Rangers, finally, confirmed the coaching staff officially, particularly the permanent appointment of Alex Rae, as revealed to you by Ibrox Noise a month ago.
In the first formal statement on the matter, Rae alongside Stephan van der Heyden, Brian Gilmour and Colin Stewart were announced as Philippe Clement’s official staff till at least next season, with, as Ibrox Noise also said, Steven Smith dropping out of the reckoning some 6 weeks ago.
Steven Davis has retreated out of the spotlight entirely and continues to work on trying to get fit for one last outing for club and country to say goodbye to the fans properly.
But now we know officially it’s Clement, Rae, van der Heyden, Gilmour and Stewart and that will be that going forward.
Our thoughts?
Rae is one of us, truly, and does know the Rangers and Scottish climate a lot better than Clement does, and even his managerial career was notably above average. No Pep, true, but commendable – clearly does know his way around a training ground.
We’re not sure we always agreed with his every word on Rangers TV as a pundit, but views have to be sanitised on broadcast channels for a family audience with a hint of ‘pushing the corporate line’ which is basically why Barry Ferguson never got a job at Rangers. He makes plenty of guest appearances for functions, but doesn’t get the big job, because he speaks his mind.
But Rae was more considered, and given his decent managerial stint, and experience, Clement has evidently been impressed with him on the training ground.
As for SVDH, he’s just Clement’s historical right-hand man, he’s his Jean-Paul van Gastel, that Giovanni van Bronckhorst was unable to get at Rangers. In Clement’s case, this was his first choice. So he’s obviously happy with that.
In Gilmour that’s his connection to the Academy, and Stewart just remains goalie coach as his father did for years before leaving for Forest 6 years ago.
So that’s it all set up, no Neil McCann, Kevin Thomson – Rae got the job and so far we’d say he’s doing not badly with it.
We’d still have liked to see Steven Smith remain involved but that wasn’t to be.