Giovanni van Bronckhorst will kick off his reign as Rangers manager tonight when the Light Blues face Sparta Prague in the Europa League at Ibrox – and the Gers need to draw a line under last weekend’s shambolic Premier Sports Cup defeat by Hibs as a new era gets underway at Ibrox.
The Dutchman will lead the Gers for the first time since his appointment was confirmed last week as Rangers look to take a massive step towards securing European football after Christmas.
‘While feelings are still raw among some fans following the 3-1 defeat at Hampden by Hibs, the Rangers support can’t pour into Ibrox tonight and immediately get on the players’ backs – even if there are a few in the squad who deserve a rocket.
But with so much at stake for Gio’s side, there needs to be a clean slate for the players moving forward.
Connor Goldson’s comments after the League Cup defeat by Hibs lifted the lid on what some fans have expected to have been the case for a while but, hunger for more trophies or not, van Bronckhorst’s first game in charge is a massive opportunity for everyone to prove whether they want to be a Rangers player or not.
There’s probably some in the dressing-room who saw their Rangers career’s starting to wind down the minute Steven Gerrard jumped on a train to London for talks with Aston Villa, and they’ll quickly be found out in the coming weeks.
Fresh start for everyone at Rangers
A new manager, usually, brings a lift in performances and that shouldn’t be any different with Rangers after the return of van Bronckhorst to Ibrox and it is only right the players are given a chance to get themselves out of the rut they’ve found themselves in recently.
The Dutchman has already made it clear that he wants his players to put the work in and prove they belong at Rangers – and the fact that van Bronckhorst has no loyalty to any of the players makes for an interesting dynamic.
Managers will always end up with certain biases towards players the longer they are at a club and working with one group but with everybody at the club having been signed by previous managers and nobody having worked with Gio before, the players have it all to prove.
That will have already started in the handful of sessions under GvB and his staff but tonight is the first real test of the players since.
What happened at Hampden on Sunday should still be hurting in the dressing-room at Ibrox – but for everyone’s sake – Rangers and the fans need to move on from it and focus on what is to come under van Bronckhorst.
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