Tonight Barry Ferguson is pontificating on all things Sevco.
He started with Joey Barton, predicting that the player will never take the field for the club again, but he quickly moved on to talking about how Warburton has handled the situation and how the fans need to know where this ends. In between times he managed to slip in a reminder about his coaching licenses and his experience.
To me it read like someone angling for a better job than the one he has now, which is managing Clyde.
To me it read like a naked attempt to advertise himself as an alternative to Mark Warburton, and that’s something the media would be four-square behind and their supporters would broadly accept. This is an underhanded move … but I have no sympathy for the current boss.
He has to know this kind of stuff is going on.
He clearly knows the media has flipped on whether or not he’s got what it takes to manage the club.
The coverage he’s had in the last week or so has been the worst of his Ibrox career. He can see the writing on the wall.
But Barry Ferguson’s intervention should worry him more than most, because Ferguson has already destroyed the career of one boss at Ibrox. He has no scruples about this stuff. Le Guen was sacked when Ferguson made his stand against him, and one of the guys on the board at the time was Dave King. Ferguson also has the ear of Walter Smith and Paul Murray … I think his intervention this evening is something more than a coincidence.
Paul67 over on CQN flagged the possibility earlier that Barton’s ban has been timed so that by the time it ends Warburton may not be in a job. If he were to lose tomorrow and then again at the weekend the domestic season would be virtually over before October … that would certainly put the noose firmly around his neck. In that scenario, Paul67 thinks Ferguson might be a good bet. You can’t have read Ferguson’s comments tonight and doubt it.
Has Paul67 heard something? He often does, but even if he hasn’t there’s a common sense aspect to this. I said last week that if Warburton goes it will open the door to the return of a “Real Rangers man” in the dugout; Ferguson is that, alright, and a cheap option to boot. The planets could align beautifully to put him in the hot-seat and the media would support it. I even know who they’d hold up as a comparison; Neil Lennon.
This is definitely one worth watching.