If we were in the position the Ibrox club is in right now, not playing well, behind in the league, with rumours everywhere about dressing room splits and the board openly at war with itself, every single element of the club operation would be being questioned.
There are at least two obvious areas where they need to be put under proper scrutiny; their finances and their football department. We will get to the finances a little later tonight, in light of the club’s PR tactics in denying that they are being paid less than Celtic for Australia, a claim which I believe to be manifestly false and will be proved to be.
But the football department is where my interest lies at the moment, and it’s been sparked by Van Bronckhorst telling the press that Ramsey will be on the bench on Thursday night. Now, we know this guy isn’t 100% fit and won’t be anytime soon … but surely the best way to get him up to fitness is to play him once in a while?
If this were Celtic the media would be looking at their January transfer business and asking a very basic question; how much was Van Bronckhorst involved in the decision making? The club brought in four players. He didn’t seem to have any involvement with that process. If he did you’d think he’d have got footballers he could actually use.
Yet none of them are regular starters. None of them look like holding down a first team place even in the short term. Three were clearly signed to get them through the campaign and add to his options; in that, they have failed dismally because none has presented him with a viable challenge to the players who he relies on every week.
I find it hard to believe that any of these guys were Van Bronckhorst signings, and the thing is the two “blue chip” loanees must have cost them a pretty penny. The Manchester Utd “wonderkid” would not have been allowed to leave cheap. We know that Ramsey is costing them a small fortune. Right now, that is money squandered.
The reason this is so obvious to us is that we have seen this picture before. We know how it works. We’ve witnessed this happen at our club, leaving us with players the manager quite obviously does not want. It paints a picture of major dysfunction, with people treading on the toes of others, where the left hand often doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.
It is a sign of a club in a profoundly nasty situation.
When we signed Marian Shved in a recent January window it stood out because the manager basically disavowed the signing during a press conference.
He was Brendan Rodgers, of course, and he was to leave the club within weeks of that statement. Van Bronckhorst hasn’t disavowed these guys … but he’s not playing them either.
That strongly suggests they were someone else’s flight of fancy.
Boy oh boy, that club is in a bad, bad place right now.
Oh dear, how sad, never mind!
Let them stew in their ain shite James, IF this was Celtic it would be ALL OVER THE FRONT PAGES, banner style.
I’ve long thought that there is something very dodgy going on over there, tbph it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if they were using money from ill gotten gains.
As they say in Scotia,.. it’ll aw come oot inda wash.
They have form for this as we all know, and those directors over there must have bottomless pockets considering the amount of cash they’ve thrown around. The players covered in this article alone amount to many millions, and again like you say, there’s something not right about it all.
Thanks JF
The over reliance on loan signings over there is really quite questionable. Their financial situation has been well documented, and explains the lack of big money permanent signings, but the way they’ve gone about their loan business is truly baffling. There are two primary motivations for seeking out loan signings:
(1) if the club has a long term injury (many months, maybe a year or more) and needs temporary cover for a position while a permanent member of the squad recovers. It can make sense to bring in someone for 6-12 months to help provide squad depth while another player is sidelined.
(2) if the loan player is of sufficient quality that the ‘buying club’ can’t otherwise afford to purchase outright. A fit and productive Aaron Ramsay would obviously fall into this category.
I can at least understand the rationale for bringing Ramsay. Even if it took him a month or 2 months to get his fitness levels up, he’s still provide a tangible improvement to the squad for the last couple months of the season. In theory anyway. But the other 2 guys – Diallo & Sands – make absolutely no sense. There may be some dysfunction between their DoF and manager, but these guys aren’t good enough to play for Rangers. My guess is that someone at Rangers was led to believe these two guys were a lot better than they actually are or that they simply failed to do any due diligence on these players at all. Their last signing – Zukowski – make some sense and can’t really fault them for the signing at this point. The cost was well under £1m for a permanent transfer of a 20 year old player. He’s only played once so far, but he plays the same position as Tavernier, and nobody is getting selected over Tavernier right now. Zukowski is there for when Tav is either injured or suspended (he’s now on 9 yellow cards and the SFA have yet to impose mandatory suspensions!) and possibly as a long term replacement when Tavernier finally moves on in a few years. So with that context, the Zukowski signing makes a lot of sense – unlike the other 2 loan signings.
Ramsay to start in the Derby as a “shock and awe tactic”.