If Rangers lose to St Mirren at Ibrox today in the Premier Sports Cup, Derek McInnes’ job as Rangers manager is in severe danger. And you could hardly call that a hysterical assessment.
Five points behind Celtic in the Premiership after two games. Demoted in Europe to the Conference League after going out of the Europa League to Jagiellonia Bialystok in midweek. Yet to win a match since taking over the team at the start of the season.
If you thought reputational damage couldn’t get more serious, McInnes’ defeat to the Poles meant he is the first Rangers manager to lose a Europa League qualifier since Pedro Caixinha went down to Progres Niederkorn in 2017. Any association with Caixinha is a damning indictment but, like a run of games without winning, it is an irrefutable fact of life.
Manager under fire
The queue of those who say they didn’t want Derek as manager in the first place grows by the day. Whether or not they’re telling the truth, or gleefully joining a sizeable bandwagon, is neither here nor there. It is a total mess at Ibrox. And the manager has become a figure of ridicule.
When Rangers’ CEO Jim Gillespie mentioned McInnes and Jurgen Klopp in the same breath last week, did he mean Derek will soon be doing commercials for Trivago? It’s the sort of cheap shot the manager will have to live with until he can find a direction for Rangers that isn’t as perilous as the one he is on.
Rangers’ week started with an AGM, saw them go AWOL from the Europa League and ended with an SOS as panic set in among their disbelieving fans. What you might call an initial reaction that could yet get worse.
Chermiti injury scrutiny
But, as Rangers’ chairman Andrew Cavenagh would say in the American vernacular, here’s the thing... Last Monday, for the first time since Andrew and 49ers Enterprises got here in the guise of the US cavalry with the plan to Make Rangers Great Again, I thought to myself: “What are these guys going on about?” The occasion was the gathering of the Ibrox shareholders and Cavenagh was addressing the topic of Youssef Chermiti.
Last season, Chermiti scored against Celtic with an overhead kick that defied the laws of gravity. Last Sunday, Youssef suffered a long-term injury that put the governance of the club under intense scrutiny. What would have been so hard about playing Hibs at home and leaving out Chermiti, for whom Rangers had reportedly rejected a £20m plus offer from Galatasaray? To play him, lose him and be left to speculate on his market worth after a season out of his career, seems to have been a baseless risk strategy. Or, to put it another way, a cock-up.
Cavenagh, or ‘Cav’ as vice-chairman Paraag Marathe called him in front of the assembled throng, said: “Selling a player for a bunch of money if you can’t put it back into the squad and replace him or make the squad better is useless. What we care about is winning, not the financial side of it.”
Begging the chairman’s pardon, but 49ers Enterprises were supposed to bring order where there was chaos and financial stability in the Blue Room where there had been the economics of the madhouse. The reality is now substantially different from the perception.
Financial and recruitment concerns
The Conference League, assuming Rangers qualify for that competition, brings in a pittance compared to the colossal riches Celtic will enjoy if they make it past Austrian side LASK into the Champions League proper. McInnes said the club were “playing with fire” in terms of stabilising a squad made operationally difficult by injury. But, on the subject of pyrotechnics, Rangers, under 49ers Enterprises, have burned their way through a lot of money without winning any trophies.
Their recruitment strategy has started to resemble throwing paint at a wall and hoping it settles nicely. Ten players have been brought in since the end of the last shambolic season that was finished 10 points behind a much-less-than-vintage Celtic, and more could yet follow. The players who lost to Jagiellonia, meanwhile, were assembled at a cost of £33million – not that you’d have noticed on Thursday night.
The manager’s most telling statement in his post-match press conference was: “This club was built for the Champions League or the Europa League, but the team’s not ready for it.” Really? £33m to put together and they’re not up to it? Derek also used words like “madness” and “inexplicable” to sum up the display against the Poles, even saying there was a “lack of intelligence” within his team. Is this helped by shipping in even more hopefuls who might have a stronger mentality?
How many more incoming transfers can Rangers handle, both in terms of wages and finding a settled team? When Rangers lost to Hibs on the back of a hotly-disputed penalty and a belated deflected winner, McInnes said it felt as if he and his team had been “mugged off”. But how would anyone find a more respectful description of the manager’s progress in the job so far.
Team selection, substitutions and in-game management have all been criticised by fans who are losing faith in the manager at an alarmingly early stage in his tenure at Ibrox. And 49ers Enterprises must now come into the causes for concern as well. Copious sums have been spent unwisely and, after a series of managers coming and going, the judgement exercised by the custodians of the club’s future now has to be called into question into the bargain. It’s an unhealthy combination for Rangers fans.
Former Ibrox manager Graeme Souness, in Glasgow a few days ago, said he believed the club’s recruitment had suffered from being left in the hands of people who hadn’t played the game. He said the same thing three times for emphasis.
I’d like to hear how Souey apportions blame regarding a team who have yet to win a match, have players who clearly can’t handle the pressure at a club of Rangers’ size and a squad that is becoming gargantuan in size with the approval of owners who have taken their eye off the cash register. I know, from personal experience, Graeme is rarely lost for words. He might be struck dumb on this occasion.
