Graeme Murty has claimed that comments by Frank McAvennie and Andy Walker are all the incentive his team needs to get a result tomorrow.
First up, this nonsense about “pinning headlines to the dressing room wall” is exactly that.
If you require a tactic like that to involve your players in a game and to give them the proper motivation you’re doing something wrong in the job. It can add an extra edge to their desire, but if you’re trying to use it to light a fire then you might as well chuck it.
And it goes both ways. Some of the comments out of the Sevco camp are just as provocative, but even more stupid as they don’t have the weight of evidence and prior form to back them up. I highlighted Martyn Waghorn yesterday, but he was not the only one.
Too many people at Ibrox have been running off at the mouth all season.
Also, why criticise ex-Celtic players for stating their opinion?
Because I’ve listened to ex-Rangers players and they are pretty much unified on the idea we’ll win too. Murty should surely be criticising them just as much, although granted none of them said what McAvennie did about a cricket score.
Nevertheless, this is why he won’t be in the dugout after tomorrow. His performances thus far have sparked panic at Ibrox and caused them to appoint an unknown Portuguese manager in his place. That’s a measure of how he is rated.
Yet that’s a little unfair.
When Neil Lennon was appointed interim manager at Celtic Park following the sacking of Tony Mowbray, he was given till the end of the season, and a chance to turn things around. We crashed out of a cup competition to lower league opposition whilst he was filling that post; our board didn’t let that get in the way when they evaluated his application for the job on a full-time basis. I’ve never thought he should have got it, but the club wanted to give him the opportunity to show what he could do.
Dave King and his board are men without honour or loyalty. Murty should have got the season whilst they did a proper managerial search; they sure as Hell won’t have ended up with the guy they got. And whilst you can say that the former reserve coach hasn’t improved the performances one iota, you could equally use that as an argument for pointing out that no manager could get enough from that Sevco squad to make them a decent team, as Caixinha will find out.
Which leads, automatically, to you wondering whether he’ll get time to fix things. This isn’t his team, but by God he will be judged on what he gets them to do. If he fails – and by that I mean loses some of his opening games, is turfed out of the cup by Celtic and doesn’t secure second spot – what the Hell will they tell their fans when season ticket time comes? Will they trust the guy with any kind of budget? Will they guarantee him a full year in charge?
Sevco goes into tomorrow’s game in the deepest crisis I’ve seen them in since their club was born five years ago. The appointment of a new manager is supposed to be a fresh start and chance to get things right, but this has started in farce and will end the same way.
None of that is the fault of Frank McAvennie and Andy Walker – who I can’t believe I’m defending, as I usually slag him off – and Murty won’t be able to hide behind them when the game gets underway.
He and John Brown and the rest of the geniuses at Ibrox will have to hope for damage limitation.
Because on and off the park, that’s as good as it’s going to get for the next few years.