Turning Toxic

The toxicity of Ibrox Stadium at the end of another big-game defeat, under the current management team, was like nothing I can recall in my time as a supporter.

The fact that this came after only four league games speaks volumes about the severity of the fury felt by the fans. The scenes at the end of the game were almost surreal to witness and in truth felt like a tipping point of sorts.

The reaction hasn’t come in isolation. It is the culmination of months of concern and mistrust in those charged with delivering success back to Ibrox. While Michael Beale racked up league wins immediately upon his return, he proceeded to exit both cups to Celtic to ensure another barren season and faced the charge of failing to win big games that mattered.

Last Sunday at home to a depleted and out of form Celtic side, with probably the weakest backline we’ll ever face in an Old Firm game, there was a chance to obliterate those criticisms.

Instead they were reinforced.

Worse still was the manner in which our fears were confirmed.

Instead of pressing and attacking our under-pressure visitors we sat deep and allowed them to have the freedom of the park. In contrast when we had the ball, Celtic pushed three attackers onto the edge of our box and pressed high and hard, forcing us all too often to play long and aimlessly.

Viewers unfamiliar with the fixture would have been forgiven for being unsure as to which team was playing at home and that’s simply unacceptable and quite frankly a sad indictment of our coaching team.

The stadium was super-charged as kick-off approached and explosive when we thought Kemar Roofe had given us the lead. The atmosphere was there to be harnessed by the team but instead the life was sucked out of the stands by our approach and play.

We were passive both in and out of possession and stood off a defence clearly uncomfortable playing out from the back. The few moments of joy we did derive from the first-half came from rare moments of pressure and in fact such pressure should have given us the lead but for the intervention of VAR.

Yet the management or players couldn’t see what was there for the taking as it sat right in front of them.

In true Rangers fashion we then contrived to gift Celtic a goal from an error right on half-time and to be honest I don’t think the players ever really believed that we were going to turn it around.

We certainly didn’t play in a manner which suggested confidence in our ability.

Fans have been screaming out for a revamp for years and those more cautious in criticism of Michael Beale, myself included, believed that the manager needed to be given his own squad that could be shaped in his image and to his style.

Yet as I sit here and write this I have absolutely no clue as to what that style is intended to be.

We look unclear and muddled in our approach. Only two outfield signings from this summer were trusted to start the match, and one of those was enforced due to an injury to Borna Barisic. We had the guts of £9m sitting on the bench again in the form of Lammers and Danilo, two supposedly key additions in our rebuild.

The same was of course true of last season with Davies, Yilmaz and Matondo unfancied for long spells.

Over £30m has been spent in 24 months and yet we’ve witnessed nothing but regression.

It’s a travesty.

The manager targeted players to fit a certain formation in the summer. The lack of wingers at the club and signed by Beale meant we set up with a narrow midfield and attack with the main width coming from full-backs.

Pre-season was a slog with some evident difficulties in adapting to this set-up, but the hope was always that the manager with his reputation as coach would get to work on the training ground and get his message across to the team.

But it simply hasn’t happened and I’m not sure he is now clear in his own mind how he wants his team to play or set up.

Our biggest outlay in the summer was on Danilo and yet he has been benched in recent weeks as we have moved away from the double-striker attack. And he has been joined by Sam Lammers, another significant expense, who appears to have been dropped for big games by the same manager who brought him to the club.

It’s a worry, a real worry.

The back-line remains 75% of the same defence that was featuring half a decade ago. Our full-backs understandably are not at the same level as they once were and we haven’t really upgraded our central defence for a number of years. That’s simply not sustainable, especially at the top level in Europe as we discovered against PSV Eindhoven.

Where the club goes from here I have no idea.

We have a manager whose plan simply isn’t translating onto the pitch and whose marquee signings are sitting on the bench after a handful of games. We have seen enormous waste in terms of our transfer spend over two summers and with a bloated wage-bill still being carried.

We also have no sporting director or director of football to oversee a mid-term strategy or any sort of succession planning and a CEO who isn’t sure whether he wants one or not.

The recruitment problem becomes cyclical.

If we don’t spend our money well and thus fail to own decent assets to sell, then we have less money to spend in fixing that problem. The less money we have to spend the harder it is to identify quality additions.

Yet here we are a couple of years into this spiral and the state of the squad looks increasingly worrying.

The sales of Patterson & Bassey should have kick-started a successful player-trading model but yet our failed recruitment has squandered those windfalls and squeezed our budget instead of expanding it.

Ross Wilson was blamed for our poor transfer activity in recent years and yet this summer entrusting the manager with that responsibility appears to have yielded the same disappointing results.

It’s a mess.

But in the here and now we have immediate problems.

While the transfer window remains firmly closed for another time, on the pitch we have a League Cup to win and a league not to lose, as depressing as the latter sounds. Recent years have shown that a four point gap is now vast such has the domestic consistency been from Celtic in particular.

We need results and we need a damn long run of them.

But if you were wagering your own hard-earned cash would you be putting shedloads on that happening? I know I wouldn’t.

It feels similar to the end of Van Bronckhorst’s tenure, or maybe even closer to Le Guen’s given the toxicity.

You know how it is going to end but are just waiting for the crash to happen.

Obviously I hope I am very, very wrong and we’re sitting here months from now celebrating a resurgent Rangers. But is there anything – and I mean anything – pointing towards that happening at present? Sadly not.

I think that’s why fans have been so quick to turn because frankly there has been nothing to cling onto.

The old cliche says that “it’s the hope that kills you” but bloody hell the lack of it is even worse.

Roll on St Johnstone….