So, here we go again.
As Derek McInnes walked into a room that has seen more unveilings than the Tate Modern in recent years, it understandably felt like business as usual for those of us assembled. More akin to a Rangers manager coming in to share his tired and well-worn thoughts on a shaky 1-0 win over Falkirk than the frisson of excitement created by a Rangers Chairman standing by the door and saying ‘So, gentlemen, can I just say to you, welcome to our new player-manager…’
Such is the level of managerial turnover, not just at Ibrox but in the game in general, that the whole business is now cliché. Someone joked before we went in, ‘Can I just say now that I thought he spoke very well.’ The same script, the same soundbites, the same promises. Soon it will just be a press release.
In fairness, McInnes was a lot more direct than we’ve heard in recent years. None of the LinkedInglish that Michael Beale flirted with and Russell Martin took to unprecedented levels 12 months previously and an inherently earthy and trusted understanding of the job at hand, which his continental predecessors were never quite able to portray. His constant reference to finding out what is ‘under the bonnet’ of players was evidence of that. ‘He gets it’.
One story he was keen to tell was how Walter Smith indulged his father’s questions and love for the club in the Manager’s Office as he went through his medical before coming in to sign on the dotted line at that famous desk. It was a room for which he has a great deal of respect. He knows, as Smith instinctively knew, that history will always envelop the job. It was Smith, after all, who asked for portraits of the men who had gone before him to be hung up on those walls. A constant and visible reminder that he used as fuel rather than a weight that has sunk so many of those who have followed him.
If those walls could speak, they could provide McInnes with countless warnings and inspirational stories in equal measure. One old tale comes to mind, one that was told to Graeme Souness early on in his time by a Scottish hack of great experience, but which still strikes at the heart of the problem that any new Rangers manager has in turning this massive ship around. It could have been 100 years ago, or it might have been 80, but the point still stands. A prospective new recruit was led into the Manager’s Office to sign his contract, with Bill Struth in place to welcome him. ‘I hear that you’re a good player, son,' Struth said. ‘But can you play for Rangers?’
Despite the noise, there have been plenty of good players at Ibrox in recent years. Players who would have held their own and had fine Rangers careers if they had played in a different era. Some, especially the more attacking ones, would have flourished without having to carry that entire creative burden themselves. The infamous leadership group would have glowing reputations had they themselves been led by those better equipped to be the senior players at Ibrox.
The Nico Raskin of Belgium has been very tidy and influential at this World Cup and as part of a technically proficient midfield. The Nico Raskin of Rangers has too often sought to try and do all three jobs at once and ended up a man down. Beside Ryan Jack, John Lundstram almost propelled Rangers to immortality, but when asked to do the holding job himself when managers wanted to be more adventurous, he looked less like the Rodri of Spain and Manchester City and more like a Welsh boy I knew at uni.
Rangers have spent millions on plenty of talent with very attractive graphs, but a complete lack of understanding about the challenge that awaited them and they had no hope of success without a strong Rangers spine around which to grow. If Rangers had signed a 21-year-old from League One in 2022 and asked him to run the midfield, he would almost certainly have crumbled. When Celtic signed him, he was accommodated into an already established strong culture and was sold to the Premier League for £25,000,000.
It’s not completely unique to Rangers but there aren’t too many clubs for whom the local pressure renders most of the accepted recruitment and tactical theory purely academic. The Manchester United story of the 1980s, for example, is not one of being blown away by nouveau riche neighbours. They spent more than most and on players with fine track records in the First Division. But, as some of the more homegrown players complained later, few were ready for just how hated they were and, as a result, that they’d be playing someone’s cup final every single week.
Perhaps if Bryan Robson’s body could sustain his style of play and lifestyle, then the margins may have been tipped, but even then, without their own Rush or Hansen, it was almost certainly destined to be an era of crippling inconsistency with famous nights under the lights followed by dropped points against relegation fodder. The pressure at big clubs is relentless and it needs a cohort of players who live for those demands; otherwise, the whole thing will collapse in upon itself.
None of this is news to those inside the club. When we sat down with Martin 12 months ago, he did seem genuinely accepting of the fact that he needed better leadership on the pitch. ‘We need men’, he told me. He was given boys instead and I don’t believe purely out of choice. Even the player who ticked the most boxes, Joe Rothwell, couldn’t get out of here quickly enough when he found out just how intense his new job actually was. Player recruitment is hard enough without being at a club which also needs some ethereal intangible that doesn’t show up on a StatsBomb radar. Robin Pröpper’s impressive season as captain of Twente meant very little when trying to organise a defence for a totally different physical and psychological challenge. Andreas Skov Olsen’s two titles with Brugge didn’t help him manifest one in Scotland.
What is leadership in football anyway? For me it is less the bloody warrior and more the real-time influencer on the pitch. The players who can sense danger and act accordingly. Far too often, from Gerrard to Röhl, a Rangers team has needed the half-time break to reset and sort out their problems. Rangers were genuinely superb in the second half at Parkhead in the New Year, but could so easily have headed back into the dressing room with a familiar scoreline being too much to wrestle back. At Tynecastle in May, every fan watching on expected Hearts to make changes and become a different proposition in the second half. Danny Röhl should have known that too, but which of the well-paid professional footballers on the pitch sensed the changing dynamic and instructed teammates to shape up differently and see out the next ten minutes, allowing time for their manager to respond?
Every successful manager who has ever worked in football has talked about the importance of key players - their lieutenants on the pitch - who carry out their ideas in practice. They set the standards in the dressing room, not only on match day, but every time they come into work. We have seen so many different managers and approaches, but the same culture in place at Ibrox - or rather Auchenhowie - for so long. It cannot be changed without new dressing room leaders living and breathing those standards every day. If they don’t buy into new ideas or set the example that the new boss has asked for, then those tactical plans and catchy soundbites stay on the whiteboard as purely abstract concepts.
Souness needed Butcher just as Wenger needed Bergkamp for their revolutions to work. As we know, the patient, evolutionary alternative can never be allowed to take root at Rangers. Either way, to borrow from Bill Clinton’s election strategist James Carville, it’s the players, stupid.
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And sometimes just having reliable and consistent performers can be enough. The story of Steven Gerrard’s title-winning season is an almighty confluence of events but would have been unlikely without that high-performing spine. Allan McGregor and Steven Davis enjoyed possibly the best seasons of their careers while Calum McGregor struggled and Celtic appeared to sign a goalkeeper without functioning hands.
The two best players in the Rangers dressing room - Filip Helander and Kemar Roofe - stayed fit enough for long enough, which meant that everyone, both at Ibrox and throughout Scotland, knew that for once, Rangers had the best players in the league for the key positions throughout the centre of the team. This, more than anything, bred increasing confidence and belief and other players flourished in that environment, finding consistency they had never shown before or would do so again. Even in tricky moments, that reliability calmed things down. Draws became wins, the odd point could be saved from defeat. ‘He’s here, we’ve got this.’
Understandably, fans crave this reliability more than anything. When we did a live show at New Edmiston House with John Brown last August, he was asked what Graeme Souness said to him when he signed. Bomber’s response was a mantra etched deep into the Rangers psyche. ‘Just win’. Cue huge cheers and agreement. Fans talk about this a lot. The question of how victory can be achieved is for the nerds and boffins; real Rangers men just do it and we need that back. To back up my earlier point, Brown went on to explain how even in adversity, he would often look around the dressing room and have total confidence that this team would find a way and never give up. Or words to that effect. Cue even louder cheers.
Brown played for Rangers for nine and half glorious seasons and as a fan, that confidence was transmitted to the stands. We knew that even if that team was 2-0 down away from home, it wasn’t necessarily a lost cause. They really were winners and we loved it. But it was obviously a lot more than simple sentiment. In his time at Ibrox, Brown shared a dressing room with two world class goalkeepers, a world class centre back, the best Scottish centre back, the best right back in Britain, a generational English talent in midfield, a wide forward who was a European champion with club and country and who had been voted the fourth-best player in the world and the greatest Rangers striker of all time.
For only two of those full seasons did Celtic challenge for the title. Rangers were signing Alexei Mykhaylychenko and Celtic were signing Carl Muggleton. With one club shopping in Serie A and the other on Sesame Street, it should really be no surprise that the Rangers dressing room was so often infused with such belief. Critics of the era may suggest that they should have just won even more than they actually did.
Brown, it must be said, wasn’t ever making the point that it was as easy as shouting cliches at one another, but at times, fans appear to think so. The conundrum of how Rangers can afford or entice players with the kind of CV that matches this challenge is often best ignored. It is easier then, to pretend that a new manager can solve all previous ills rather than deal with that depressing reality. No, this time the new guy will be the right guy.
Maybe he will. Sport, and especially league football, is always an exercise in relativity. You only ever have to beat what is in front of you and, as last season’s chaotic last man standing contest would suggest, what is in front of us really isn’t up to much. Scotland produced its poorest champion in many a year and there are few signs yet that it was a wake-up call at Parkhead for a serious overhaul. Perhaps then, a more galvanised and physical squad will be enough to get over that particular line just once and then, who knows what? Perhaps a big signing like Lewis Ferguson - a far better player for his time in Italy and the only member of the Scotland squad who could come home from the US with pass marks - could generate that requisite confidence.
The question of leadership seems to create a great deal of consternation and confusion, but is it really more complicated than someone who knows how to do something showing others the way? It would be one of the most romantic stories of recent times for a Rangers team of home-grown stock and within a traditional set-up to go and learn how to reach this destination for the first time together but the reality is that going into another campaign without a player or indeed a manager who has had previous success under this kind of pressure makes the job, if not impossible, then very difficult indeed.
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The problem that Rangers face isn’t, and never has been, finding players who can beat the Hibs, the Hearts and the Celtic. The problem Rangers face, and have always faced, is finding players who can play for Rangers.
Bill Struth knew that. Derek McInnes will know that. Finding two or three men who can cope with carrying Ibrox on their backs is easier said than done, but it will always be the key to unlocking the door towards much happier days.
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