Rangers’ board is in a huge £5M stand off with Giovanni van Bronckhorst

Talk is now increasing that Giovanni van Bronckhorst and the Rangers board are trying to come to a compromise with regards the Dutchman’s doomed tenure in Govan.

The bottom line is GVB is not going to resign, because like Steven Gerrard at Villa, he is not interested in losing out on a circa £3M-£4M pay-out, and we can’t honestly say we blame him for that.

No, if Rangers are to replace him, the board will have to fire him, and to this date he’s not been given the dreaded vote of confidence – indeed, Rangers’ board has failed to make any statements at all the past month or so, if not more, ever since that charm offensive a few months ago.

So their silence on Gio is conspicuous to say the least, and we imagine that silence will remain until the man moves on, by hook or by crook.

Problem? Rangers don’t want to waste the circa £5M it will cost to fire him and his staff, given the accounts quoted exactly that amount as profit in the recent numbers, meaning what little profit we’ve made will end up down the tubes in GVB and his staff’s pockets.

In short? Better in their pocket than his, frankly, is the message we’re getting. Furthermore, Rangers made that amount from ‘selling’ Steven Gerrard one year ago, and to immediately splurge all of it in firing his successor would just be bitter irony.

But he’s not going to quit – if there’s one thing about many of the Dutch, they are stubborn, they are a touch arrogant, and they never admit they got something wrong. Resignation isn’t in Dutch DNA and Gio will hang onto his job until told otherwise.

So now Rangers’ board is in a conundrum – Gio isn’t going to dump the job, and they don’t want to pay the £5M out, so what do we do?

This is the dichotomy now facing the club, and unless the board decide to stump up the money, the manager is going nowhere – so it’s now a standoff, and whoever is weakest will lose.

It’s that simple.