The Summer of Discontent?

Rebuild. It is a word synonymous with modern Rangers as we as a club continue to throw money but little skill at a problem that is now an annual event. As sure as night follows day, rebuild follows failure. The trouble is with each failed rebuild we are digging a deeper hole and threatening to push the support’s patience beyond its limits.  

Rangers are currently a club without a CEO, a stadium, any key upgrades, player sales or leadership. There has been an undeniable void since the club last dropped the bombshell news that Ibrox would not be available for an unspecified time at the start of the campaign, a time key to bedding in new players and qualifying for the newly enriched and formatted Champions League.

The trouble with voids is that they like to be filled. If it isn’t newspapers speculating, opposition fans inventing stories then it’ll be our own fans moaning and groaning – justifiably so – at shambolic position in which we currently find ourselves. It’s unhelpful all round.

So let’s tackle the elephant in the room first before we pan out to the wider landscape.

Rangers fans have not heard from their Chairman properly since September 2022 and when things are going well that might be excused.

But now when you are asking fans to stump up their season-ticket money after another unsuccessful year, we really deserve to hear an explanation and an update on the stadium situation that’s frankly made our club a laughing-stock.

The news might not be good. In fact it may be a little embarrassing. But treat the support like adults and at least have the decency to take on the responsibility that the role demands and step up to the plate.

If the stadium was an isolated concern then the calls for public utterance might not be quite so emphatic however with the club again rebuilding from a position of weakness, silence won’t be tolerated.

Last season we saw a support that was primed to explode . The toxicity witnessed at the end of home defeats against Aberdeen and Celtic are scenes that I haven’t seen in my lifetime as a Rangers fan. And if the club hasn’t realised, I get the feeling that a similar anger is simmering under the surface once again should we not hit the ground running this coming season.

We tolerated the early disappointments of the Gerrard reign because underneath it all were signs of progress. Progress though is the one key element missing from recent seasons and it has in truth been replaced by regression. So we aren’t just angry because we aren’t winning, we’re worried because we aren’t winning and don’t seem to be moving any closer.

The Chairman therefore must fulfil the duties that accompany the role he has accepted. Whether he likes it or not as chairman he is a figurehead for the club, more so now that there is no CEO available. In any job there are aspects people like less than others, but you still have to do them. We need to hear from John Bennett, and we need to hear from him soon.

Moving beyond the stadium and chairman, we have the minor issue of trying to ready a squad for the upcoming campaign. As the team departed for their training camp in Holland we left with only squad players / existing loans added and, while I’m aware there are a number of weeks to go, the manager would certainly want as much business completed as early as possible.

Last season under Michael Beale the club spent £21m gross on incoming transfers and from that resulted a £13m net spend, including his severance package a few weeks into the season. Now, we weren’t cash rich at the start of the season and that sort of outlay can only serve to put pressure on the finances. In simple terms we cannot continue with net transfer spends and losses. It’s very likely that our debt / loans have increased as a result of the above and so at some point that trend has to reverse. But how do you reverse it when you need to spend money? And we’ll now have even less money because of the costs that will result from the stadium farce.

That job falls largely to Nils Koppen, our Director of Football Recruitment, because our issue hasn’t been spending money, it has been spending it well. We’ve seen large transfer outlays on the likes of Dessers, Lammers, Matondo, Ridvan, Davies, Danilo. We’ve seen our wage budget swell to levels that our current income cannot sustain. And so part of the reason for our slow foray into the transfer market may well be that simply put we must sell before we buy. I’m sure we can float a few quid but ultimately we need to get some bodies out the door, and fast.

We need to give Philippe Clement the tools and best possible chance to be successful this season.

He inherited a shambles of a squad last season and he cannot be allowed to venture into 24/25 without some real quality being added. We spoke last season about the need for a new leadership group and for key positions to be upgraded, and it simply must happen.

While fans can appreciate the targeting of younger players and a lowering of the average age, it’ll mean little if we’re out of the title race by October. We also can’t be in the business of sacking a manager every 12-18 months. If indeed this is again a project then the manager or the chairman has to be honest about that.

It is immensely disappointing to be writing about our club in such a way when, if we rewind not too far back, we won a league, made a European final, qualified for the Champions League and made two club record player sales six months apart.

This is not the foundation that should have given way to a deep and continued regression.

Last season saw our lowest points total since Gerrard’s first-season, that’s the level to which we have reversed. The squad last season was not in any way a good Rangers squad. Whether it was ageing leaders or mis-firing strikers, this was a squad bereft of talent and character and you won’t win much with the absence of both.

The board and ownership group have been immensely fortunate that the ire from the fans has so far been directed in the dugout or on the pitch because in truth that has been a narrow distraction from the bigger problem – that those in charge have quite simply made a mess of things.

While Sam Lammers was being ironically cheered off the pitch we should remember that it was the board who appointed a manager they quickly sacked and gave him far too much money to sign the player we unfairly targeted. We had a CEO and board who didn’t think we needed a Director of Football but after watching a shambles of their own making unfold in front of them then decided that we absolutely did.

That CEO has now left the building and in fact we now can’t even use said building for the foreseeable.  Sometimes despite a wider failure it takes a single issue like the stadium to really focus attention. And that attention is now very much on John Bennett and his board.

Everything we do is reactive. We make a mistake that costs us millions and only then do we try and take steps to fix it. That’s no way to run a football club and perhaps speaks to the lack of football experience at the top of the club.

Now, I don’t intend for this this to be a relentless board-bashing rant because we are some weeks from the start of the season however we are under pressure as a club because of the people running it. That’s just obvious. The faces may have changed but demands will not.

The custodians of the club must deliver for the fans and there’s no doubt that we have an enormous few weeks ahead in terms of recruitment, Europe and hitting the ground running domestically.

We must get our transfer strategy absolutely bang on, support the manager as much as possible and, for the first time in too long, begin to see improvement. But before that I think it’s imperative that we hear from John Bennett. Over to you, Mr Chairman.

We can’t afford another Summer of Discontent.