the last decade, perhaps this moment, with Steven Gerrard crying out for fresh and ambitious investment, will be looked back upon as the defining one.
We allowed Celtic back into the reckoning in one window and then, with a team full of serial losers, chucked the title as soon as the slightest bit of pressure was reintroduced.
The signings over the last four windows have quite simply not been good enough, as evidenced by the fact we started seven players in the weekend’s League Cup Final defeat from the defeat of 2019. Another of them came off the bench.
Now Celtic are within three trophies of Rangers’ world famous trophy record and we are about to surrender that as meekly as we did our league championship last season.
The management of the club and squad at the top level has been disastrous.
Whilst these directors might’ve been dining out on the notion they were the ones who saved Rangers only a few seasons ago they are now set to become the caretakers who allowed Celtic to overtake us.
As things stand, and with Rangers a team in transition, it’s hard to see how we stop them with Celtic building forward and Rangers, under its current stewardship and Board, continuing to go sideways.
Meanwhile, the inexperience of Michael Beale shone through at Hampden.