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Among many other things, Rangers manager Derek McInnes felt his side looked ‘young’ and ‘inexperienced’ in Thursday night’s barrel-scraping fiasco in Jablonec nad Nisou.
‘We’re trying to make some signings to help with that side of it,’ he insisted. Quite how spending £8.5million on a 20-year-old South Korean in Kim Min-Su and a proposed £9.5million on 22-year-old Venezuelan Kevin Kelsy will prove a direct solution is anyone’s guess.
These guys might well be promising players, but how can they realistically be expected to prosper when entering the chaotic and febrile environment that exists at Ibrox right now? Kim has a handful of games at Girona under his belt and one season playing for FC Andorra in Spain’s Segunda Division.
Kelsy, admittedly, has a bit more on his CV. He got some big-game experience in Europe during a spell at Shakhtar Donetsk and has developed in the MLS at FC Cincinnati and Portland Timbers, boasting ten goals in 22 games at centre-forward in the current campaign.
Asking him to suddenly become the panacea for all ills – and, by golly, there’s a list of them the length of Edmiston Drive – within a Rangers side whose only achievement so far is to take the binfire of the past five years and show there’s plenty more where that came from is a different kind of challenge altogether. It is already inflicting mortal damage on the ill-equipped Ryan Naderi.
Best of luck to Kim and Kev, but the disorder in Govan at the moment has the potential to swallow them up whole. After all, McInnes, a grizzled veteran of the game, looks as if he’s already at that point.
Dejected Rangers players struggle to take in the magnitude of their European failure
That the 55-year-old carries the air of a dead man walking just seven games into his reign is beyond a shock for those of us – hands up here – who felt he represented the kind of thing Rangers needed at this juncture.
He would get the team organised and hard to play against, we thought. He would galvanise the squad. His knowledge of the club and the terrain would be invaluable.
Instead, he gives the impression he’s losing trust in everything – transfer dealings, his squad of players and even himself. McInnes is often talked about as having a tendency to occasionally overthink things and those disastrous losses to Jagiellonia Bialystok in Europa League qualifying and Jablonec in the Conference League preliminaries are entirely on him.
After an awful display in losing 2-1 in Poland, McInnes went three at the back against Jagiellonia at Ibrox because he didn’t want to put a right-footed player at left-back. A goal up and level on aggregate, he then put Ross McCrorie, a right-footed player, at left-back in a four for the second half and it all fell apart.
It is impossible to know where to begin with Jablonec away. It was as bad as anything seen since 2012 and all that. Worse than Raith in the Petrofac Cup final or Alloa in the semis. Worse than Progres Niederkorn. At least as bad as Queen’s Park.
Enough has been said about it and the underlying statistics. It was horrific. Resignation material.
Lord knows how many tactical switch-ups there were. Four? Five? Each achieved nothing. And if it was possible to set alarm bells ringing even louder than they were at the final whistle, McInnes managed it with his post-match comments.
Derek McInnes made some startling and frankly worrying admissions in the wake of defeat
He raised eyebrows when admitting at the time of the Bialystok balls-up that he wasn’t sure Rangers – about to take spending on players to almost £80million in just over a year – were ready for the Europa League.
His stuff after Jablonec was next-level, though. When the manager is stating he hasn’t a clue what kind of team he is in charge of – equally bad at being possession-based, counter-attacking or direct – it is impossible not to wonder what’s been going on behind doors since pre-season.
Kelsy will be the 13th signing of the summer. Yet, still, there is no real ID around the team he will be expected to fit into. No indication of the end goal. No solidity. No killer instinct. Precious little creativity.
It also looks like the players have already stopped listening and lost faith. And that’s fatal for any management team if it’s the case.
BBC radio passed comment during Thursday’s coverage of Thelo Aasgaard appearing to ignore McInnes late on.
In the TV coverage of the warm-up ahead of the Premier Sports Cup win over St Mirren, coach Paul Sheerin had ten players circled around him while giving directions, but Manny Fernandez looked like he was barely paying attention, turning the other way and spitting on the ground.
When things are going well, these things pass without remark. When they are going as badly as this, they’re red flags.
As is having a captain in Lawrence Shankland who doesn’t start games and a vice-captain in Dan Neil, whose involvement has been, well, bitty. As is leaving Nico Raskin at home for the Jablonec disaster when there hadn’t been any kind of bid for him.
Knee-jerk as it sounds, it is hard to see McInnes recovering from all of this. Rangers have trips to Pittodrie and Falkirk on league business, Motherwell visiting Ibrox and then a double-header with Celtic on their plate. It is difficult to see them coming through the next three weeks unscathed.
Kim Min-Su has arrived in an £8.5million deal but lacks the experience Rangers really need
Where that would leave the San Francisco 49ers-led revolution of the club is anyone’s guess. If McInnes gives the impression he is losing sight of what he is trying to achieve, you can multiply that tenfold for more or less everyone above him in the food chain.
That’s nigh on 30 new players in just over a year for that £80million. Signed for different coaches, different styles and, at present, a team that doesn’t really know what set-up suits. Kim and Kelsy just feel like more shots in the dark when a midfield playmaker with goal threat is needed.
Eventually, the heat must settle on technical director Dan Purdy and recruitment chief Robbie Thelwell. Performance director Stig-Inge Bjornebye is part of the cast of thousands who work transfers too.
You never hear a peep from any of them. Bjornebye also has ‘strategic responsibility’ for the academy. Who knows what’s going on there? David McCallum left and Brian Gilmour took over on an interim basis. Erm, and that’s about it. Deckchair-shuffling.
Chairman Andrew Cavenagh does put himself out there, but it’s getting harder and harder to take him seriously. Back in May, his latest handbrake turn involved proclaiming that transfer policy was now built around ‘pro-Scottish bias’. Three of 13 signings since are homegrown.
CEO Jim Gillespie has likened McInnes to Jurgen Klopp in public. It was a naive error to make most observers question whether running St Mirren really is preparation enough for this.
With more cash being thrown into a black hole and no European football, heaven knows what the accounts are going to look like next time round.
Rangers chairman Andrew Cavenagh isn't one to hide away but his words often seem hollow
Meanwhile, the club carries on with no sporting director, no obvious person determining the overarching strategy. Just because Kevin Thelwell wasn’t up to par, it doesn’t mean scrapping that position altogether is the solution. Right now, the club feels like it really needs someone with relevant experience to pull it together.
In a normal environment, these organisational issues would be addressed before another change of head coach. This ain’t a normal environment, though. And McInnes hasn’t a leg to stand on when he can’t beat a Czech outfit with an £8million turnover, a 6,000-seat stadium and a passport into UEFA competition only granted because the team it lost to in a domestic cup final got caught up in a match-fixing case.
Kim and Kelsy must wonder what they’ve signed up for. If it does see them waving goodbye to their new manager within a matter of weeks, though, one thing is for sure – he cannot be the only departure.
What has unfolded this season is unforgivable, but McInnes is far from the only person responsible. He’s just drowning in loser culture on a boat lacking stewardship, any real coordinates and in danger of being holed below the waterline.
