When will it be time to go for Pedro?

[pete 2,499]

Koeman's now available...

 

I don't think you can compare last season and this. Last season's spell was not his squad, and we were playing with youngsters for the majority of it.

 

There's definite progress; but it's clearly not enough for those that expect us to be beating everyone under the sun. We do need to start showing consistency in our results, for longer spells.

 

Koeman is a sitter for the Dutch job. Frank de Boer is still free though.

[Bill 13,717]

The right manager always makes success more likely but finding the right manager and supporting him financially is hardly something we excel at. I'm not sure I'd trust the current Rangers board to appoint anyone better than Pedro Caixinha and if they did I suspect there are several current players who would also want out.

 

Caixinha might be part of the problem but getting rid of him certainly won't solve all our problems. The squad is stronger ... it was so poor last season it could hardly be anything else ... but it still just isn't strong enough to give us the success we want. Like it or not, we're still short of 5 or 6 players and we don't have the money to buy them. Over the season we'll compete with Aberdeen but forget any ideas about winning titles for the foreseeable future.

[cooponthewing 1,139]

Koeman is a sitter for the Dutch job. Frank de Boer is still free though.

 

You going to pay his wages Pete? You also going to pay off Pedro, his back room team and all of his signings?? So there you go, Pedro won’t be going anywhere as we can’t afford it.

I actually agree his time could be coming to an end, however where do we find the money to pay them all up? It’s a bit of a mess.

[compo 6,158]

As soon as possible

[Yorkie Bear 512]

I think a bit of composure is needed here. Assuming we win on Wednesday, we’ll be third in the league and with Celtic and Aberdeen playing, probably 3 points behind second place.

 

I agree there seems a problem within the team that they cannot respond to going behind and when they go 2 down, they seem to give up. While Pedro needs to take some blame, the greater blame should lie with the players. They need to respond as a unit. They need to react to the brutality that is sometime handed out by the opposition, but I don’t kid myself that this is an easy thing to do.

 

For whatever reason referees seem incapable to dealing with hatchet men. Naively, I thought that after we had moved up from the Peterheads of Scottish football we would be allowed a bit more protection. How wrong I was. As Alves has said, the referees let the hard man tactics go unpunished early on and that sets the trend for the game. It then becomes a matter of survival and good football goes out the window. I don’t know the answer to this. It’s easy to say the players should rise above the baiting but when they are battered and given no protection, it must be very difficult. You can almost understand them just wanting the game to end so they can get off safely. When you see the state of Carduso’s face when he came off, surely the officials must have realised that something needed to be done. Instead, they send the Manager to the stand!

 

And by the way, did anyone notice that the combativeness of Hibs in the semi was somewhat less that it was at Ibrox. I don’t think that Stokes committed a foul all game! Or maybe I’m a bit paranoid.

[Tannochsidebear 2,316]

Let me say this first: the question is a relevant one and needs to be asked.

 

Yet, and that is a big yet, where does a manager's ability start and where does it end. Like the OF games laid at his door step, or the exit to Progres. Bad as it was, the players on the day carried a big responsibility and essentially failed to deliver. Up until the first game against the Scum at Ibrox, all the aforementioned games were mostly played with personell from ast season, personell we all agreed needed to be replaced. Progres was, and I know that people do disagree, a pre-season farce with half of the old and a handful of the new personell. And whether we would have made the group stages is very much up to debate ... and any exit would have received a similar fallout. Likewise, it is equally up to debate whether any other coach would have fared any better with the same players.

 

What we have seen since his arrival is a constant FLAK and ridicule from the m(h)edia, which, when you get it 24/7 for months, does get to you. And with the renowned fickleness of the Bears, IMHO a lot of reasonable discussion went down the drain. Without criticising the OP, the constant repetition of the bad results are pretty pointless right now. No-one bar the Yahoos et al care about our exit against Progres, unless you really want to dwell or revell on infamous stuff (which would be a bit off the norm for your everyday football fan). And those trolls from other clubs can be easily silenced by pointing out their failures in Europe, if they ever got there.

The Scum as a team are head and shoulders above us. 20 to 30m above us, for that matter. They are settled and a well oiled and drilled machine - with or without the help of the officials. We are being put under scrutiny at all frontiers, which eventually may hamper us on the field as well. The expectation levels seem way out of touch ... well, okay, maybe not exactly way out of touch, but sure not in line with reality these days. When you here this talk about "any Rangers should brush the rest of the SPFL bar the Scum aside" you know where things are wrong. And you start to wonder where in these last five years the minds of these people have been?

 

But back to the actual question. I gave PC till the end of September to sort his side out. IMHO, we have been more solid than last season and can play some attractive football. We actually "play football", as opposed what other teams do and did, not least against us. As someone pointed out, nowadays - no matter whether it is Cardoso, Alves or indeed McCrorie - you don't squeeze your bum each time the opposition attacks. Yes, we do lose goals, but that's what everyone does in this game. What we lack is a fighting mentality, which is doubly frustrating as I thought it would be exactly what Dorrans and Jack would add to the midfield. By the looks, teams have (as with MW's side) sussed out the required tactics against us and for the last few weeks we have failed to cope accordingly and change game plans. Which one can sure hold against PC, but there again enters the personell stuff. There weren't any hammer-throwers on our bench yesterday. We were having a debate during the game on the German board as to what needed to change, since our MF was effectively non-existant and we got nothing from the ref. Perhaps PC already noted that the fight was gone from some players or it was one of those days, but as I pointed out elsewhere, changes could have been made to adjust to Well's game plan. And there we would e.g. have blame that can be reasonably levelled at PC for not reacting quicker or more decisive. Somesuch may cost him his job, rather than freakish pre-season stuff or OF defeats.

 

The media will be full of niceties about PC and Rangers today, not least those of a Yahoo-inclination. That will only stop when we lift another trophy. We - and more the players than the manager - chucked it yesterday. A lot of conjecture will come around now ... as well as the almost stereotypical questioning of the appointment of PC. And people will bite again ... and throw their own conjecture about the likes of McInnes into the fray. With not a whisk of knowing how McInnes would have fared as a Rangers manager had he been signed last summer. But that won't matter in this atmosphere of low-key hysteria which is brewing since PC's appointment.

 

It is very much up to the board to see what they do about "the situation", if you want to call it such. I would assume PC will be here till the turn of the year - in the very least.

 

Every manager appointed mid-season comes in to a set of players who have been under-performing (hence why the predecessor got sacked) and who are not his first choice. Good managers, and even some average ones, get a bounce for a while and results and performances improve. Not under Pedro they didnt for us. As I said in the OP we havent won 3 games in a row since he took over.

 

I have read you several times downplaying the Progres result. It is the worst result in our entire history. Bar none. That cannot be downplayed, nor should it. If Pedro didnt have his first choice picks ready for this game, then he takes the blame for that. The same scenario existed for Progres, a lot of new players and they started pre-season the same time as us, yet on a budget about a million times less than us. Our Under 20 side should have been able to beat them. Whether we went on to make the groups stages or not (most think not & I agree), to be eliminated at that stage cost us a fortune, and the manager has to be criticised for it.

 

We are as far ahead of Motherwell in financial terms as we are behind celtic. Yet we lose to Motherwell and its fair enough, and we lose to celtic and we cant expect to compete? It cannot be both. I dont expect to win every non-OF game domestically, but I certainly do expect to win most of them, and I most certainly expect us to win a SF at hampden with 80% of the support behind us against a provincial club with perhaps one player (Moult) who would make it into our 18 man squad.

 

We certainly do have good days where we play well and win easily. Everyone goes home happy and we move on to the next one. The problem is that under this manager we have never built any consistency of results or performances. He has been here 7 months, 25 games, spent £10M, which a substantial amount of time and resources, and I dont think it is too much to expect him to produce a team that knows how to beat the likes of Motherwell on a consistent basis.

 

I agree that unless he has a disaster and loses 3 on the trot that he will be given more time (wrongly IMO) and the board will see where we are after the OF game at Xmas in relation to Dolly and the rest of the league below us, as any change for the season should be with an opportunity for the new guy to do some deals in January, both in and out.

 

One thing that troubles me greatly was that coming out of Hampden yesterday and walking back towards Battlefield, and even on the bus going home, there was a real apathy about our situation. The result was not a huge shock as it should have been. There was no angry shouting, no trouble or gesticulations. Most people walking along the crowded streets were not even talking about the game. It was a shrug of the shoulder and an acceptance I never thought I would ever see from Rangers supporters, so there is without doubt a realism amongst the hardcore that actually attend Rangers matches, which might be different from the internet only guys, that we have no divine right to win, and we are a Rangers side in name only.

[Franc Ergs 1,357]

Seems Pedro has now hung the players out to dry , and that's going to be difficult to come back from.

Could even have an adverse affect for the Killie game.

 

You're spot on about Stokes there though Yorkie Bear, and i'd also add that he didn't celebrate his goal either.

[chilledbear 16]

When the crowd turn on him and the Board.

[forlanssister 3,050]

Do we give the next manager one window and if he doesn't set the heather on fire before the following window bin him and so and so on and so on........?

[Rousseau 9,399]

Koeman is a sitter for the Dutch job. Frank de Boer is still free though.

 

Is Dick a stop-gap?

 

I'm not too enthusiastic about FdB...