To paraphrase Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a football club without a manager must be in want of a manager.
Six weeks down the line from the 'mutual consenting' of Pedro Caixinha, Rangers will still have Graeme Murty in the dugout for this weekend's game against Ross County...and, according to yesterday's statement, till the end of December. This means he'll be in charge for another five games after that till the winter break, taking him to a total of twelve at least. Some clubs keep permanent managers in their posts for less time than that.
Given that Caixinha's jacket had been on a shoogly peg since the failure to Progres (sic) in Europe back in July, it seems quite remarkable that the club hadn't already started quietly sounding out alternatives in advance of his inevitable exit. Delaying the start of that process till he left the building was either incredibly honourable or incredibly incompetent; I'll leave you to decide which of those descriptions to delete as applicable.
The Rangers board contains a number of successful business folk, and there is also a managing director heavily experienced in the ways of football (Stewart Robertson) and a Director Of Football too. And yet a thousand monkeys attending a thousand board meetings would have been more effective than this.
There has been a lot of conspiracy talk about Rangers trying to use the media to tap up McInnes and destabilise Aberdeen. And we know there are a depressingly high number of Scottish football journalists who would happily report that "the sky is green and grass is blue" if Jim Traynor sent that to them in an email titled 'Today's Rangers Press Release'.
But forty days passed between Caixinha leaving and an approach being made to Aberdeen for McInnes, and another two before he actually turned them down. The club's claim that "there was no outstanding candidate among those who applied for the position" is almost certainly true, but it seems crazy to have waited several weeks to confirm that is the case. If McInnes was earmarked early on as the leading candidate, the suggestion that Rangers wanted to wait until the double-header against the Dons was out of the way is laughable; five weeks passed between Caixinha going and that first game at Ibrox, plenty of time to sort things out.
It seems more likely that the board's strategy was as detailed and well thought out as David Davis' Brexit impact assessment files, and so the media simply filled the information vacuum as well as they could. And with little to go on other than a link to McInnes which certainly seemed plausible, they regurgitated it again and again like Roman nobles at a 1st century AD banquet. The speculation probably did unsettle McInnes and Aberdeen, but to suggest it was all part of a cunning plan gives the impression that Rangers operate with more nous than Baldrick.
One thing it has accomplished, however, is to distract supporters - and, either wilfully or otherwise, the media - from two far more significant issues surrounding Rangers. The first was their recent accounts which stated that £4m was required for working capital by the end of November - November! That's less than halfway through the season before they basically ran out of money. In fact, it's possible that the long delay in moving for McInnes is because Rangers couldn't meet Aberdeen's compensation demands until that cash injection.
That £4m, plus another £3.5m next year, will apparently come in loans from a company called NOAL the holders of the shares bought by Dave King's family trust, which leads me onto the second issue - the ongoing battle between King and the Takeover Panel. King has bascially admitted he can't actually afford to bid for Rangers (his lawyer's claims that he is "penniless" and that he hasn't got any sort of control over the actions of NOAL seem interesting in the context of the loans that have gone the club's way). Just being in conflict with the Takeover Panel is unheard of (this is the first time someone has fought a ruling from them); losing would put King in a very precarious position indeed.
Those are probably the reasons why McInnes felt staying in the North-East was a better career move than going to Ibrox. And this embarrassing affair may well bring that into the conscience of even those with the bluest-tinted spectacles.
In the meantime, Murty will plug on. By the end of December he will have, in two spells, managed Rangers for eighteen matches. Caixinha was in charge for only twenty-six. Murty is clearly not a viable long-term option; whilst his tactical changes for the games against Aberdeen were impressive they came on the back of embarrassing losses to Hamilton and Dundee. If Rangers choose to stick with him into the new year, they will not finish second. But by confirming him in the role till the winter break they have conceded that they are yet to devise a plan B, after seemingly taking a month to come up with a Plan A that was so simple that even Kris Boyd had thought of it.
On the bright side, they do apparently have Alex McLeish's phone number...
Lawrie Spence has ranted and spouted his ill-informed opinions on Narey's Toepoker since September 2007. He has a life outside this blog. Honestly.
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