WITH all due respect to those who worry about equities and loans and resolutions, what most Rangers fans want from today’s AGM is a definite assurance from the board that a new and successful manager will be appointed soon.
They will also want to know that the incomer is a person of qualities sufficient enough to get the Ibrox club out of the slough of despond in which it is currently mired.
No other issue really matters to the fans, with many of those who have invested their hard-earned cash in the club quite happy to wave it bye-bye if Rangers can just get a boss who can get them winning again.
It is now five weeks since Pedro Cashedinhischips and departed the scene, with almost no one expressing any regret about him leaving. It was clearly a bad choice by the board and hopefully they will apologise for the mistake to the shareholders in the Clyde Auditorium this morning.
Fatuous attempts to put the blame on managing director Stewart Robertson for signing Pedro have failed, so it is to be hoped that the shareholders ask sensible polite yet probing questions of the men who have ultimate responsibility for the club, chairman Dave King and the board of directors.
The departures of both Mark Warburton and his replacement since the last AGM will need chairman King to be at his Jesuitical best to explain what happened, but if anyone can convince the shareholders that past mistakes will not occur again, then it is him.
It now appears clear that Alex McLeish will not be returning to Ibrox at this time, and if Derek McInnes had been willing to take the job then he would already be in the hot seat.
Walter Smith is enjoying his retirement, there’s no sure bet candidate despite what the bookies say, and maybe, just maybe, people should believe what director of football Mark Allen – remember he had no part in signing Pedro – has been suggesting about time being taken to find the right man to take Rangers forward over a period of years.
The problem, as always with the Old Firm, is that any new manager of Rangers or Celtic never gets more than a few games to prove himself and a run of defeats condemns him to the exit door. The incoming Rangers manager will also find himself being constantly compared to Brendan Rodgers, however unfair that is given the disparity of resources between the two clubs at present.
He will also have to work with an underachieving squad of players and there has to be a doubt about whether he will get the sort of budget that has been promised in the past to move some of them on and bring in genuine contenders.
It will take all the persuasiveness that chairman King can muster to keep the shareholders happy, and in simple terms he needs to tell the truth about one thing above all – who is going to lead Rangers back to at least competing against Celtic. Do that and the rest of the AGM is a doddle.
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