By David Herd
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RANGERS V KILMARNOCK PREMIERSHIP SUN 26 OCTOBER 15:00
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SK BRANN V RANGERS EUROPA LEAGUE WED 29 OCTOBER 19:45
Welcome to the latest edition of the website’s weekly preview feature.
Danny Rohl is the new Rangers Head Coach, after a recruitment process that looked farcical. The top brass at the club tried their best to put a positive spin on the 14-day search for Russell Martin’s replacement, but it didn’t convince many of us. The press conferences on Tuesday that heralded the arrival of our new German leader gave us the chance not only to hear his thoughts on the challenge he faces, but also for us to listen to chairman Andrew Cavanagh as well as the two club executives under most pressure now from the support – Kevin Thelwell and Patrick Stewart. I’ll give my thoughts on all four of them in this piece, and fair to say that there’s a range of opinions across the four.
First, Danny Rohl. I’ll freely admit that he wasn’t the man I wanted to see unveiled as our next head coach / manager. I personally felt that at a time when the team on the pitch and the club off the pitch was crying out for leadership and will-to-win, it was time to bring back a man who undoubtedly possesses both. Steven Gerrard would have been the figurehead many were looking for, and it’s difficult to imagine Rohl commanding the instant respect Gerrard does. But he said no thanks, and we need to get behind the man who is here. Rohl’s arrivals has definite positives and negatives.
On the minus side, he has little experience as a Number One at a club, and that one Head Coach job was at a bottom end Championship club who were happy to avoid relegation and survive in their league. He hasn’t led a team to any silverware, and he has no knowledge of the unique pressure that exists at Ibrox. But no matter who got the job, there would have been negatives.
On the plus side, this is a coach who started at a very young age and who has worked at some huge clubs. In particular, he was assistant at Bayern Munich at a time when they won every domestic honour and the Champions League. That’s a club where the demands are to win every week, and where success is only measured in trophies. He has also been assistant at RB Leipzig and with the German national team, working with elite players and gaining their respect. Even at Sheffield Wednesday, he took over a team adrift at the bottom of the league and with an owner seemingly hellbent on driving the club into the ground. He not only kept them up, he then got them not too far from the play-offs the following season before financial meltdown saw players unpaid and results slide. We hear a lot of comparisons to Russell Martin, but these just don’t make sense. Yes, he managed in the same league and also hasn’t won trophies as a manager. But the level he has worked at is miles higher than Martin, and the reputation he has from players and fans in Sheffield is very different from what you hear Southampton fans say about their former boss.
Also, Rohl has shown he is flexible and not wedded to any system or philosophy. His teams are set up in whatever way he thinks will suit them best depending on who he has available and who the opposition are. I must admit, when I heard this it was music to my ears after the nonsense of “we need to win in our way” from the imposter we had to endure at the start of the season. Throw in Rohl seems to have embraced the club traditions, and I’m warming to him. For me, much of the indifference towards him is a legacy of the scandalous appointment made in the summer. It’s time to give the new man his chance and wish him well. I’m hopeful he will surprise a few, and that he can give us back the hope that was drained out of us recently. We do need to recognise, though, that until January he is stuck with the squad he inherited. Turning a team with five wins from 19 into contenders for trophies will not be easy. He saw that for himself in Norway.
A quick few comments on the other three men who sat beside Rohl in the media room on Tuesday.
Andrew Cavanagh – Americans usually know next to nothing about football, but I think our chairman really is one of those rare Americans who genuinely follow the sport and understand it. He spoke of mistakes in recruitment leaving us without leaders, without steel, and without a decent left back. He volunteered to answer questions aimed at others that were about matters on the pitch, and that impressed me. Of course, there are doubts over his continued backing of the executive team and their horrendous performance so far. But Cavanagh has I think managed to maintain the confidence of most that he wants our club to succeed. If he was to ever read this, then apart from hiring a new CEO and Sporting Director, I’d ask him to please wear a club tie when facing the media as the Rangers chairman!
Kevin Thelwell – his entire recruitment strategy thus far has been woefully wrong for this club. Far too many projects, far too many loans with no option to keep them, far too few experienced leaders, and far too few “bad losers” who refuse to accept anything other than winning. And that’s before the quite preposterous spending of nearly £10m on a striker who doesn’t score goals on the basis “he will come good”. We can maybe do that from a position of strength, but to sanction that outlay during a total rebuild of a team who has won nothing is dereliction of duty. He has assembled a team that I wouldn’t put money on beating anyone in our league or in Europe, and at a cost of somewhere north of £30m. Surely the Chairman will hold him to account soon.
Patrick Stewart – has there ever been a less impressive top man in any large worldwide organisation? He hardly said anything on Tuesday, and the only times he spoke, it was painful viewing. When defending the recruitment process he stuttered “we managed to get one of the five over the line” to justify things. He has overseen a review of the club that has meant lots of new executives and the worst managerial appointment in club history. He seems to actively dislike our own support, with his ridiculous apology for a Graeme Souness banner and his silence over blatantly wrong refereeing decisions that have cost our team suggests he prefers fighting us than fighting for us. In front of the cameras he looks like a frightened rabbit in the headlights, and away from the cameras he has done zero to justify his position at Rangers. If his jacket isn’t on a shaky peg, then the chairman isn’t doing as well as I thought.
RANGERS 1 KILMARNOCK 1
No wins in four home league games is diabolical form, and we now face a Kilmarnock team who are above us in the table. It’s painful to say, but it’s difficult to predict a Rangers win these days regardless of who they play. We are toothless going forward, and have scored just eight goals in eight games. We are dire at the back, clean sheets almost as rare as finding a fan happy with Kevin Thelwell. Danny Rohl has now seen for himself just how awful a squad he has inherited, it’s a bunch that Klopp or Pep couldn’t turn into trophy winners.
For me, we need to do what managers do when they know they have a poor team. We need, first of all, to become hard to score against. I’d personally like to see us got 5-3-2, or some similar set-up, as I think we need three centre backs while we can’t trust any pairing, and a two up front because we don’t have anyone we can trust to lead the line and score a goal. Maybe we can get a new manager bounce this weekend, but there’s nothing so far to give me any confidence we can win.
HIBS 2 RANGERS 1
Easter Road is the toughest domestic away fixture so far, and this Russell Martin and Kevin Thelwell created team will start as second favourites. Hibs are a team who have dangerous forwards and big strong defenders, and they will fancy their chances to give us a doing. Their fans, who hate us with a passion, will be expecting a win. And as things stand, I dread how this one might go.
I’d like nothing more than being proved wrong, but a win for us looks highly unlikely. Maybe after a week, the new Head Coach will have found a way to get the best out of the shambles he has to work with, and Rangers throughout history have often got results when it was least expected. I just feel that Hibs would beat Brann, and we just saw what Brann did to us. I hate being this negative, I can only hope that two wins in the next week make me want to write something cheerier next time.
There has only been a decent 45 minutes in the last seven days, the rest has been brutally bad. Let’s not kid ourselves on that anyone should be getting praised for how well they’ve played.
