The Murty mistake

In this bright and exciting era of Steven Gerrard, your resident grumps Ibrox Noise have enjoyed being a lot more positive. Players linked, dross likely to be punted, and the hopes of us all that Stevie G will turn out to be more Graeme Souness than John Barnes.

However, we’ve held off discussion of a developing story purely on the basis of awaiting to see exactly what manifested, before drawing any conclusion.

In simple terms, the restoration of our former manager to youth coach.

Regulars to the site will know we are not fans of this individual – we were strongly opposed to his appointment, briefly let up as we gubbed Ayr and Falkirk, but when it finally came crashing down around us, then got worse than we ever feared, we couldn’t drive him out of Govan fast enough.

The latest is of course that he’s back in his former role, or will be imminently, and to say we are appalled at this is an understatement to put it mildly.

This man has no place at Ibrox or Auchenhowie. We are on record as saying that.

Youth results have improved under Billy Kirkwood, and that is as critical a starting point as we can muster. To revert back to a man Mark Warburton misguidedly brought to Ibrox is a stunningly poor move which we cannot abide.

Let’s not forget, this is a manager who, at Parkhead last season, said:

“The atmosphere here is second to none.”

Utterly unacceptable comment for any Rangers employee to make, never mind the manager.

There was also the defence of Cedric Kipre’s assault which has utterly derailed Ryan Jack’s career – the midfielder lost the rest of last season yet his manager defended his opponent.

This is not the right man to have any position of authority within Rangers, and if Steven Gerrard sanctioned this appointment, we can only assume he’s done so utterly misguidedly.

As caretaker he did ok – we cut him slack, plenty of it, given he was reluctantly in the role in the first place. But once willing manager that slack was gone.

Then of course the dreadful Hampden incident which saw Kenny Miller and Lee Wallace suspended and fined for speaking their minds.

And we’ve not even mentioned:

His pride at getting Celtic for his testimonial;

“It is a great honour for me for Celtic to come and play in this match. With my dad being a life-long fan, the club has always featured very strongly in our family. It’s a dream to get them down here and I’m sure the fans will love seeing one of the biggest clubs in Britain here.”

This didn’t actually happen in the end, and reports are he faced a Reading select team but nevertheless it doesn’t change what he said.

And the fact a tonne of Celtic men have defended him in the press, while few of a Rangers persuasion have done likewise.

We could go on, and on.

He shouldn’t be at Ibrox in any capacity. His race has run, and it is a truly shocking call to have him back.