Reformation Bear

Ok. Thanks for clarifying. I appreciate that credibility appears to be on the line. I hope the Club also appreciates this and engages accordingly. If not it could be a very dissatisfying meeting for both parties. I'm not looking for details here but given the weight of importance that seems to be being placed on credibility I assume that those attending from 1872 will have in their collective mind the markers or behaviours from Club reps or outcomes from the meeting that would represent a good result in the circumstances ie some idea of what a successful meeting would look like where confidence (or otherwise) is established in relation to 1872 credibility.

D'Art's response begs a few follow-up questions. First is, is 1872 confident the Club has understood and accepted that the nature of the meeting is of a make or break nature for 1872. The reason for asking is it would be unfortunate if the Board reps came out with a sort of 'we didn't appreciate you were billing this as a matter of such great criticality' and use that as the basis for less than frank responses. Second is if it is being badged by 1872 as make or break it puts the outcome into stark binary options. If break.......then what? (Sorry, haven't worked out how to do multiple quotes.....D's answer was to a question about whether this was a make or break meeting)

I think its fair enough to put the Club on notice that a meeting is needed and urgently at that, and to let the Support know that its to take place. I hope the Club reps allocate enough time for the sort of Q&A that is warranted by recent events and that you get honest, forthright answers. Its a time for plain speaking, time for the Board to appreciate more fully the strength of feeling in the Support about (among other things) a failing season, a failing Board and management and genuine concern about what funding is available or will be available to put a much better team on the pitch. As to the agenda I'd hope that enough quality time is earmarked for the big, really big, important subjects. My view is the substance of the meeting should focus on ............ (1) Management Vacancy & DOF role .....and rationale for selecting a caretaker manager who has zero relevant direct managerial experience. It looks like a panic move and it looks like a move which indicates - rightly or wrongly - that the Board is sacrificing the objectives for this season. Assurance needed that suitably qualified, experienced, expert persons will be recruited who are capable of getting Rangers back to winning mentality. Are Rangers facing legal action for the removal of Warburton, Weir and McP? (2) Investment & clarification on previous statements re same. What is being done to produce significantly more funds to acquire much better quality players - otherwise what assurance can a new DOF and head coach have they will have sufficient resources to work with (new 3) Objectives for this season - clarification needed - in light of results and performances is Murty still charged with getting the Club into a strong second? Is a more experienced interim manager to be appointed? The Support want to see a title winning side asap. What will be done to make this happen? and if time permits because right now they are probably secondary issues .......... (4) Communication (particularly with fans) (5) Professionalism relating to image and corporate identity (6) Accountability Good luck with the meeting, I suspect it'll be needed. Looking forward to hearing the outcome.

I could never work out what Warburton saw in him that either make an immediate positive impact at Rangers or was so filled with latent potential that within a short time to adapt he'd become a vital player for us. Warburton (and Weir and McParland) must have seen something of value - they are professionals in the game of football. So he's signed for a big enough fee and we all sit back and wait for something really decent to happen. And wait. And wait. And continue to wait. And now that the gang of 3 have exited, wait some more. I still don't see the potential. But then I'm not a football manager, or asst manager or scout. Maybe he'll come good under better quality management. I hope so for its a big enough investment these days to flush down the pan and write off (as Warburton might) as just one of the random things in football. The other one though is Dodoo. Not really seen much of him playing. Wonder why that is. I know he was injured for a while but I think that's behind him now. He's on a longish contract too (is it 4 years) so clearly the same gang of 3 really did see some good potential to be unlocked on a real football pitch and not just on a training pitch. But he seems to have done a sort of a Rossiter and disappeared from contention. The difference being you can see Dodoo in the training gallery photos but Rossiter is still invisible.

Surely even King, Robertson, Dickson and the Board could not realistically have expected a virgin manager in Murty to be managerially pitch-perfect on arrival. But to hit the ground stumbling (or flipping) so visibly must surely have been more than a bit astounding for them to witness. Not enough that King and the Board are presiding over a team that has already slipped to the levels of mediocrity where a season that should have been full of promise is unfolding into one almighty shambles, we have to witness a first-week apprentice caretaker manager becoming intimately familiar with the effects of gravity when a circus trick goes wrong. As a punishment he should be made to wear an orange bib for the rest of his time as caretaker. Partly to warn people from a distance that his is a learner manager of the first order, and partly so that if he does any more circus flips those within striking range of his failed attempt may see it in enough time to jump out of the way. The Directors including Robertson and Dickson should also be made to wear orange 'diddy learner director' bibs for having the cheek to think that appointing a novice trainer of the apprentices as a caretaker manager is an acceptable solution for a Club of Rangers' stature.

Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. At 26 unless you're a entrepreneur who has started up a decent sized business, run it successfully, made money and by that I mean sustained profits and are continuing to do so, then vast majority of 26 year olds I ever came across who claimed to be a 'somebody' or claimed to be complete enough as a finished article would in reality be lucky to be able to direct their way to find their car keys never mind seemingly having enough real life experience to be a director of football at a club of the stature of Rangers. Does real-life, winning, experience and expertise in directing not matter more than attracting a young not yet proved anything candidate? How can a 26 year old give credible, believable, effective direction to a 37 year old professional player or even older manager? That's a recipe for potential strife and failure unless that person is utterly exceptional. If that is the type of person who is appointed then the Board might as well order some orange bibs for them to wear so we can pick them out as the trainees who are still learning. Get one for Murty too (although its not his fault that he's been landed in the hot seat). Brentford can afford to play at experimental shops with these sorts of appointments. They can take as long as they like to try a Woolies pic'n'mix approach to picking up staff and putting down staff and trying again until maybe one day they stumble upon a winning formula that pushes them a bit further up the ladder of contention to escape the Championship into the EPL. We don't have that luxury. We should be done with on the cheap experimental managers or DOFs. Winners are what is needed. Winners with relevant track records. Winners with experience. People who have credibility and standing. People who know through good experience how to direct and manage and who are capable of getting results at Rangers. If that's representative of the calibre of people being considered then imo the Board is either forced to shop for bargains and hope that they find a gem on the cheap because better experience cannot be afforded, or they have no realistic idea of the calibre or experience of person needed to do a proper DOF role at Ibrox. Maybe the Board and Robertson and Dickson should be wearing orange 'learner director' bibs as well.

Warburton claimed at the start of the season his side would be highly competitive. It wasn't before he departed and it certainly isn't now. Part of the wretched legacy he leaves is a squad shorn of confidence and which never got to grips anywhere near well enough with producing a winning mentality. He never came remotely near producing a central defence partnership that could even remotely be described as reliable. His attempts at trying to find a combination of forward players who could score enough goals to win games failed dismally. He could analyse but finding solutions was not in his bag. The list is longer and its been covered in many other threads. Warburton was on a project One he was always careful to say was a long term project. Patience and perseverance became his watchwords in recent times. Its all very well giving out these sorts of messages, and then lacing them with the tranquillizing mantra we were treated to every week even after dismal results and performances that his squad trained well, prepared well and was in good shape......you know the rest. But......and it a very big but........he was not able to instil anything like enough of a winning mentality in the squad so that far too often we had games which should have been won but were either lost or points dropped. The project, the need for patience and perseverance, the caution he sounded over it being a long term thing may have bought him some time, maybe another season, if he had the skills and experience to lead the team to deliver a far far stronger challenge for the league. But he could not inspire the team to avoid living on the edges of games where the result could so easily be the loss of points, and that happened far too often, They were not just random results they were the product of a trend that was clear enough from quite early on in the season........he could not inspire enough wins, he did not know is strongest side (refused to even contemplate that in favour of it being solely all about the squad), and he was stubborn to the point of predictability in the way he set his sides up which made it easier for the opposition to nullify his team. Possession of the football without doing enough to win games is an empty claim to success. He knew that goals win games. But it was beyond his management and leadership skills to create a strike force that could score enough goals and create a defence that conceded a lot fewer goals. That, it football terms - at least at Rangers - equals failure. The trouble is his now failed project has left behind a right mess of a squad with zero core of a team that could form the basis of one which could be a much stronger challenger for the title. He has left a huge amount of work for his replacement to do. So much in fact that King's meagre resources may not be able to afford to fund a reasonably quick recovery plan. When he and Weir recently started to introduce the need for patience and perseverance I suppose one way of looking at it (in the light of their under the table efforts to dig an escape tunnel out of Ibrox) was that they knew full well that they had built a project that had become a failing mess and it was time to get out quickly. So the warnings of patience and perseverance were really perhaps their way of saying 'look folks, we've fucked up and we know it but its you the Support that will have to pay with the currency of yet more patience and yet more perseverance'. King, Robertson, Dickson and the Board are not free from criticism on this shambles of a season. Arguably they bear as much if not more blame for the mess we are left with because of their failure to intervene sooner to deal with a clear trend of managerial underperformance in the form of results, and because they simply will not, or are not able to, or are not willing to find more substantial sums of money for player investment that are needed and that King indicated would be available.

Murty is hopelessly out of his depth. It's not a criticism - its a simple fact. He has no direct relevant managerial track record or experience to bring to bear. He's learning from managerial scratch as he goes along drawing on whatever he has seen and heard from other managers he's worked with and from whatever coaching courses he has done. In appointing him King, Robertson, Dickson and the Board have taken a punt, placed a bet, gambled with the result for the rest of the season or until they replace him. They did not appear to have a contingency plan for having to replace Warburton+2 at short notice. They appear to have been panicked into finding an -n-house solution and Murty drew the short straw (or was maybe the only option). Their risk management was lousy. Unless that is King etc took an early view that appointing a managerial virgin was not an issue if they had already resigned themselves to this season being an utter shambles and the game moves on to finding replacements that will somehow generate enough enthusiasm from the Support to sell good numbers of STs for next season. Murty would then be a shield of sorts to keep some flak away from the Board while they scramble to put a rescue plan of DOF and head coach together then go and find a couple of folks willing to take the jobs on. Murty risks being hung out to dry if results and performances like today continue (assuming he is allowed to stay on as caretaker or does not himself step back). The next challenge is in 5 days time at Inverness If King, Robertson, Dickson and the Board do want to rescue something from this season and reduce the risk of the team's results falling into freefall then they surely they need to appoint a suitably experienced replacement and stop asking Murty to take on way more he's qualified to do. I'm not placing any bets about seeing a DOF and head coach appointed until after the OF game.

It's plain to see and acknowledge that Murty is stretched way beyond his abilities and experience. In fact, imo, it was absurd of the Board to even ask him to take on caretaker. It's a decision of first order panic in my view. And one which risks Murty being hung out to dry if more results like today happen and if the league position slips further. No amount of games in the next month or so are going to propel Murty's managerial experience and abilities to the level needed to be a proper and effective interim manager of Rangers. The Board are having a laugh at the Support for appointing him then and for failing to appoint someone patently more suitable. Since they are, imo, engaged in taking the Support for granted by appointing Murty as the man to gee the team up to get second and so on how about this for a possibility ...............could they bring back McCoist as interim? Could it really be any worse? (that sort of answers itself but anyhow......)

I don't think Kenny has his coaching badges yet. If that's the case then that could be a barrier to him taking the team. I don't blame Murty. No blame whatsoever. To be catapulted into that role when he is a virgin manager, not even a novice, was about as absurd a decision King and a Board could take as was possible, next only to having no manager and the Captain (who does I think have his coaching badges) takes the team. That action tells me that King has already sacrificed this season and its the Support - as usual - who suffers. Murty, whether he realises it or not, is being hung out to dry by the King, Robertson, Dickson and the Board. He's their vain attempt at providing some sort of lightning rod for criticism from the Support and media if results - like today - are bad and if league position slips even further. Conveniently for them, he could also be in charge at the OF game on 12 March which, if it goes badly as well it might, then still means he and the team pick up the initial ack-ack flak that will be sent up before sights are set on the real target of the Board. All of which gives them time to see if they can pull off a stellar DOF signing and a stellar head coach signing that would be needed to rescue ST sales for next season Look.....out the window......there's an entire squadron of pigs flying round the moon. There must be a risk that Murty finds the pressure to be too much and simply asks to be returned to his apprentice training role, or worse, does a Warburton and resigns,

And this was after Miller's press conference where he acknowledged that the squad realised it had not performed as expected or to its capabilities. Now if you know that as individuals and as a team but then only a few days later do your level best to show that nothing has changed, no improvement, no transformation, no fight, no 'putting things right', then what does that tell us? Among other things it tells us that, like Warburton, generating some sbo analysis is one thing.......but if you lack the ability to fix it then the analysis means nothing. In fact it becomes a bit insulting to the Support because it risks creating the impression the players know but don't give a fuck Asking the apprentice trainer to come in and take the reins and to apply expert motivation skills to get the players to lift their game is, frankly, the territory of mickey mouse leadership from the Board. It's just plain barking mad. Wouldn't happen in any other peacetime business. It looks like an action from a Board that is out of control, panicking and doesn't have the faintest clue about how to go about getting a good quality interim manager quickly. Instead, they're hanging Murty out to dry. Miller and the squad too, but then Miller was the one who acknowledged the team failings ......and then participated in yet another failing today.

Interesting. Maybe that begs some rhetorical questions. If the feeling is that its not money that's the issue, and that we could afford to pay pretty reasonable top dollar for a suitable and experienced interim then what prevents that happening? What are the issues that stop an experienced interim manager being appointed? What issues are so fundamental to prevent such an appointment that King, Robertson, Dickson and the Board are prepared to let the risk happen of rookie Murty being hung out to dry, letting a risk happen of results going into freefall, risking a very bad OF experience for the Support in a few weeks and risking the season being judged by many to be nothing better than a boondoggle? Maybe the reality is that King, Robertson, Dickson and the Board have tacitly accepted that this season is fucked, that the squad is actually miles short of any sort of core competence around which a proper title challenging side could be created, that the plan for the next few seasons will need to be radically changed to recognise we are in reality for a long time to come really in also-ran territory where fighting to be 2nd is the norm, in the same way that accepting 2nd for this season was trotted out at the start of the season. Here's another rhetorical question though.....by their actions and inactions have they (are they) in the process of putting Rangers into retreat

King, Robertson, Dickson and the Board aren't feeling anywhere near enough of heat (wrath even) for what is turning out to be a shambles of a season. They've been shielded to an extent by the asbestos coating of Warburton, Weir, McP and a squad that (in general) has become demotivated, disinterested and lacking in any sort of desire to fight for the privilege of playing for Rangers. But that's gone now. The staggeringly inept (imo) decision to appoint a virgin manager, a novice of the first order to run the team while executives form a selection committee and travel the countryside to find a DOF and head coach beggars belief. No competent Chairman and no competent MD and no competent Board would be so nuts, so daft, so desperate, so shorn of credible alternatives that they put a guy of Murty's manifest inexperience in charge as a caretaker then infer that it might be the case until summer. Its like taking the apprentice training manager and overnight and without any relevant experience making him the production manager responsible for the entire output of the factory. In other businesses investors, shareholders, and maybe even non-exec Directors might have thrown their arms up in horror at this and demanded some heads from the Board, starting with the Chairman. They are taking the piss with the Support, shareholders, investors, and with the squad. And they are getting away with it. IMO they are not without a very significant portion of the blame for this season and they should be feeling the heat for what they've done and for what they've failed to do. In the same way Warburton failed and in the same way the team is failing, so is King, Robertson, Dickson and the Board. Success starts with leadership. High quality, effective leadership. People who say what the mean, mean what they say and get it done. That's not happening anywhere near effectively enough with this Board. I think its beyond them.

He flirts with the occasional moments of great saves only to submerge into the realms of aspiring to mediocrity the same as most of his fellow squad members. Pity we hadn't kept Gilks and sold Fod. As for the new guy, he'll be lucky to get a game this season if the Warburton mentality is continued by Murty of playing certain players regardless of form, competence or quality.

Money helps. I mean if you want a seat on the lifeboat of a sinking ship when there aren't enough lifeboats for everyone then money talks. It's becoming a big enough rescue job for this season so candidates with some half credible experience even to stabalise the ship and steer it into some calmer performance and results waters might be attracted if the compensation was good enough. Thing is though, if King, Robertson, Dickson and the Board have fucked up the removal of Warburon. Weir and McP and might be in for sizeable damages and legal costs then do they really have enough money to buy a seat on the interim manager lifeboat? I doubt it. For if they had, we'd have seen an interim appointed by now because if the Board could not foresee the tremendous risk they were taking in appointing a managerial virgin, a novice of the first order for these last to games then they don't deserve to be Directors or executives of the Club. I don't think King, Robertson, Dickson and the rest of the Board have the faintest clue about what to do to rescue this season. Not a clue.

IMO the way things have gone recently under Warburton and now under the hapless (but can't be blamed) Murty I think there is a real risk of going into freefall. Every team will be thinking even more than they used to that we are there for the taking away from home and at home. With an OF game on 12 March if that went very badly it could risk accelerating a freefall where any notion of EL football for next season would need to be binned. Worse than that, the longer it goes on the harder it becomes for a DOF and head coach to stabalise the ship, instil some confidence, instil some discipline, instil some semblance of decent coaching and start a recovery. Each game like today potentially distances us from half decent DOF / head coach candidates as they'd be likely want a very sizeable transfer budget to work with - money King and the Board do not appear to have. Eve worse than that, money they do not appear to be anywhere near willing enough to try to find. It seems increasingly clear that King and the Board will want to rebuild Rangers on the cheap, and expect whoever they get as DOF and head coach to build a title challenging side quickly and on the cheap. These sorts of football alchemists do not exist other than in the fantasy minds of King, Robertson, Dickson and the Board. King and those running Rangers are progressively causing Rangers to retreat into the mediocrity of also rans of Scottish football. That is the work they are presiding over They may think they are doing differently........but the facts are before our eyes game after game after game. King insisting in his 2nd statement that the objective was to finish a strong second and to get EL football for next season was ridiculous really when he then appoints a managerial virgin, a proverbial novice to run the team while his trusty lieutenants rack up the airmiles and scour the country in search of the salvation that lies in the form of a DOF and head coach. Nothing like forming a selection committee, and planning the travels to have pow wows with prospective candidates while the out-of-his-depth caretaker and the disinterested squad take the flak.

In times like this just when you think you've got to the bottom of the latter there is always another rung you didn't know about ready and waiting to be broken.

Wonder what any prospective DOF and head coach makes of this. If they've looked at the videos of the season so far and are watching this game then each passing minute must surely be adding £Ms to the amount they will be looking for from King to achieve even a half decent rebuilding of a side that has no competent core of CBs, midfield or strikers. A GK who is a bit of a bombscare and clearly does not feel the heat of competition breathing down his neck. King might think he's saving money by appointing Murty to take the fall for the failings of Warburton and this squad but actually its going to cost him a damn sight more than he can afford to fix this when prospective DOFs and coaches talk to him about what they'd need to work at Ibrox. In reality, by appointing Murty and by avoiding appointing an experienced interim manager King (and Robertson / Board) have either singularly failed to appreciate just how bad the football performances had become and just how fragile the players' confidence was, or they did appreciate it but are nevertheless prepared to risk writing off this season as an abject disaster. If the latter, quite who they hope to attract for DOF and for head coach is a complete mystery. The DOF and coach would want those mega £Ms I mentioned to do a proper job. But wait.......its money King and the Board don't have and do not seem to have any intention of getting. They are just stringing us along.

King, Robertson, Dickson and the Board have played this cute. They've effectively put the players on the sacrificial altar for the rest of the season to be castigated alongside Warburton by much of the Support, and along with it watching the season go down the plughole. They'll continue to blame Warburton of course - and rightly - and no blame to Murty who is so out of his depth that it looks like a crime to have appointed him. In fact, it just goes to show the absolute failing of the Board not to have acted far quicker to get a suitable interim manager in place. Murty simply cannot deal with these sorts of situations. He cannot. It's not in his experience bank to do this. And its ridiculous that King and the Board even asked him to. The real blame from here on in lies entirely with King and the Board. They let Warburton continue to fail without acting and are now presiding over the ritual humiliation of a caretaker manager who is nowhere near ready to be managing a SPFL side never mind manage Rangers. They are presiding over a squad so lacking in confidence and leadership that they are in disarray and in retreat. Can you imagine turning up to the OF game in this shape? Actually - yes. I can see King, Robertson and the Board taking until after then to find their cherished DOF and head coach so that they are not exposed to what is likely to happen in that game. They may be likely to let Murty and the team take all the flak that will be going. Blame King for this shambles and blame the Board. They are supposed to be the guardians. They have failed.

The curtain on the Warburton, Weir and McParland efforts at Rangers has been rung down but the props they brought in - the players who are not delivering and who may not even be capable of delivering at Rangers - have yet to be cleared away. The football life we had under Warburton this season, and in reality for a fair bit of the latter part of last season, turned out to be a magic hat illusion rather than the reality of building the core of a title-challenging / title-winning side. Too much emphasis in inputs - training well, preparing well, analysing what went wrong, pitch geography and so on......all of the tranquillizing buzz phrases he used to create the impression that this was true progress. But nowhere near enough emphasis on leadership and drive and motivation to get games won that should have been won. Too much of an emphasis on striving, not enough emphasis on achieving and winning. Its going to be a very tall order for an incoming DOF and head coach / manager to take the squad, decide who to keep and who to release, decide which new players to bring in (affordable ones of course and that in itself is a whole different story), and then do what King seems to reckon is still required for next season ie (his words from 2nd statement) "......compete for the title and progress in Europe". I don't know if the position we have reached is in effect a reset for that would imply a lot of time has been lost and is irrecoverable. The further implication being that King's season 3 (ie next season) objective of competing for the title would not then be likely to be credible. I suppose much depends on 2 things of equal importance. The first being who is recruited to the roles of DOF and head coach. If these are well experienced, seasoned professionals who skills are such that they produce good confidence that they will be winners at Rangers then so much the better. If its more amateur hour from the Board, signing potential but with little or no track record of actually winning and delivering the goods at a big club then reset and delay would be more likely. And we'd start to hear yet more messages about needing to be patient and to persevere. The second is investment money to acquire better quality players for key positions. If insufficient, or if spent unwisely then its reset territory and more of the patience, persevere messaging. If the Board do not make wise choices for the 2 jobs and do not provide a decent enough investment pot for acquiring better players then imo it would be hard to see how King and the Board would escape the growing wrath of the Support. In the meantime there is still the remains of this season to be played out. And a lot to play for. If Murty can turn things round and achieve 2nd, maybe even a strong 2nd, then he should be richly applauded for that would be some achievement given his stark lack of management experience and given the intense pressures he will have been under. If he is not successful in achieving 2nd or even achieving EL football for next season then he should not be blamed. The blame would be entirely on the shoulders of King and the Board who deliberately elected to put a massively less experienced person in charge as a caretaker than the manager who just left the Club, and for whom King has issued a very public criticism of the manager's lack of experience Swapping insufficient and ineffective experience for even less even on an interim basis, and still requiring the objective for the season to be met is, imo, strange. To the point where if it does not work then the only people to blame are King and his fellow Board members. It's going to be very interesting to see how the rest of this season pans out.

Just a thought. Warburton (and the other 2) may have started action against the Club but have deliberately not made the details public. They, and their legal team, may yet be looking to obtain a settlement without having to take recourse to more formal proceedings. They will know that its far more efficient, far less contentious, and far quicker to meet and agree a compensation package than it is to set off down the tribunal / courts pathway so maybe they figure its worth trying to get the Rangers Board to come to its senses (I know, I know) and re-engage to try to conclude a settlement. You'd keep that process quiet to reduce the risk of details escaping and risking inflaming things further. But if attempts to persuade the Rangers Board to meet with the aim of obtaining a fair and reasonable settlement failed then I guess we'd hear pretty quickly from the Warburton camp of a referral via the appropriate legal channels. It's early days yet.

I understood from Robertson's interview on Tuesday that the concept of adopting the DOF model had been under consideration for a while, ie it is not a knee-jerk reaction to the sudden departure of the gang of 3 last Friday. That being the case you'd think - being such a transparent set of Directors and execs - that they would have included Warburton and Weir in some or all of these discussions. After all, the concept would have had an impact on the roles of the manager / asst manager. Or maybe they were not including W&W in these discussions and they found out about it which, when added to taking umbrage at King and the Board's quizzing of his performance, money spent on non-playing players etc in Jan helped to provoke the 'we're getting out of here' actions by the gang of 3. Or maybe W&W had been included in the discussions about creating a DOF, Warburton then applies for it as a natural progression from being manager but is turned down .....and cue the 'we're getting out of here' line. Who knows? But its great for conspiracy theory on the underlying causes of the Board acting the way they did in interpreting what was going on as de facto resignations only to be countered by Warburton insisting they didn't resign. One thing is for sure - its clear there was a rift of mega proportions between the Board /MD and the gang if 3. So big a rift as to be unbridgeable.

I'm sure it will be difficult enough for Murty to do the caretaker manager role. He has a lot less experience than Warburton and look how King lashed out at Warburton's display of (in)experience. But he may well be in a no lose, only win situation until a longer term manager and DOF are appointed. For starters, even though King or Robertson have not softened the objectives for the first team for this season any failure to achieve that simply cannot be laid at his door. King and the Directors made a deliberate choice to appoint a distinct lack of football management experience as the caretaker until a DOF and longer term manager are appointed - which Robertson acknowledged might take until summer. He can't be blamed. He'd be cut an enormous amount of slack because he can't possibly be expected to know better, or to apply hard-won experience to make the right decisions and produce the right sort of leadership to transform this underperforming squad into the 'strong second' that King expects. He simply could not be blamed for any failure. It would be perverse if he were to be blamed since it is a conscious choice of King and the Board not to appoint an experienced interim and to instead run with newbie. He can only win because if he does manage to lead the team to 2nd place - even better if its a strong second - then the experience he gains will be invaluable in returning back to the development role. His reputation is enhanced - or should be - however the season turns out. If we get 2nd he'll be hailed as the man who rescued the season. If it fails and is no EL football next season then he'll be regarded as at least having the guts to give it a try, and then return to the development role with that experience under his belt Its a no lose, only win situation for Murty But one hell of gamble by the Board for the rest of this season. If it does not work ie no 2nd slot and worse if no EL football I suspect many will simply - and rightly imo- blame the Board for not installing a more experience interim manager in the first case.

Why not Mulholland is a fair enough question. The thing is though King went out of his way pretty fiercely in his 2nd statement to criticise Warburton's reaction to being questioned about performances etc and noted (perhaps a shade sarcastically) that in his experience Warburton responded in ways which a more experienced manager would not adopt. In a back-handed way this seemed to me an acknowledgement by King that he knew he had recruited a manager who did not have a lot of experience, and certainly none at a Club of the size and attention that Rangers gets. I don't see King being about to risk making the same error in appointing a DOF. I'd be very surprised if a name with considerable experience in a DOF role was not appointed. The time for experimenting too strongly is over. If he appoints a DOF who fails to deliver as expected then blame comes ever closer to King and the Board - not a risk I think they'd want to flirt too much more with.

Maybe. But not necessarily. If there was a deal on the table which both were happy with its not that uncommon (at least in commercial negotiations anyway) for one party to sleep on it and think again, or to be told by their Board to go back and ask for more, or just as a pure try-on to try to get some more. It doesn't mean the deal has to change. The parties can discuss, explore and so on but the original deal, acceptable in principle but subject to completion, can still be the outcome. I'm just a wee bit surprised the Club didn't seem to think it worthwhile bringing them back to the table to try to resolve it. Personally I'd have insisted on direct talks with the 3 of them on the basis of best to deal with those giving the instructions to the agent and not the agent himself on something as fundamental as a top management trio leaving the club. On a personal note I've lost count of the number of commercial deals, big commercial deals where after many months of negotiation and with contracts drawn up ready for signature, a counter-party comes up with last second proposed changes which disturb the deal. It's always meant more discussion. Sometimes some give and take happens and other times arms are folded and its put to the counter-party the deal is the deal - take it or leave it. These things happen in all walks of business life. I'm just surprised that the Board seem to have lost patience in looking to conclude a non-controversial deal to part company which indicates to me (rightly or wrongly) that Board tempers got frayed and they got fed up with the whole thing and just pulled the trigger to try to bring it to a close.