Reformation Bear

According to a back page headline in the Times Robertson is quoted as saying there was "no confusion or turmoil" at Ibrox and insisted the club was right to take its time about finding a manager and director of football. Wars or conflicts may have been declared, fought and won / lost in the time its taking to get through a recruitment process. There is also a difference between taking a reasonable and unavoidably necessary amount of time and taking your time just because you choose to take your time for whatever convenient reason. I'm still not sure which applies in Rangers' case but its beginning to edge towards the latter. With sherpas Robertson, Dickson (and is it now also Park?) discretely padding the marshier hidden by-paths of hunting for a lesser-spotted DOF and an elusive manager the trek to successfully landing their intended recruits does seem to be taking as long as it might take to plan for and then climb some very tall peaks, or fight some wars. Taking its time may be masking a case of the club finding it difficult to recruit a DOF and manager that are patently of a calibre suitable to pilot a recovery at Rangers. Whoever they pick will be bound to be central to convincing ST holders to renew. That, given the shambles this season so far, makes for quite a task for the recruitment sherpas to find the right folks. They can't go on trailing candidates forever though. At some point soon they need to decide and appoint and tell us who they've tracked down.

Surely it could be a bit more attacking? How about a 2-3-5 as a real sign of attacking ambition.

.......so long as its not coming over to the DOF / Head Coach candidates that Robertson, Dickson and Park aren't trying to sell tickets for the titanic. TBH I think the folks interviewing on behalf of Rangers have quite a big job to do to sell the jobs to the candidates. Time was when the very name of Rangers would be enough to sell the job. Not these days. Not when big salaries can be commanded for top people, and when those people also then want assurances about having a decent transfer budget, and in Rangers case these days, assurances about clarity of objectives and timescales to achieve them. It seems to me to be more than possible that the Board will have to work very hard to sell the jobs to candidates.

Wonder if Robertson, Dickson, King et al have done thorough research on the pros / cons, costs / benefits, risks and issues etc in deciding to switch to a structure of DOF and Head Coach. Maybe they have. But maybe in applying their now seemingly lengthy selection process they've been met with a reality of what the market is telling them are the remuneration packages that candidates require to step into a rescue / recovery role at Rangers. They'll have seen the clumsy and messy way Warburton was removed from office and having seen the way the Board worked to see off Warburton, the fees for a DOF and Head Coach then maybe start to carry a premium to hedge against that sort of thing happening to them. And then there is the whole question of what amount of money will be made available for transfer fees. That feels like a critical point for a DOF and Head Coach to be satisfied about. Add to that reaching agreement on the objectives. A DOF and Head Coach will surely want to avoid any notion that they can wave magic wands with small transfer budgets and still deliver a title very soon. I assume they will want to agree some very clear objectives and timescales for achieving them along with commitments about transfer budgets. The reality of those sorts of points - or other real-world market points - being put to an interview panel might be a reason for the whole process taking some time as the Board has to step back and consider what its being told. You can do all the research you like, and look at all the models applied in other clubs.........but if the financial specifics at Rangers are not what these sorts of candidates see as market norm to do a proper job in a reasonable timescale then it may prove to be a whole lot more difficult and time consuming to move to a DOF / Head Coach structure. It happens every day in many walks of business life, especially it seems in the public sector. An organisation wants game changers, people who deliver success quickly.......but on the cheap. The result is often (I'd argue mostly) disappointment when the person recruited turns out not to be able to do the job but was great at interview, or can do the job but is simply using it as a stepping stone for something much better because the pay being offered is lousy. The whole process certainly is taking a fair bit of time. The longer it takes, the more it risks taking on the feel of struggling to find good enough candidates who are willing to take on the challenge, and take it on with a meagre transfer budget.

Thanks. But might a head coach still not perhaps want (or need) an assistant - a Weir replacement? And it seems then that a head of scouting and recruitment would need to be employed to replace McParland? If I'm following this correctly there would need to be at least one additional person recruited (Scouting & Recruitment) and maybe 2 if the selected Head Coach insisted on having a deputy?

Out of curiosity, in switching to a DOF and Head Coach structure what other new jobs would be likely to need to be created to support a DOF and Head Coach? Would a Head Coach be likely to want an assistant coach, or maybe more than one assistant? Would a DOF need a deputy DOF, or some other new posts not already in existence at Ibrox? I've no idea whether the plan is to just appoint a DOF and a Head Coach and hey presto that's it for recruitment and they just get on with their jobs by managing the existing staff resources. Or do these types of roles typically require support staff, and in Rangers' case - if they do need support staff - are we likely to have them in the right numbers and right skills? What I'm unsure of is whether these 2 new appointments are just the tip of the recruitment iceberg or whether these folks are going to want to bring an entourage.....which would presumably put even more strain on the finances.

They'd need permission to speak to candidates who are already with clubs. If the clubs had been approached for permission to speak to their managers this would surely have been made known by now. Does that not then indicate that either no approach has been made or the names listed are pure speculation?

Hill's comments seem to have provoked the Club to put out an extact of a Murty interview at 4pm today where Murty asserts up front "GRAEME MURTY believes the Rangers players’ target of finishing second and reaching the Cup Final is still a ‘realistic’ aim for this season." Perhaps a bit of an attempt to act as a fire extinguisher to put out the beginnings of a blaze where the Hill message is seen to be yet another lowering of standards, or maybe just a bit of an attempt at damage limitation. It would be good if Murty and the Invisible Unnamed Mentors could get the team to start winning games and shift the focus away from players opining to the media on what they think the targets are at the Club.

There's a lesson in this for King, Robertson, Dickson, and the Board. And the new DOF and Head Coach. And the players. It is fundamentally not acceptable to go into the start of a season boasting about going for 55 .......only for (eventually and long into the season) Warburton to come clean with his snarky statement about nobody said when. We had the 'highly competitive' assertion. We had the Chairman saying a ceiling of ambition of 2nd was good enough this season and adding a floor of success being EL football. Now here we are virtually into March and we have a player watering the whole thing down to the objective being just to qualify for Europe. For next season the messaging from King, Roberston, DOF and Head Coach needs to be fundamentally clearer and set out in plain language so there is no mistaking what the measures of success are to be. Not couched in glossy, vague 'it can mean what we want it to mean' terms. Failure to do that may yet adversely affect ST holders appetite to renew even if stellar names are appointed as DOF and Head Coach. The problem will be one of trust in believing that they say what they mean in clear plain terms, and that they go on and do what they said they'd do in such a way that if they succeed we all celebrate and if they don't we at least see a management team and first team that is patently trying its very best and fighting for the jersey.

I don't believe that taking whatever extended time is needed to announce the appointment of a DOF and Head Coach axiomatically leads to a result that the right persons have been selected. There is no co-relation between the time it takes and a guarantee (or even strong certainty) that whoever is appointed will turn out to be appointments that can be judged as having made the right decisions. Taking what is now beginning to look like extended time can also soon turn into the appearance of systemic heel dragging. Heel dragging because, perhaps, the first choice candidates ask for more than King and the Board are prepared to offer (not just salaries for a rescue/ recovery act) but also assurances on transfer budgets? In which case lots of negotiation and seeking of compromises, or dropping down the pecking order of candidates to find a couple who are affordable and 'sellable' to the Support. Heel dragging because Robertson, Dickson and the Board are just not capable of going any faster anyway? Could be because its not that much out of the ordinary for appointments at big clubs, or because the DOF / Head Coach model is brand new to Rangers so discussions with candidates take longer while all parties work out how it is to work and get comfortable with it. Heel dragging because its tactically convenient to delay appointments until it becomes opportune to be able to write this season off as a shambles and try to leave the blame at Warburton's feet? Thus leaving a new DOF and Head Coach with enough games - including a home OF game - to use as test-bed territory for deciding on the players who will stay and to start getting them used to the new order of management - all with the pressure of league and cup performances neatly removed and written off as all the fault of Warburton? The more immediate reason for Robertson, Dickson, King and the Board to 'get it right' is arguably less to do with the work the DOF and Head Coach will need to do - and be seen to have done - in building a proper title-challenging side. It may be as much a case of 'getting it right' in terms of convincing enough ST holders to renew for next season on the back of what is turning out to be an utterly shambolic season. The 2 appointments are a bet on the future success of the Club. But like any persons appointed they could leave before the job is finished (or be sacked) - just look at the case of Warburton, Weir and McP. They will also be a bet on the preparedness of ST holders to renew in anything like the same numbers as this season and that factor - short term though it is - may feature quite high in deciding who to appoint.. The names, their track record, perceived quality of the persons appointed are, I think, likely to be very important. I hope we don't end up with a broad consensus response from the Support, shareholders and even the media along the lines of 'you took all this time and these are the best selections you could make!' That may be inevitable from some quarters but if it were to be a generally accepted perception then I think the heat on the Board would turn up quite a few notches. No pressure then on Robertson and Dickson to 'get it right'.

If nothing else his comments should act like a bit of a taser on the squad and maybe jolt them into some sort of positive response on the pitch. His comments, and those of Bell, are all very well up to a point since they don't really tell us what we didn't already know or suspect but I suppose they feel some sort of need to get their views / frustrations off their chests. A point to consider though, its not just Warburton and Weir who hold the responsibility for the failings of proper, effective management of the squad. Robertson as MD must bear responsibility too. He is meant to have had the good quality communications with Warburton, he attends the games, its his job to keep a finger on the pulse of how the operations - including football operations - are going, Could he not see what we were seeing and what the Gilks was seeing - insufficient fight, insufficient motivation etc coming from the squad with too much talk of preparing well and not enough outcome of games won? If he did see it why was no corrective action being taken on Warburton early enough? If he didn't see it, or didn't believe it, and was just sat on his hands looking at the other operational bits of Rangers then maybe the question should be was he also failing in his c£200k PA plus bonus job? Convenient though it may be to draw 'do not cross' lines of responsibility and for the manager to just do his own thing within the boundaries of set objectives, if in doing that he is not leading his workforce effectively enough - as measured by results - then imo it is up to Roberson as MD to have the responsibility for getting it sorted. In the same way that Bell has indicated that Warburton did not like confrontation, maybe the question is valid of asking whether Robertson did enough as MD to ensure that the good ship Rangers was operating as effectively as it should have been. Would now be interested to see if Barton surfaces with views. Probably not direct views since he will have signed a confidentiality agreement as part of his settlement. But maybe indirect views commenting the comments of Bell and Gilks.

You can sense the leather on the brown brogues being worn thinner and thinner as Directors' heels are systemically dragged. Meanwhile Murty now gets a gaggle of invisible and secret advisers to guide him in picking the team. A case of after 2 full weeks (more if you include the foreknowledge the Board had that Warburton was looking to defect) nothing much appearing to be done and dusted on manager replacement front while creating heaps of invisible activity around an increasingly uncomfortable Murty.

Send three and fourpence.......................

According to the twitter thingy on the Rangers website Murty has a group of people who have been made available to him by the board for advice. Their identities are to remain private. So at least he has some invisible friends to call on to help ease the increasing burden he's unreasonably been asked to bear into this 3rd week of caretaker duties. I hope he finds real benefit in the help he's being given. More to the point, I hope it translates into a win on Weds. The team is now selected by committee it seems but fronted up by Murty who will still take flak for poor results / performances leaving the invisible ones comfortably masked behind the scenes at Ibrox (a bit like the invisible Board). Its not quite yet taking on the nature of being farcical but it risks heading in that direction. Disney may yet come to the rescue with some much needed investment for movie rights for an animation of Murty and the Several Advisers.

Now we know who Murty's adviser has been?!?

I see from the Rangers website twitter feed-thingy that Murty now has more than one invisible unnamed assistant. If he had 11 maybe he could play them and see if the optimism about finishing 2nd and reaching cup final might be warranted. GM: There are a group of people who have been made available to me by the board for advice. They will remain private

They've now been beyond the edge of the forest on their hunt for a suitable and affordable DOF and Head Coach. They should by now know what the reality is of what it will cost in salary and in transfer budget terms that their target DOF and Head Coach are requiring in order to steer Rangers to a 55th title and beyond. Whether the realism of those requirements corresponds to what King and the Board are prepared to offer is another matter. If their preferred targets are asking for things that are not affordable to the Board then I suppose more hunting trips or more negotiations would be held with targets lower down the pecking order. The delay is either ordinary course of business of the time it takes to carry out a recruitment process for these sorts of appointments, or it indicates that systemic heel dragging is starting to take place because of financial constraints or they are not yet ready to bite the bullets and make decisions. After all, they bought into quite a failure in continuing with Warburton and Weir and simply cannot afford to have anything other than successful football delivered by whoever they pick. Decisions, decisions........... And that's just the starting point. The next important things are will there be reasonable and sufficient transfer funds that the appointed Head Coach will presumably have asked for assurances about, and just as important what expectations are to be set about creating a proper title-challenging side?

A bit like Warburton's eventual and much delayed acknowledgement of the 'going for 55' slogan............the players don't say when.

My belief is the MD (Robertson) and the Chairman and most probably all or most of the rest of the Board should have seen that Warburton (and Weir) were not up to doing a proper job of leading Rangers in the SPFL. Like most of us they could see the way the results were going, the rank awful performances, the stubborn and predictable approach to tactics and formation that made us so easy to play against, and so on. The row with Barton is another example where Warburton could only reach out for he disciplinary rulebook instead (as more capable leaders might have done) of looking for other less controversial and less costly ways of dealing with argumentative confrontation My point is the Board - led by King - has failed here big time by either wilfully or recklessly adopting a course of systemic inaction until Warburton tripped up on his agent's shoelaces with the whole 'we resigned - no we've not fiasco' which is still running and which may yet end up costing the Club a fair whack of much needed money in compensation. IMO King, Robertson and the Board could have and should have acted far more decisively far earlier - at the very latest after the OF game that most of them chose not to attend. But instead they have allowed the creation of another mess to happen by delaying and then trying to be opportunistic in the 'they've resigned' line they are taking. They may, incidentally, be correct in winning their argument that Warburton resigned......but it does not excuse them for an abject failure to see the way things were developing and act much more quickly.

Seems to me his resignation and Rangers' efforts to appoint a DOF and Head Coach are simply a coincidence. I'd be tempted to say a random coincidence but we've had enough of randomness recently. There is no way, even if recruiting on the cheap, that Robertson, Dickson, King and the Board would want to risk appointing a Head Coach who is admittedly not as rookie as Murty but equally far less experienced than Warburton, and just look at what King had to scathingly say about Warburton's experience and reactions to Board questioning. It seems to me that a Ferguson appointment would be far too much of a gamble that would immediately zap like lightning straight back to King as a move that did not inspire confidence that this would take Rangers forward either at all or at any meaningful pace. It would be an electrifying appointment......but the heat and voltage would all be rebounding back on King and I reckon he must surely sense that. I think Ferguson has a way to go yet to pick up further and better management experience to try to prove he is of a managerial calibre to run a big club. If King and the Board don't see that they need to find a far more experienced and better qualified Head Coach then they really are in a world of desperation.

It's Sunday. 3 days to go before the game. 3 days for Murty to listen very carefully to the invisible unknown person the Club has given him to assist. 3 days for the assistant to impose some much needed discipline in the defence and get them doing the basics of defending right first time every time. 3 days for the assistant to inspire goal-shy forwards and midfield players to put on their shooting boots, get ruthless, shoot at goal and just get the job done of scoring goals. 3 days to pick a side and a formation where the team to a man knows what to do, where each knows who's doing what, and gets into the game fast and maintains the tempo and score some goals It's a new month and time to shake off a bad Feb. A good time to get a good win. Come Wednesday though will we have seen more of the same or will Murty and his mysterious assistant have steered the team to a win? Surely the tide must turn soon and the players themselves take far more personal and collective responsibility and go and to a proper job at Ibrox and win the game. Surely?

Feels like Robertson, Dickson, King and the Board are finally getting round to making decisions, agreeing contract terms and making announcements of who they've selected to be the DOF and the Head Coach. Regardless of speculation in the media of who the selected 2 are to be, its surely got to be the case that the Board is now in 'make mind up' mode. Of course its one thing to have your preferred 1,2,3 for each job and quite another to settle down to negotiate contract terms, part of which may (I'm guessing) include the DOF and Coach getting a firm enough undertaking from the Board about what transfer funds will be available to them. That, along with the salary they may want to take on such a big recovery job, could still delay things even more and the preferred first choices may end up not being those actually appointed if the terms prove to be beyond agreement. I don't know how far negotiations with shortlisted candidates may have got but until all parties have a deal they are satisfied with, or can live with, then its talk, talk, talk and more delay. I'd still be surprised if they made an announcement of the more immediately vital role of Head Coach before the OF game. But almost as importantly as revealing who the DOF is to be and who is appointed Head Coach there is another matter that sits alongside these appointments. IMO it becomes important regardless of who is appointed. The subject is the objectives and timing. Put slightly differently its the messaging that the Board, a new DOF and a new Head Coach will be giving out to the Support, and shareholders, about what the 2 new appointments are there to do, what transfer fund resources they will have and how long they are to be given to do it. Clearly the ultimate eventual objective is to win 55 and then build on from there with more titles and more and better performances in European football. I don't think a new DOF and a new Head Coach will disagree with that. Nor, I think, would the Board or the Support or shareholders. The question is timing. The whole 'going for 55' thing under Warburton last season allowed a level of expectation to grow that was - frankly and as now seen very evidently - optimistically misleading. Warburton himself had to try to defuse that at the back end of last year when he smirklingly noted that nobody said when. That messaging from the start of the season was not sufficiently moderated by King or the Board who were obviously content to ride on its back watching the cash registers chinging away with very large ST sales. It backfired big time. It eventually contributed to costing Warburton his job as early suspicion that the squad did not even flatter to deceive, it was patent deception that it was anywhere near good enough under Warburton's football-by-numbers approach to live up to a billing of 'highly competitive'. I don't see a DOF or a Head Coach signing up under any expectation of quick success. I just don't see them being prepared to commit to that unless there are mega £Ms available for transfer funds and we all know that's not the case. I don't see King wanting to repeat the error of not doing anywhere near enough to work with Warburton to set and communicate a damn sight more effectively about the timeframe for achieving it. The 'highly competitive' messaging and express acceptance of 2nd this season with a stronger challenge next season did not achieve anywhere near the level of buy-in from the Support that was needed to generate the sort of 'be patient, must persevere' messages that eventually came out before Warburton walked. Too late by then. So when a DOF and Head Coach is appointed I would not be in the least bit surprised if the messaging from the DOF and Head Coach make it a whole lot clearer - in plain speak - about what they are appointed to do, and the timescales, and even more than that, if it is to be a progressive rebuild because there is not enough money to splash out on big fee signings to get to 55 quicker. The timescale bit may not be a message many want to hear. But I would be very surprised if considerably more effort was not made by King, Robertson, the DOF and the Head Coach to set out a message of expectation that spells out that the rebuild to the top may take quite a bit of time to achieve. As much as news of the 2 appointments is vital to the future success of the Club, so is the messaging they give about the objectives and timescales going forward.

Leaders, those who actually motivate and get things done by their actions, their behaviour, their words and the way they say them, their example, their preparedness to call a spade a spade and mean it, to do what they set out to do......will do that whether or not they wear an armband. They may do it a bit better if wearing an armband but by their nature they will still do it anyway. Whereas taking the armband off someone who may be less capable as a leader may have the unintended effect of weakening his game. I'd leave things as they are for the rest of the season and reassess it under a new manager. Besides which the Robertson, Dickson, King and the Board are so blinkered on what to do and how to do it in trying to appoint a DOF and Head Coach that they can't even be bothered to offer Miller a new contract. Not a great bit of motiviation for Miller if on the one hand he's asked to take over a role of captain but at the same time nothing offered back by way of an updated contract. Leaders lead regardless of the bit of uniform they wear or fancy job title that denotes some sort of rank. Pity the Board did not have some more effective leadership - especially at Chairman level.

I sure would like to have been in on the interviews when Robertson and Dickson asked prospective head coaches who they might want to keep, who they'd want to let go and how much money they thought it might take to obtain the core of a title challenging side. The secondary question of what they thought the market transfer value of players who must or could be released must have been enlightening too. I'm assuming of course that interviews have covered the ground of what a Head Coach would want to do with the existing squad and how many changes they'd want to make and how much that might cost. Over the course of a number of interviews there may be some extremes of responses from candidates but when the responses are considered as a whole I do wonder if Robertson, Dickson, King and the Board are being confronted by a consistent message from candidates that says that its wholesale clearance and wholesale rebuild time (again). For if any Head Coach appointed thinks he can transform the bulk of this current squad into a credible title challenging side at all never mind in reasonably quick time then he must indeed be either the most stellar coach in the business or an unrealistic optimist who wishes his way to success rather than manages his way to success. Maybe King is being faced with a reality check from these interviews that results in the enormity of the mess left behind by Warburton becoming much clearer. If the consistent message is wholesale clearout and start again with the prospective sales value of players moving on being nowhere near covering what a new Head Coach would require for rebuilding then that would pose a big problem. If that is the case something may have to give to fund it, assuming King and the Board are maxed out and unable or unwilling to find materially more investment to fund such a clearance. What might need to be given up either permanently or suspended for some years to divert more funds to pay for new and better players ......the academy perhaps?

I agree. The problem seems to be that Robertson, Dickson, King and the Board either see it very differently and are prepared to let Murty and Mr (or maybe Mrs) Invisible Assistant carry on for a while longer or they are not able to find a suitable person to take over as interim pending DOF and Head Coach appointments. It might have been better to have appointed Wallace as interim caretaker (I think he has his coaching certs) as he should know the first team squad a whole lot better than Murty and may have been able to lead it better than Murty has done. That's a punt I know and clutching at straws but if the Board can not or will not appoint a better qualified interim while still mucking about with a DOF and Hd Coach selection process then its the only other straw I can think of clutching that might help rescue things a bit.