So now it’s been a few days since the old firm defeat at Ibrox I’ve had time to mull over what I witnessed happen to my team right in front of my very eyes. The lack of fight and effort was clear to see and Kenny Miller is the only one in that team that deserves an ounce of credit but here lies a problem, he wasn’t the only one to blame for the hammering that Celtic inflicted on us. Only six days after a semi-final defeat at Hampden, Pedro yet again got his tactics wrong, and more frustratingly, it was like he hadn’t learned a thing from the previous encounter. I genuinely feel for the manager though. He’s inherited a team void of cohesion and fighting spirit. That may seem harsh but there are few players in that squad that understand the responsibility placed on their shoulders to play for a club like Rangers. Pedro comes across as a man who is very confident in his abilities and enjoys preparing his team as efficiently as possible but recently in the press he’s been slated for explaining his tactics after games and giving his team selection a day early to the media. Personally, I think that’s been a bad move on his part and I’m surprised no-one from the club has advised against him doing it and quite frankly the PR from Rangers is embarrassing or lack of it to be precise. Initially I thought it was odd that he came into the job near the end of the season but in hindsight it makes sense, it gives him time to access the current squad and see exactly what kind of job he has on his hands, and boy does he have a hell of a summer ahead of him.
According to the press, the new manager has handed in a list of twelve players he wants to the board, for many reasons I find this difficult to deal with. Having only been here for little over 6 weeks he’s compiled a fairly sizable list of players he believes will help Rangers compete with Celtic and rebuild our current squad?, well fuck me he’s been busy because last time I checked we didn’t have any sort of scouting network, so one can only assume its players he has previously worked with. Everyone in Scotland knows how thick skinned you need to be to manage up in the goldfish bowl that is Glasgow and it’s certainly one thing that caught out Mark Warburton during his ill-fated time at the club.
So where does the leave our new manager? He’s got a catch 22 situation on his hands at the moment, he needs time to get players playing the way he wants but also he doesn’t have the luxury of losing the big games coming up. The last four matches run with Partick, Hearts, Aberdeen and St Johnstone, tough games that he needs to win in my opinion and fans certainly don’t have much patience left after back to back defeats off their greatest rivals. Couple that in with the slim chance of overtaking Aberdeen into second spot to accelerate the standings when it comes to qualifying rounds for the Europa league. It’s abundantly clear we need new blood in the squad and he must have had assurances of funds for the summer otherwise he wouldn’t have come to our club. Personally, I hope he gets the backing he badly needs on and off the park as we have a huge rebuilding job on our hands.
Finally, I’d like to say a huge thanks for the opportunity to contribute to the website, I’m currently involved in a podcast called We Welcome The Chase and we record every other week and you can find us on our YouTube channel. If you’d like to check it out you can find us at https://www.youtube.com/user/WeWelcomeTheChasePod or on twitter @WWTC_POD
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