Giovanni van Bronckhorst has branded club legend Brian Laudrup ‘stupid’ for claiming he’s thrown in the towel as Rangers boss.
A defiant Van Bronckhorst came out fighting as he prepares for a win or bust double header against Hearts and St Mirren with his Ibrox job on the line. The Dutchman is under heavy fire following a string of catastrophic results and error-strewn performances which have humiliated fans in the Champions League and left his side trailing Celtic by seven points in the domestic top-flight.
And nine-in-a-row great Laudrup weighed in yesterday when the Dane criticised van Bronckhorst’s body language during Sunday’s defeat at St Johnstone by claiming he looked like a man who has already given up the ghost. And that prompted an unusually stinging response from the Rangers manager yesterday. He said: “I’m giving up? I think that’s very easy and stupid to say from Brian, if he doesn’t know the situation. He knows the pressure every manager is under and I get a lot of questions about my body language. I don’t think it’s got anything to do with body language.
“It’s about what you bring to the players. I get many questions like, ‘Yeah, you should be different on the sidelines.’ But I am me. I’m not anyone else.
“And the last thing we all need is when people keep putting the pressure even higher by suggesting things which aren’t true. So I totally disagree with him.”
A host of former Rangers players have also publicly questioned van Bronckhorst’s managerial strategy throughout a wretched last couple of months. And asked if he has been disappointed by the critics he insisted: “No, it’s their opinions and they get paid to give their opinions by papers or by TV.
“So I don’t mind those opinions. We all have our own opinions and I can’t change that.
“But it’s nice to see the comparisons between last season when everything was going well, you’re doing fine. And now, if everything goes wrong, you’re doing wrong. But that’s why they get paid.”
And van Bronckhorst went on to reveal he has been given the full backing of the Rangers board ahead of tonight’s showdown with Hearts. He said: “I have the support of the board. I didn’t have any conversation about my future. But I feel their support because they say, ‘You have to keep going. You’re in a tough moment but we have every trust in you,’.
“So I feel very supported by the board. I know I have to perform, that’s different. But I have the backing of my board.”
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