They were guilty of sleeping at the wheel for a fortnight. Maybe even longer. But - all of a sudden - the Rangers board sat up with a bolt and decided to kick manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst to the curb before this car crash of a season got any more gory. Better late than never they’ll say.
But the truth of the matter is their dithering and prevaricating has left them behind the eight ball at a moment of crisis, when there is no more time for them to lose. Even if they rush a new man into position at breakneck speed by comparison, there is now only three weeks for him to get to work on a squad of chronic under-performers before they have to go back to work against Hibs on December 15.
In other words, the odds are stacking up against him with each passing day all because the men in charge have abandoned any semblance of leadership. They ought to have acted swiftly and decisively back at the start of this month when Van Bronckhorst looked on helplessly from the sidelines in Perth as his team slumped to a spiritless defeat against St Johnstone. It became blindingly obvious to almost everyone else on that afternoon the Dutchman had run completely out of answers.
His increasingly erratic team selections and a desperate, scattergun approach to making substitutions, were the tell tale signs of a manager entering a death spin. But somehow the people in charge of running Rangers failed to notice until it was too late. By failing to remove him from harm’s way a seven point gap at the top of the table turned into an unbridgeable nine point gulf when Van Bronckhorst made the same mistakes all over again and dropped another two at St Mirren.
And yet still they waited, humming and hawing for another week before finally pulling on the trigger when Van Bronckhorst was contacted on a family holiday and told there would indeed be no way back. Sources in Holland are convinced the club’s director of football, Ross Wilson, was reluctant to make that call and perhaps, if he had his way, Van Bronckhorst would have struggled on for a while before being told to step aside.
And that would almost certainly have made a bad situation even worse than it already was. For example, had Van Bronckhorst stayed in charge for long enough to suffer another routing at the hands of a rampant Celtic on January 2, then he would have been chased down Edmiston Drive with his reputation in flames. So, ultimately, it was an act of mercy to remove him from his misery before any more damage was done, even if the penny had still not quite dropped inside Wilson’s Auchenhowie bunker.
If the Dutch camp are correct about Wilson’s misgivings then that does call his professional judgement into question, which in itself ought to be a considerable concern for whoever is next in line for a seat in the Ibrox dugout. Because if there are serious miscalculations being made by those entrusted with overseeing the club’s recruitment policy then the new man might be up against it before he’s even started.
And this is where Van Bronckhorst probably deserves to be cut a little slack, even if it was his own error strewn decision making which ultimately cost him his job. It was only a few months ago, after all, when vice chairman John Bennett boasted Van Bronckhorst was in charge of the strongest Rangers squad in all of his time as a director.
If Bennett truly believes that to be the case then it’s a further sign that a dangerous sense of delusion has taken hold at the top of the old staircase. Because anyone who thinks Rangers are in any way better off without the combined talents of Nathan Patterson, Joe Aribo and Calvin Bassey doesn’t belong anywhere near the club’s nerve centre.
The awkward truth is, Van Bronckhorst was dealt a dud hand before what was supposed to be his first full season at the helm. Not only was his squad significantly weakened by those whopping sales but he was also left with two ticking time bombs inside his dressing room in the shape of Alfredo Morelos and Ryan Kent. It beggars belief that this pair are now weeks away from being able to open contract negotiations elsewhere as free agents, given the value they once added to the balance sheet.
Much to his credit, Kent continues to go about his work with commitment and effort, even if his form may have suffered as a result of the uncertainty. Put it this way, he was still digging Van Bronckhorst out of a hole in the final few days of his tenure, turning in a man of the match performance in a win over Hearts and winning the penalty which salvaged his last point in Paisley.
Morelos on the other hand has behaved like a tantrum throwing manchild while his market value has plummeted. The only pounds he’s been piling on have gone straight to his waistline and this abysmal lack of professionalism merely made Van Bronckhorst appear weak and unable to control his own dressing room.
And yet what did anyone realistically expect when this notoriously untrustworthy, loose cannon of a Colombian went into the final year of his contract without his future being secured, one way or the other? At one point Rangers thought they could command a fee in excess of £16m for Morelos. They’d be lucky to claw back as little as £500,000 if they attempt to offload him in the next transfer window.
All of which means Rangers are about to pay a hefty price for their own lack of strategic, forward planning as well as paying Van Bronckhorst up for the remainder of his ripped up contract. As decision making goes, it’s difficult to imagine how this accident prone Ibrox regime could have made any more of a mess of things. And yet now here they are, with another monumental call on their hands while the clock continues to click.
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