The best Rangers manager since Walter Smith. There, I said it.

And I mean both eras, 9IAR and 2007 – obviously Sir Walter is the Grand Master and always will be the greatest of the modern era. No one can match what he did, it defied all reason and he is rightly Rangers’ joint-best manager alongside William Struth. Some might argue he’s the greatest but this is splitting hairs.

Aside Walter since 9IAR we’ve had Advocaat, McLeish, Le Guen, Ally, McDowall, McCall, Warburton, Pedro, Murty and of course the ex-manager.

Quite simply, 4 matches in, 1 goal conceded and 4 victories on top of each other and Gio already has a strong case for being the best and most impressive Rangers manager aside Walter in this modern era.

We can’t express in words how amazing his start to life in Govan has been.

He’s given us every dimension of Rangers win. Smooth stroll against powerful opponents in Prague, solid win at tough venue in Livi, hard-fought tussle over nemesis side Hibs, and complete roll over of in-form Dundee.

Giovanni van Bronckhorst is literally the perfect Rangers manager. He’s formerly a world class player, a proven world class manager, and he’s one of us. And he was desperate to take this job.

He carries himself in total dignity, and he has a complete mastery of football and how to play it. He’s also one of the most fiercely intelligent managers we’ve ever had.

Sure, he’s going to have dips, this wonderful honeymoon period won’t last forever, probably, and we’ll handle it when those dips happen, but for now, we are cherishing going from where we were only 3 weeks ago under a non-manager, to what we have now.

Night and day.

Now, I know a lot are reading and thinking of Advocaat’s trophies and of Eck’s, and how well these guys did. And there’s merit to that. Gio is unproven as yet in our dugout for winning things. But no one has ever started better than he has, and that in itself is astonishing.

So thank you for coming home, Gio.