For a long time, Rangers fans and those inside Ibrox tried to answer a perplexing question: Why did their team thrive in Europe yet struggle domestically?
Why did punching upwards feel easier than punching down?
Was it simply a mentality issue? Were this squad unable to raise themselves for meetings with the likes of St Mirren, Motherwell and Livingston, while simultaneously managing to navigate some of Europe’s best in midweek due to atmosphere? Did struggles owe to squad size, or fatigue?
The answer was far simpler, and helps to explain how this season’s European campaign, now effectively over with two games still to be played after a 2-1 loss in Budapest against Ferencváros, has unravelled so spectacularly.
It was a quandary best epitomised by 10 days at the start of this year. On January 30, Philippe Clement’s side defeated Belgian champions-elect USG 2-1 at Ibrox to finish in the Europa League’s top eight.
Yet, on February 9, Championship side Queen’s Park dumped them out of the Scottish Cup, inflicting the club’s worst defeat in modern history. A long-standing issue reached its crescendo.
This summer was supposed to provide a line in the sand, yet since that point Rangers have continued to flounder domestically, save for a brief Danny Rohl upturn, while also losing the threat and reputation they once carried on Thursday nights.
Can you imagine how many points a Steven Gerrard or Philippe Clement team would have taken from this run of European fixtures, facing Genk, Sturm Graz and Brann? Rohl’s men have one point from six games and, before kick-off last night, had conceded the highest xG in the competition.
Rangers tended to overperform on the continent compared with their domestic exploits because of how the core of their squad was built at the start of this era. The reason they are now struggling on both fronts also comes down to recruitment.
When Gerrard arrived in Glasgow in the summer of 2018, his priority in rebuilding Rangers was to make them hard to beat. He required a base that would allow them to navigate four tricky Europa League qualifiers, secure access to finance for transfers, and provide a platform to build on.
Gerrard found individuals to build a core and established an identity. The connotation of Gerrard's team is likely still that unbreakable defensive shape in Braga, the clear clarity of roles and distances against the ball. A side who were hard to play against.
Gerrard’s time at the club was the last sustained example of a long-term recruitment plan being developed over several seasons. That stretch was the most recent instance of something tangible being built over many windows; a core being added to, refined and improved.
His was the squad Giovanni van Bronckhorst lifted so spectacularly to reach the Europa League final in 2022. The standout of that run, John Lundstram, had been signed to provide a physical presence in midfield that Gerrard and Ross Wilson felt had been lacking in the previous campaign.
Subsequently, the rigid system that Clement set domestically limited Rangers, yet enabled them in Europe. While the likes of Cyriel Dessers, signed under Michael Beale, and Hamza Igamane and Vaclav Cerny, brought in during Nils Koppen’s one summer as director of recruitment, helped this club reach the Europa League quarter-finals in 2024, as they had also managed in 2023.
Still, whether under Beale, Van Bronckhorst, Clement or even under Barry Ferguson against Fenerbahçe, while Rangers looked different under each manager domestically, they felt like the same side on Thursday nights. Different versions, but the same identity could be relied upon.
They were organised, hard to beat, direct. Qualities that, arguably, made them ineffective at breaking down a low block allowed them to excel in Europe. There was always that identity to fall back on, first established by Gerrard in 2018.
Even when so much was going wrong in the 2024/25 campaign under Clement, some semblance of identity remained. A robustness out of possession that provided a platform, a base, an identity. Providing players with a confidence that allowed Rangers to travel away and have no fear.
This summer, the club boldly went in search of a new identity. Their diagnosis, that this team needed a clearer vision for what to do with the ball rather than without it, was correct, but their remedy was deeply flawed. They spent over £30 million, yet the squad appears weaker in most positions.
Instead of taking the club forward, decision-makers pushed it backwards, not only failing to deliver a new identity but unravelling the one they inherited. A club with such a proud recent record in this competition have barely competed, and that is before mentioning the memory of Club Brugge in the Champions League qualifiers.
Patrick Stewart, the now-sacked CEO, pivoted from twice backing Clement to appointing Barry Ferguson as interim manager, and then overseeing the recruitment of a polar-opposite, dogmatic manager in Russell Martin, all within six months.
Martin spent pre-season reaffirming that Rangers must focus more on themselves than on the opposition. Again, a noble aim, but when that fifth goal went in against Brugge, the side’s sheer vulnerability was laid bare. It was idealism over reality. There was nothing to fall back on.
It was naive in the extreme to believe that transitioning to a totally different culture of playing style, one Ibrox had never experienced, would work without compromise.
Stewart infamously spoke of “building the plane while flying it” this season, yet the vision he, Kevin Thelwell and Martin spoke so confidently of crashed early.
In reality, this summer took a sledgehammer to the identity Rangers had off the ball, while failing to add anything tangible on it. What is left? What you have seen since, a head coach in Danny Rohl trying to pick up the pieces and tactically tinker from game to game.
Rangers enacted their summer rebuild backwards. Gerrard established a base first and then added the edges, but Martin and company laid no foundation.
Instead of making a ‘halfway house’ appointment, as Hearts and Tony Bloom demonstrated with Derek McInnes, they attempted too much, too early.
Rohl was visibly angry post-match at the Groupama Arena. He accused his squad of “destroying” their hard work with momentary lapses of concentration. Once again, the German had them competitive through a shift in shape, yet he could not legislate for the defending at either goal.
It is in those individual lapses that this side’s softest underbelly is most evident. In moments of crisis, the inability of two or three individuals to grab the game is stark. James Tavernier was almost a European-winning captain three and a half years ago, yet now, relied upon more than ever, he is struggling badly in a competition that used to bring the best out of him.
Rohl could not trust that when his side went 1-0 up, they would protect it with the military discipline of Gerrard’s teams, hit into space effectively quickly like Clement’s, or rely on the individual quality enjoyed by Van Bronckhorst.
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Rangers’ Thursdays have died a death because the hard-to-beat, rigid identity that created them was discarded over the summer. What once made them so strong in Europe is no longer muscle memory. There is no core, no identity.
Rohl knows this, he said as much pre-match when discussing the need to establish a group of players to build round. "Around this core you can play with exciting young players," he said. "It's good to have players who understand what it means."
His task, and that of an incumbent sporting director, is to build upwards having established a base, just like Gerrard did.
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