What Rangers need desperately right now is some decisive, clear headed leadership.
So it’s no wonder then their supporters have entered into a state of blind panic as they watch their club being swallowed up by a crisis entirely of its own making. Because unless someone upstairs acts swiftly and professionally on their behalf, then there is a very real danger that the error-prone Ibrox side will become completely derailed and rendered irrelevant for some significant time to come.
It was just last week, on these pages, the men in charge were warned the time had come to start reclaiming control by relieving gio of his own responsibilities and removing him from harm’s way. They reacted by burying heads even deeper into the sand and this amateurish inaction means what was a seven point gap at the top of the table has now become nine. In other words, Rangers don’t just need snookers to have any chance of catching Celtic’s runaway train this season, they need a miracle.
Surely, even they can now see van Bronckhorst has got himself into an unrecoverable death spiral. One look at his dispirited post-match interviews in Paisley on Saturday afternoon should have made that blindingly obvious. Van Bronckhorst could come up with nothing more convincing or defiant than a casual shrug of the shoulders when asked if he can survive the latest in a series of woefully inept performances from his side. "We’ll have to see. In football you never know,” was how he put it in between jabbing an accusatory finger directly at St Mirren’s away dressing room.
The disconnect and breakdown of trust between the manager and his own players could not have been made any more apparent. Quite clearly, van Bronckhorst has now reached the point where he can hardly hide his own disdain for the underperformers clogging up his squad. And it appears that a great deal of them feel exactly the same way about him.
Put it this way, it was no surprise at all to learn of a fall-out between the manager and Glen Kamara after the Finnish international was scapegoated and substituted after a woefully inadequate, goalless first half against St Mirren. Kamara is one of several players who may feel understandably aggrieved about being tossed to one side by a manager who does appear to have been picking favourites inside his own camp.
This has led to him hanging his managerial hat on the likes of John Lundstram, Malik Tillman, Rabbi Matondo and James Sands - while the likes of Kamara, Scott Arfield and Steven Davis have been reduced to the role of onlookers and occasional bit part contributors. Teenage prodigy Alex Lowry, meanwhile, appears to have been jettisoned back to the youth department without any kind of explanation.
And let’s not forget either Allan McGregor was given the same cold shoulder treatment at the start of the season before Van Bronckhorst was finally forced to concede that the veteran remains, by some distance, the most reliable goalkeeper on his books. It could be the manager has been overly eager to put his own stamp on a starting XI he inherited from Steven Gerrard midway through last season but this stubbornness has done it more harm than good.
And yet there is also a feeling that any further van Bronckhorst bashing is like beating a dead dog - an unproductive distraction from the wider issues which have brought Rangers to this crisis point. Because the appointment of a new manager won’t address the fundamental, deep rooted issues which are looming just over the horizon like a storm waiting to be unleashed.
A massive rebuild is about to be required over the next two transfer windows and it will have to be a hugely expensive one too if the next Ibrox boss is to stand a decent chance of challenging Ange Postecoglou’s superiority. Rangers certainly won’t be able to cover the costs of this squad overhaul by selling from within because their much trumpeted ‘player trading model’ looks more like a busted flush.
Yes, they have cashed in on three major talents by flogging off Nathan Patterson, Joe Aribo and Calvin Bassey over the last 12 months while replacing none of them. But that’s not a player trading model. It’s an asset strip. Ryan Kent remains the club’s most gifted and sought after player by some considerable distance. But the winger - a £7m purchase - is now weeks away from being able speak to other clubs and then leave for free.
There’s been an unedifying pile-on where Kent’s recent fluctuating form has been concerned but anyone who can’t see his value or importance to this team simply isn’t paying attention. It was Kent who dug them out of a hole on Wednesday night against Hearts and it was the same on Saturday when his determination and quick, dancing feet won the penalty which salvaged a draw at St Mirren.
Imagining what Rangers might look like without him ought to send a shiver down the spine of those fans who are already deeply concerned about their club’s immediate direction of travel. The extraordinary mismanagement of his contractual situation means Kent could leave for less than £1m in January or for nothing in the summer.
Alfredo Morelos, of course, has been left in the same sinking boat. But, unlike Kent, the Colombian loose cannon can no longer be bothered to contribute. So much so, in fact, that if the club did decide to let him leave for £500,000 in the New Year they might struggle to find a buyer who thinks the price is worth paying.
Kamara - who looked like a £10m operator in the Europa League last season - is another rapidly depreciating asset while James Tavernier has been allowed to overstay his own peak. If Rangers had a player trading model worthy of the name in place they might have considered inviting offers for the captain this time a year ago rather than selling off his ready made replacement to Everton.
All of which points to a club which is doing nothing much more than struggling to manage its own decline at a time when their rivals are motoring off in the other direction. If Postecoglou was to throw open the doors of Lennoxtown to any interested bidders this January then he’d be deluged by big money approaches for the likes of Jota, Kyogo Furuhashi, Liel Abada, Reo Hatate, Josip Juranovic, Cameron Carter-Vickers and Matt O’Riley, among others.
In other words, the Big Aussie will be sitting on a potential gold mine of saleable assets this Christmas. Whether it’s Van Bronckhorst or anyone else holding the fort on the other side of the city, his cupboard will be bare by comparison.
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