Rangers have had ten managers – permanent and interim – in the last eight years. That’s a lot of pain, a lot of angst, a lot of failure.
What is it about this malfunctioning club that has put their fans through this misery? Is there something in the Ibrox water-system that simply disables the club?
Some of the appointments shrieked failure before they even got started.
Few had heard of Pedro Caixinha, the Portuguese coach who had achieved some things in Mexico, but was struggling with a small club in Qatar when Rangers bizarrely summoned him to Glasgow. The scene was set for a truly chaotic period in the club’s history.
As Caixinha, then Giovanni van Bronckhorst, then Philippe Clement began to flounder, the interims came and went in a bewildering revolving door.
When Rangers were forced to go to Barry Ferguson last March to give him the gig – his managerial CV amounting to only Alloa, Kelty and Clyde – it put the tin-lid on the sheer farce that Rangers FC had become. Their fans were sick and tired of it.
Steven Gerrard kisses the Scottish Premiership trophy after leading Rangers to title in 2021
The Liverpool and England icon did not fare so well, however, as boss at Al Ettifaq
Gerrard’s previous stint in charge at Aston Villa was underwhelming and led to the sack
Graeme Murty here, a 62 year old Jimmy Nicholl there, Steven Davis for a week or two … Ibrox jangled with incompetence.
Even Michael Beale, the so-called ‘brains’ behind Steven Gerrard’s tour of duty between 2018 and 2021, proved less brainy when it came to taking the reins himself.
Nobody, it seemed, could come to Rangers and provide some stability, let alone lasting success. But the closest who came to it was Gerrard.
Perhaps this is why Rangers appear intent on going back to the former Liverpool and England captain – currently unemployed and not widely-wanted in football – as a cure for their ills.
Gerrard’s actual ability as a manager looks patchy and average – the evidence of recent years at Aston Villa and Al Ettifaq is there before us – and even Rangers fans tend to look the other way when facing up to the fact he won just one trophy in nine in his first Ibrox innings.
But it was the title. And it was the one Rangers fans wanted most – the one that stopped Celtic going 10-in-a-row. That famous day outside Ibrox in early May of 2021 Gerrard was feted like a messiah, pulling up in his car outside the stadium with thousands of pilgrims mobbing him.
There was talk then of his great years as a manager ahead. In one TV interview Gerrard, abrim with confidence, even appeared to say ‘not yet’ when his interviewer, heady with his interviewee’s achievement, suggested that managing Liverpool was surely on the horizon.
Affecting a modesty which in the years that followed would prove thoroughly justified, Gerrard smiled and said he was in no rush to leave Rangers, and that Liverpool had a great manager in Jurgen Klopp in any case.
Gerrard admitted to friend Rio Ferdinand this week that he would jump at chance to return to management
Gerrard is the favourite to replace Russell Martin at Rangers, where he is fondly remembered for title win
The bright, rosy future of Steven Gerrard, football manager, looked a certainty. It wasn’t to be. He floundered in the Aston Villa role, as he actually had also done at Rangers on more than one occasion. It wasn’t just for the money that Gerrard, in July 2023, went to the Saudi Pro League to manage Al Ettifaq. In England’s top fight, the place he wanted to be, nobody wanted him.
Nonetheless, it is still worth asking: why do Rangers so routinely malfunction whereby managers come and go.
In a lot of cases – Van Bronckhorst, Clement and Beale to name three – recent success elsewhere had appeared to burnish their credentials. Come to Rangers, and they eventually go down in flames.
If it is a systemic failing – the way the club is run, the scouting, the training routines or the mental welfare of the players – then Patrick Stewart, the Rangers CEO, better get to the bottom of it. Has he published the results yet of his widespread review?
If Gerrard does return to Rangers – which he never envisaged when his managerial career was supposedly taking off – it will surely be his last chance. This will be it for him. Rehabilitate himself and win some trophies, and then maybe attempt once more the north face of England’s Premier League, if another opportunity arises.
But if he fails this time around at Rangers, then which substantial club in football will touch him? Three strikes – three failures in a row – and he’ll be out. He might be coming back to his last-chance saloon.
Gerrard had a glowing reputation as a player – it was the reason he was able to blithely walk into Ibrox in 2018, to a job he had never done before in his life. That was a huge risk by Rangers, but it was lost amid the back-slapping and hoopla of having landed such a footballing celebrity.
How ironic, in a way, this situation is. Back in 2018 Gerrard had never been a manager, so no-one knew his abilities. Now, seven years on, with his erratic performance as a manager there for all to see, he is the one man Rangers want back in charge. It’s a strange business.
Yet the move by the Rangers board to go and get Gerrard makes perfect sense, for the club’s directors. It almost totally insures them, in the sense that there is this clamour among the fans to ‘bring him home’.
Many Rangers fans would be glad to see Gerrard return, given he was the last manager to give the club any kind of stability
Gerrard’s managerial record has been distinctly patchy and average, and Rangers could be his last chance to prove himself in that capacity
If Gerrard returns and fails, the Ibrox hierarchy will be able to say: ‘We only gave you what you wanted. You wanted Stevie G back.’ If I were on this Rangers board, with the public heat bearing down on me, I too would have made a beeline for him.
The misery of all these managers coming and going, of winning just three trophies in 14 years, has significantly affected the culture of Rangers.
There was a time when the club’s support were regarded as arrogant and lofty – maybe to put it more accurately, superior – but no more. The Rangers fans have had to get used to being downtrodden, and the truth is, they have manfully adjusted to their fate.
A dark humour is now quite often the recurring theme of fans’ chat and interaction. No credible Rangers supporter can continue crowing about the club’s lofty status when Celtic have swatted them aside so frequently. Rangers fans have come to accept their fate, if not with good grace, then at least with honesty, given the tribulations of their club.
In Gerrard, they are hoping to be led back to the top of the Scottish game. They hope this legendary ex-footballer can restore lustre to the name of Rangers FC.
The problem is, this is Gerrard the manager, not Gerrard the footballer. If he comes back to Glasgow he faces a major task rehabilitating himself in the role.
