Professional football comes with some amount of lazy tropes attached. One of the real pearlers you hear on repeat is that clubs, no matter how grim their results, just can’t keep changing managers over and over again.
It’s something often said about Rangers, particularly when, as is the case at the moment, yet another campaign looks in perilous danger of careering right off the edge of a cliff.
Another thing often said about Rangers is that you’ve got to remember what a mess they were in back in October when Danny Rohl first came in as head coach. What’s worrying is that the person harping on about this more than anyone right now seems to be Danny Rohl himself.
The German seemed rather subdued the other day when previewing this Bank Holiday blockbuster which sees Celtic go to Hibs later today and Hearts play host to his Rangers side at Tynecastle tomorrow.
It’s pushing it a bit far to suggest he has the look of a bloke preparing for the gallows, but he certainly hasn’t been the Little Mr Mischief who set the tone for the last Old Firm league derby by questioning why Celtic didn’t try to win by more than one goal away to VfB Stuttgart in Europe — only to then see his own team bottle it and squander a 2-0 half-time lead at home to their city rivals.
Tellingly, he refused to give an answer during his Friday media duties when asked how he assesses his own performance as Rangers manager. He says that’s not his job. He expressed the view that it will take four more good games before he can discover, for sure, if the board are happy with him. And he’s spot-on there.
Defeat to Motherwell last week has put Danny Rohl’s future very much up for discussion
Rohl has certainly been a different kind of figurehead to many of those who went before him. A calmer presence, a decent guy. More like what’s required.
Michael Beale and Russell Martin were full of nonsense. God help the next generation of up-and-coming coaches at the Welsh FA if Martin is the bloke booked in to give them a ‘tactical masterclass’ at their National Conference later this month.
Philippe Clement, who came across as a welcome voice of reason early in his reign, finished up slavering down the front his jumper — not to mention doing Ministry of Funny Walks skits in the press room — by journey’s end as well.
You’ll get the odd person pointing to the job the Belgian waffler has been doing in Sleepy Hollow at Norwich City and bigging up his credentials, but the harsh reality is that he blew a league title from a hugely advantageous position in Glasgow and then saw his team knocked out of the Scottish Cup at home to Queen’s Park.
Those guys who got the tin tack at Ibrox fully deserved it. And Rohl will have a hard job avoiding it, too, if this campaign collapses like an underwhipped souffle over the next week or so.
Yes, he did well to turn the place round after the unabridged catastrophe that was Martin’s short time at the helm and get Rangers back into the title race, but that’s old hat now.
Rohl has been unable to get the better of Celtic’s venerable veteran Martin O’Neill
They put themselves in a brilliant position, just two points behind Hearts, when beating Derek McInnes’ side 4-2 in mid-February. The board had also given him £10million to spend on Ryan Naderi, Tuur Rommens and Tochi Chukwuani as well as financing a loan deal for the damp squib that’s been Andreas Skov Olsen.
Since then, they’ve drawn at Livi, let slip a two-goal lead at home to Celtic, and lost at home to Motherwell with a squad that has had well in excess of £40m spent on it since last summer. They’ve won just seven of their last 14 games in all competitions and one of those was a revenge victory against Queen’s Park in the cup.
What’s more, they’ve also slipped into the dangerous habit of, once again, losing goals like there’s no tomorrow.
In addressing what lies in store for Rohl — and what should happen to him if this goes belly-up — it is important to state what exactly is on the table for Rangers right now. This is no ordinary title race. The stakes are inordinately high. It has, without descending into hyperbole, the potential to change the entire face of the game here.
With Olympiacos unlikely to peg back AEK at the top of the Greek Super League and Shakhtar Donetsk almost certain to go out of the Europa Conference League to Crystal Palace, Rangers’ coefficient has them in line to go straight into the group stage of the Champions League if they win the Premiership.
That’s huge. It’s worth £40m for a kick-off. It also makes life more difficult for Celtic as they figure out how to finance a root-and-branch rebuild and prevents Hearts from having a crack at accessing the kind of dough that would turbo-charge the revolution already well under way with Jamestown Analytics and investor Tony Bloom.
This can be a real turning point for Rangers. So much is on the line. Yet, ahead of their trip to Gorgie and next Sunday’s away fixture at Celtic Park, they don’t look like champions-in-waiting.
Rohl believes it is up to others to judge his performance… and judged he shall be soon
They got schooled at home last weekend in a must-win game by a Motherwell side that cost the equivalent of half-a-dozen scratchcards and a poke of soor plooms and had picked up one point out of 15.
They seem utterly incapable of putting together a coherent performance over an entire 90 minutes when it matters. There are serious questions to be asked about Rohl’s judgment too.
He got his team wrong against Motherwell. His substitutions often leave you flummoxed. He stuck with the defence he’s got during January when it was clear there were flaws.
It’s time up for Jack Butland in goal. James Tavernier at least admits his tea is out. Lord knows what Derek Cornelius has done, but Nasser Djiga at centre-back is not the answer to anything. Forgive those of us, also, who aren’t quite buying into the narrative that Manny Fernandez is the next Franco Baresi.
Rangers need to win this title. The fact Martin O’Neill was invited back to the Celtic dugout not once but twice this season shows just how absurd and bonkers and dysfunctional their season has been and what a mess the place is.
As of this moment, Rohl has had three cracks at a 74-year-old OAP who had been out of the game for six years before this term and can’t beat him.
We are not here to denigrate Hearts either. This page has stated right from the start of this season that they have what it takes to take the crown in this most unusual of campaigns. And they still do.
Yet, they have a fraction of Rangers’ budget. Everything still has to be done within strict parameters. There was no £10m-plus for them to spend in the January window.
Nasser Djiga has looked particularly culpable at the back and should have been upgraded
Rohl has been backed to the hilt. He’s got to deliver something against a Celtic outfit that’s a total mess behind-doors and a Hearts set-up that isn’t in the same ballpark financially.
Yeah, that’s harsh. But that’s football when there’s so much at stake. Ask Liam Rosenior. Or Ange Postecoglou with his Europa League winner’s medal from Spurs. Or any number of punted top-level bosses, who leave with their pockets full no matter how bad a job they’ve done.
It’s the name of the game. Those who chunter on about how coaches need time and space and endless dough to finance their ‘projects’ are either coaches themselves or sycophants who feel that asking well-remunerated people to deliver results is somehow populist or unrefined.
Football is a results game. Not a tea dance. It’s totally, utterly ruthless. And if Rohl loses to Hearts tomorrow to slide seven points behind them with three games to go, or blows it totally at Parkhead in seven days’ time, it’s got to be curtains.
