An element of uncertainty continues to surround Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s backroom staff at Rangers, after conflicting reports emerged.
GvB was officially confirmed as the club’s 17th permanent manager on Thursday afternoon.
He arrives at a crucial point in the season and although he won’t be in charge of the team, he’s set to be at Hampden on Sunday for the Premier Sports Cup semi-final against Hibernian.
Former Deportivo La Coruña and Bayern Munich striker Roy Makaay is set to be named as an assistant and should accompany him in the stands.
It’s hoped that Guangzhou City manager Jean-Paul van Gastel will join soon, while physiotherapist Arno Phillips and data and performance analyst Yori Bosschart will also be part of the team.
There’s some uncertainty about whether or not van Gastel will be allowed to leave his Chinese Super League side, though, and there have been conflicting reports about GvB’s desire to have a local Scottish coach on his staff.
Neil McCann, Kevin Thomson and Barry Ferguson are some of the ex-Rangers players to have been linked with a coaching role over the past week.
On Thursday night, the Daily Record claimed that ‘a Scottish coach is being lined up to add local knowledge to the new look set-up with the club going through a short-list of candidates’.
However, Jordan Campbell of The Athletic appears to have heard the opposite.
‘Don’t believe there is a local coach (Rangers/Scottish) on the cards at the moment,’ he tweeted earlier in the evening.
Jermain Defoe is, of course, currently on a player/coach contract at Ibrox, and he could be a useful asset for GvB in terms of the transition from the old regime to the new.
However, beyond the fact that he’s part of the interim coaching team preparing the squad for Sunday’s semi-final, his future is yet to be clarified.
Here are two soon-to-be out-of-contract players Rangers could move for now that GvB has been appointed.