Well, that was quite a week!
There’s been plenty said about the Derek McInnes situation. The Rangers statement and the Daily Record story were both a bit of a mess. Regardless of what account of events you believe, Rangers are still without a permanent manager or head coach.
There’s going to be plenty said about the next man offered the job being second choice. It’s an easy headline, and a lazy one. When it comes to hiring the next manager, there’s a lot which is being considered. The biggest intangible, though, is the desire to take on the challenge. The demands mixed with the current resources make the job extremely difficult at best. Any manager coming in will have to be willing to potentially take a hit on their reputation. They’ll need the resolve to face an unfriendly media, be hated by all in Scottish football except Rangers fans, and even find a way to shrug off criticism, fair or unfair, from their own support. It’s the characteristic which is almost impossible to identify beforehand.
As such, the second McInnes refused the job, he confirmed he wasn’t the right choice. If he was to ask today to be given the second chance to take the job, he’d be refused. He is no longer the first choice. In fact, he’s not even a consideration now. Our recruitment team can safely say that they’ve learned from this and move on.
The club confirmed that Murty will be in charge of the team until the end of this month. Murty himself confirmed that the club is still moving forward with identifying transfer targets. This situation will give us a good indication of just how strong our new set-up is. There was also confirmation of a new board member in Barry Scott. It’s not the Barry Scott who would annoy you with his ridiculously over-enthusiastic adverts for bathroom cleaners, thankfully.
The Development Squad had a good win yesterday against a strong St Mirren side, with the game finishing 5-4 after being 5-1 up. It was a very young team Rangers played. Given that they were originally scheduled to play the AEK Athens youth team, it suggests that there’s a bit of adaptability and a strong attitude being developed.
With the McInnes situation dominating the headlines (and you’ll notice that only one club is continuing that story now), it was easy to miss that Rangers finally got that third win in a row on Saturday. There’s been far too much made of the failure to do that in some ways, so it’s almost business as normal that it’s barely been mentioned.
It’s a really busy month of games for the club, which will obviously be the focus. There’s plenty going on at the club in every aspect, but the fans just want a good run of results. Tonight’s game against Hibs is a very difficult fixture, and any sort of result would be welcomed. After that, we have some tricky but winnable games leading into the trip to Celtic. Hopefully, we’ll be able to spend our time discussing these matches rather than anything else for a few weeks at least.
Any thoughts on the upcoming matches? Tweet us @rangersnewsuk and we’ll be happy to discuss!