Derek McInnes is preparing to pull the plug on the pre-season plans left behind by his Rangers predecessor Danny Rohl. The German boss had lined up a week-long warm weather camp in the Austrian Alps for his team next month, with a rumoured friendly clash against Sparta Prague also penciled in. But Record Sport understands McInnes is now considering scrapping that trip and taking Gers elsewhere ahead of the new season.
Rangers Explore Cancellation of Austria Booking
Ibrox chiefs are examining if it is possible to cancel their booking in the plush alpine resort requested by Rohl, who has now joined RB Salzburg after being shunted out the door at Ibrox to make way for McInnes. But the new Light Blues boss is adamant his team will be well prepared before kicking off the Premiership campaign against Dundee United at Tannadice on July 31.
McInnes - whose side have one Ibrox work-out against West Ham scheduled for July 26 - said when quizzed on the Austrian trip: “So nothing's been confirmed on that. We’ve got a structure in place now, we've been liaising with the club over the last week, so we've got dates in mind to tick boxes of our games. We're looking at one or two different options potentially, but we've not ruled out going to Austria yet at the minute. We've got a couple of closed-door games already booked in, and we've got the West Ham fixture at Ibrox, we think that'll probably be the only game at Ibrox before we play Dundee United.”
New Manager Meets Squad with Limited Time
McInnes met his new players for the first time on Thursday but with just over a month remaining until the new season’s big curtain raiser on Tayside, there’s no time to waste as he looks to build a squad capable of challenging for honours. As things stand, the former Aberdeen, Kilmarnock and Hearts boss only has five senior defenders tied down - with Ross McCrorie’s return to the club just the second signing of the summer behind Lawrence Shankland.
But McInnes says he is confident more will follow soon. He said: “Yes, so over the last week or so, there's been a lot of Zoom calls, even when I was on holiday with Jim Gillespie and Dan Purdy really just to see where everybody's at in the squad, whether there's possible flight risks, and in anticipation of players maybe moving, and all these conversations. So I think what's been clear is we've tried to get a framework in place of what the squad needs to look like in terms of numbers and in terms of positions, and then just slowly but surely adding the names to that.
McInnes Teases More Transfers Amid Squad Rebuild
“There's a number of good conversations going on at the minute with a lot of players, a few players, and I've never been a manager that gets everything they want, so I don't expect to get everything that we want. But hopefully we can get a few of the players in that we've identified. And I think that equally, although it was a disappointing campaign last season, the current squad won’t be feeling great about themselves because the stick comes when you don't perform. There's nothing worse as a player than getting labelled as an underperforming or an underachieving one. And this can be a tough place to perform, so I'm looking forward to getting amongst the players, trying to get a bit more out of the current squad. But there’s been no real decisions made on anybody at this moment in time. Hopefully I can get a grasp of things really quickly over the next few weeks, and certainly by the time the window closes, the squad's a wee bit more how I would like it to be.”
