Sometimes a manager just knows instinctively when his number is up.
More often than not the moment comes with a sinking realisation that no matter what he says or does, the plight of his team will inevitably continue to spiral from bad to worse in any case. So if the penny didn’t drop for Giovanni van Bronckhorst on Sunday lunchtime in Perth, then it may be an act of kindness for someone at Rangers to remove him from the firing line for the sake of his own sense of wellbeing. Because the beleaguered Dutchman now looks like a man who is completely bewildered by the task he is being asked to confront.
It all feels like the job is getting away from a manager who can’t quite fathom why his team has entered into such a chaotic tailspin, just a few months after reaching the dizzying heights of last season’s Europa League final. And it has resulted in him resorting to increasingly erratic team selections, scattergun substitutions and feeble excuses as he staggers from one juddering blow on to the next.
The truth of the matter is, more than three months into his first full season in charge, van Bronckhorst still has not worked out what his strongest starting 11 actually looks like. And the more he has messed around with it out of growing desperation, the more confused the man in charge has become.
Put it this way, somehow Van Bronckhorst has reached the conclusion that James Sands ought to be a first pick in the centre of his midfield. Given that he has far more talented options in the likes of Steve Davis, Scott Arfield and Glen Kamara, this seems like some sort of weird, managerial brain melt.
And it’s even more difficult to comprehend given that, in his own playing days, he was such an accomplished master of that very trade. That’s not meant as a slight on Sands who may well go on to have a fine career all of his own.
But at this stage in the young American’s development, it beggars belief that he’s being used as a cornerstone of a side which is in desperate need of some leadership and composure at its very heart. With reserves of confidence and self belief eviscerated by a series of maulings in the Champions League, even some of van Bronckhorst’s most trusted players are simply malfunctioning.
Suffice to say, John Lundstram is not even the best in Perth these days and the Scouser may be wondering where exactly all his old mates have disappeared to. Having lost the ball so carelessly in the build up to James Brown’s blockbuster of an opener yesterday, Lundstram spent the rest of the match tearing around the pitch in search of redemption. But what he really needed was a little more help from some of those more experienced campaigners who are prepared to share the weight of responsibility in a crisis.
The more anxious and hurried Rangers became, the less they looked capable of digging themselves out of a hole. This latest capitulation, wasn’t a case of players lacking in application or effort on behalf of their boss.
In fact, they threw everything but the kitchen sink at St Johnstone from kick-off at McDiarmid Park. But the longer the onslaught continued without delivering a breakthrough goal, the more desperate and ragged it became.
And that strikes at the heart of the problem where van Bronckhorst’s own decision making is concerned. He has become hopelessly boxed in by over relying on players who, frankly, look ill equipped for the job.
They may not be lacking in commitment but they are desperately short in craft and composure. And, to compound matters, the manager doesn’t appear to be helping matters by providing them with a tactical strategy or a clearly defined identity of how he wants them to play.
Van Bronckhorst seemed perplexed by the fact that they pumped so many crossballs and countless corner kicks into St Johnstone’s penalty box yesterday, without ever peppering Elliot Parish’s goal.
He appeared to suggest that his players were at fault for failing to make the right runs at the right time. If that’s the case then the manager and his coaching staff ought to have had them better drilled because these same problems have arguably been occurring for weeks.
It was certainly the same story against Livingston when, after falling behind, Rangers resorted to whipping in an avalanche of crosses and hoping for the best. Lundstram did manage to salvage a point for them in injury time on that occasion.
But if van Bronckhorst had spotted where his players were going wrong and spent time explaining it to them during or afterwards, then either he was wrong or they weren’t listening. Either way, it’s not a great look for a manager who has already insulted his dressing room by blaming his catastrophic Champions League campaign on their lack of quality.
They could argue that it was the club’s lack of strategic, forward planning that really left them exposed and humiliated on the biggest stage of all. All dressed up as ‘a player trading model’ which amounts to grabbing whatever cash is on offer from the first bidder without giving any serious consideration to what happens next.
And that’s Rangers in a nutshell right now – a club and a manager who appear to be winging it and making it up as they go along. It’s left to the likes of 18-year-old Leon King to step up and put his own career development at risk by being on the end of one damaging battering after the next.
It’s one thing to say King’s education will be accelerated by testing himself against the likes of Roberto Firmino and Mo Salah. But it’s quite another when his self belief is being taken apart by Stevie May and Nicky Clark.
At one point yesterday, during a flurry of hail Mary substitutions, King was left to man the fort all on his own, with £4m recruit Ben Davies sacrificed for Arfield. Less than 60 seconds later May was spinning away from King on St Johnstone’s left wing and setting up Clark to make it 2-0.
And that’s probably around the time that penny should have been dropping inside van Bronckhorst’s own head. He’s now reached the point when he’s in danger of doing more harm than good. It seldom ends well from here.
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