It would have been natural, indeed understandable, if Robin Propper had decided never to speak about Rangers again. Yet he is not a man who harbours anger at the way his Ibrox career ended or animosity towards those who criticised him during a difficult 12 months here. If there is an overriding emotion for Propper, it is one of regret at events and outcomes.
Propper spoke to the Rangers Review this week as he prepared for the Eredivisie fixture at Heerenveen on Sunday. It will be his third appearance in as many matches and his third shot at a first victory of the season following defeats to PEC Zwolle and PSV Eindhoven thus far.
The first call is cut short due to a conversation with manager Joseph Oosting and then Propper’s required attendance at a team meeting. A couple of hours later, he makes the effort to phone back and speak again about his experiences at Ibrox and his departure from the club this summer.
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It was on August 1 last year that Propper was announced as the ninth acquisition of the window for Philippe Clement. A week short of his anniversary, he returned to the club that he had captained and signed a four-year deal.
Life at Twente, life in the Eredivisie, feels like a more natural fit for Propper. The highs and lows of Rangers, the hustle and bustle of Scottish football, were not for him.
“Yeah, it's nice, for me a little bit like home again,” Propper told the Rangers Review. “Of course, I had a really nice and big adventure in Scotland with Rangers. For me it was a really special feeling to play for Rangers.
“As a young kid you always want to be part of a big club and Rangers is for me that club. But now I'm back at Twente and for me it's a little bit like a homecoming. The feeling is right. The environment here, it suits me I think a little bit better.
“Of course, every season is like a new start. You have new players, new staff members, everything can be new. But on the other hand, a lot of things are the same as well. So the feeling is good, you know a lot of players, you know a lot of people around the club. So that's also a nice feeling to have, you appreciate how things are.”
The deal for Propper to return to Holland seemed like a simple one to complete on the face of it, but it became protracted as all sides naturally sought the best agreement for themselves. Unfairly, it saw supporters castigate him even further.
Russell Martin confirmed during the pre-season camp at St George’s Park that a formal offer had been accepted but it took until the end of the month for pen to be put to paper. Propper was the first sale of a summer window that has shown how difficult it can be to move players on.
Propper had been left behind in Glasgow while Martin got down to business at the home of English football and he trained that week with those who could not even be classed as being on the fringes of the squad. Martin made it clear that the centre-back was not part of his plans and the first half of the friendly fixture with Club Brugge proved to be his final minutes in a Rangers jersey.
“No, it was really simple for me,” Propper said of his situation over the summer. “Because in the beginning in the media there were already things before I even talked to Rangers, before I even talked to the new manager, to the new owners, to the new staff members at Rangers.
“So for me it was really simple, I wanted to meet the new manager. I had a good conversation with him and he told me what to expect and just to train hard and just have a feeling with the new style of play at Rangers. But on the other hand he told me as well that they're going to invest in the club, they're going to invest in new players.
“So for me it was really clear and the talk with the new manager was also really clear for me. But I wanted to first try to show myself to adapt to the playing style that the head coach wanted to play.
"But in the end the new players are coming in and then you have to make a choice. Twente was there and in the end I think that was the best option for me to go because at Rangers it could be hard to play this year because we had new players. So that's why I chose for Twente.”
He is back where he has shown his best. The third term of Propper’s first stint in Enschede saw him captain the club to a third-place finish in the Eredivisie. His years at De Graafschap and Heracles Almelo established him as a solid operator at that level, albeit never one that was likely to progress to the international arena.
The attraction of Rangers was simple last summer. Propper wanted to win something and felt joining up with Clement’s side offered him that opportunity. History tells a very different story.
“Of course, that's the reality,” Propper said. “With the club the size as Rangers, you know it's part of the job. You need to be on top of everything.
“You need to be the best in everything. If you lose some games, you know it's going to be hard, especially when you have a competitor who was solid last year in winning away games. You know it's going to be hard, but still you have to believe in something.
“In the end, we were not good enough. That's the reality. I think every year it's the same. You need to win the games to be competitive against your opponent. This year will be the same as well.”
The campaign spiralled from underachieving to embarrassing at a rapid rate. It was another season of failure, another rebuild that had to be demolished. At Ibrox, the record books were rewritten and players and matches will be recalled for all the wrong reasons.
Celtic lifted the League Cup at Hampden after a penalty shoot-out victory. The Premiership title was already looking like a long shot by then. Come February, the defeat to Queen’s Park was the end for Clement, even if his sacking did not occur when it should have.
Those events still resonate with Propper. The manager who had signed him and given him his chance to play for Rangers was gone. It was perhaps the beginning of the end in Glasgow.
“The low ones, of course, you want to start with the people,” Propper said when asked about moments that stood out for him. “You want to start something. You want to build something. If a manager gets sacked or people have to go, that's never a nice moment in your career. You don't want to experience that.
“The whole year had ups and downs. That's a big part of why sometimes it doesn't work out. There's so many changes, so many new players coming in, players going out, etc. The staff, the manager, it doesn't help.
“You have to build something together. Hopefully now at Rangers, it's going to be a little bit more confident and everybody gets time to build something. I think that will be the strength, hopefully, from this manager.”
Just weeks before that humbling cup defeat, Rangers had produced one of their finest showings of the season to beat Celtic 3-0 at Ibrox. The Old Firm fixture had been one of the selling points of moving to Scotland for Propper and he still speaks about the history and the occasion fondly.
🎙️ "It's Happy New Year to Rangers at the moment! Very, very happy!"
— Sky Sports Scotland (@ScotlandSky) January 2, 2025
Robin Propper puts Rangers 2-0 up against Celtic. Watch the final 25 minutes 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝗸𝘆 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘄 📺 pic.twitter.com/rIL1EemOa0
That home win saw him score his first goal for Rangers and was an afternoon of personal satisfaction. When Barry Ferguson’s side made the trip to Parkhead in March, it was one of collective achievement.
“For a lot of people, the goal against Celtic is one thing you want to experience,” Propper said. “You want to win those games. You want to score in those games, of course.
“But the away game against Celtic with the home fans, with the away fans, with the Rangers fans in the stadium at Celtic Park meant a lot. We won the game in the last second almost.
“Those are the kind of games you want to remember. That's a beautiful thing to experience, I think, for me as a player. That was special.”
Moments like that will be hard to come by for Propper now. The 31-year-old is back where he feels comfortable and where he was accomplished. With all respect to Twente, he won’t play for a club the size of Rangers in what is left in his career.
An interview Propper gave in the mixed zone after the win over Nice last November was interesting at the time and would go on to be reaffirmed. He admitted he had ‘underestimated’ Scottish football and that his game - one which he has since described as 'kick and rush' was more suited to the Europa League than the Premiership.
“For me it was the first time abroad,” Propper said. “Completely different style of playing football. Completely different. All the surroundings are different than in Holland. What I'm used to, the way of playing in the youth is already so different than what I was playing in Scotland.
“In that case, I learned a lot. I learned to play a different style, to play for different people. For me, it was all about the experience and the adventure and to open myself up to something different. I'm really glad I did that. For that, I have no regrets.
“I played a lot of games. Beautiful games as well. But you want to win something with Rangers. That's the big part of the club. That's the only thing I regret. We didn't have the power or the ability to do that.”
Some would say that Clement’s squad did not have the mentality, either. Accusations about weak characters permeated the campaign and Ferguson was often forthright in his assessment of a group that regularly failed to meet the levels required.
Technical ability and tactical understanding will only take a player so far at Ibrox. A look through the record books and a browse on YouTube will offer an insight into the club but it is only once you pull on the jersey and step over the white line that you realise what you have signed up for.
“Yeah, of course. It's a big part of it,” Propper said. “Sometimes you want to feel that and sometimes you don't want to feel that. Sometimes I talk about it with my wife, with my surroundings, sometimes with the players.
“But in the end, it's also nice to have this feeling of pressure to rise above yourself, to be better and to be demanding to your team-mates, to yourself. It's also a nice feeling to play in Ibrox. It's a beautiful place to play football. It's historical.
“You feel that and you want to make something good out of it. If it doesn't work out the way you want it, then it can be a hard place. But in the end, you do it together. You do it with the fans, with your staff, with your players. For me, that's the most important part.”
Clement often referenced the need for ‘synergy’ between the players and the punters. Ferguson, meanwhile, knew exactly what the Ibrox crowd needed and wanted but was unable to get into the minds of his side to enable them to deliver it often enough.
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A phone call that reflected on where it went wrong for Rangers ended with Propper looking to the future. He harbours absolutely no ill feelings towards those that he has left behind. He knows, from experiences that were good and bad, where Rangers are and where they must get to.
“For me it was a little bit of both,” Propper said as he summed up his Rangers career. “It was such a nice feeling to play for a club like Rangers. In Ibrox, in the games we played against Europe, against Celtic.
“For me it was a really nice adventure, a new adventure. Something I wanted to be part of. But, of course, in the end you want to win prizes with Rangers. We didn't do that so that's not what you want. It was a little bit of a mixed feeling.
“What I've seen and what they try to build, there are a lot of new players, new managers, etc. But the main thing is if you have stability and you get some time to build, then I know what kind of quality there is in the squad, in the club. Then prizes will come, for sure. I'm 100% confident in that. It can be beautiful in the next couple of times. For sure.”
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