We don’t hate Graeme Murty

A lot of our readers have made the pointed observation that we appear to have an axe to grind with Graeme Murty. They attack our output on the basis of the criticism we make of our manager, and even some of our own staff here on Ibrox Noise disagree with their fellow writers on whether or not Murty is deserving of this negativity.

See, it really isn’t an attack on Murty, nor was it an attack on Pedro, or even Warburton, or McCall or Ally before them.

It’s an attack more on the calibre of manager Rangers appoint these days without intending it as a personal smear on any one individual.

If we go back in time to the glory days of the 90s and onwards, Walter Smith was untouchable, rightly, because the man was a titan. Any criticism of him was ridiculous. He was succeeded by PSV’s Dick Advocaat, and sure the wheels came off there but the two or three seasons under him were mostly amazing, even if he had a colossal chequebook to help. He was then followed by Alex McLeish, who had been prime stock at Hibernian – and even then the appointment wasn’t a hugely popular one. But nevertheless Eck gave us Helicopter Sunday and made history as the first Scottish side to get to the last 16 of the Champions League.

The first modern era dud was Paul Le Guen, and most fans could see his regime as the wrong man wrong time mistake it was, and the gentleman lasted six months before Walted saved us again.

It was after Walter’s retirement and Ally’s spell in charge that the calibre of manager in Govan suffered a stark downturn.

Himself, McDowall, McCall, Warburton, Pedro, Murty – compare that with Walter, Advocaat, McLeish and Souness and the difference is stark.

THAT is what we have a bone to pick with – not Murty himself. He’s just our latest ‘not good enough’ manager to follow all the rest, and that’s a trend which began with McCoist.

Our real gripe is with the decision making by the board – the choices which appear to manifest themselves in Govan. Sure, Warburton got us promoted, but less impressively than Lennon did for Hibs or Neilson did for Hearts. He was completely found out in the SPL while the latter especially managed to top the thing for a while. And his successor was a disaster from the moment he was first revealed as being in the running, before Murty came in and just continued that.

We have nothing against Graeme Murty – he just isn’t a Rangers manager, albeit that comes with a caveat of not a ‘proper’ Rangers manager. As standards have dropped the past few years we are starting to worry if this new level is becoming the norm.

A team which once had the great Walter reduced to Pedro Caixinha. To Graeme Murty.

We worry that our board is failing desperately to attract the right men to the job. No one is going to tell me that good managers don’t want the Rangers job. We can still have a Rangers level manager again.

But we need to have a plan, a budget, a vision and a coherent strategy. Rangers are not going to lure a good quality manager to Ibrox without any enticement.

It’s probably why we ended up with Pedro, and why we’ve resorted to Murty.

So, no, we don’t hate Murty. We have just lost patience with the pathetic vetting and recruiting that is leading to sub-standard managers being appointed at Ibrox.

We want and deserve better.