You could set your watch for it. Every year, at the end of the campaign, when we’ve won the big prizes, the story begins: the club from Ibrox will be “ready” for the next season. The media never gets tired of it, and yesterday night’s Mail featured John McGarry.
Will they ever learn? Do they never spend the summer licking their wounds and attempting to build without making exaggerated claims? Every time they do this, they increase expectations dramatically, and in recent seasons, this has resulted in early dismissals.
Of course, having to fire a manager in the middle of a story assists this narrative because it allows the incumbent to use the justification that he is still working with another team. January windows are overlooked or dismissed as unimportant; “He needs the summer” is always the way this is phrased. The wheel turns once more.
However, some statistics published today on one of their websites ring a warning note if they choose to hear it: of the three managers – Van Bronckhorst, Beale, and Clement – the present manager has the lowest points per game record over his first 30 games in charge. Van Bronckhorst is by far the best, as evidenced by his accomplishments there. He helped the club reach the European final and win the Scottish Cup. This guy is not going to come close to it.
It’s apparent already that some of the teams have figured this guy out. The slip in their form towards the end of the season was blamed on stuff like fatigue and injuries; in fact, teams sussed his tactics and started to adapt to them.
Only a truly exceptional manager can then make changes on the fly. Rodgers proved that he could; whatever modest modifications he made to the playing style from February onwards won us the championship. Clement’s team regressed within the same period of time.
However, McGarry and others remain confident.
They say he did well. He’s done a modest, but unsuccessful, job, and I honestly don’t know what people see.
The football is only somewhat better than Beale’s, and Beale’s 30-game record has him beat. It’s all well and well to state that “the gap is only one point bigger” than when he started, but that ignores what we all saw happen: they got ahead and then finished eight points behind; that’s a ten-point reversal in a quarter of a season, which should worry them.
No, it does not. Instead, they’ve ordered another helping of Kool Aid and are happily drinking it. Madness. But it’s a familiar brand of crazy, because it’s happened every year like clockwork since they broke into the top flight on their second attempt. Nothing matters today. It’s always about what they’re going to do tomorrow or sometime soon.
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