As we all know, the cat is well and truly out of the bag following the recent Old Firm victory, and that concerns the exit of technical director Dan Purdy. We don’t quite know where to begin with this one, but we will go with the Ibrox Noise angle on it and Dan Purdy expose. This was a very curious incident indeed.
🚨 Sky Sports News understand Dan Purdy is stepping down from his role as Rangers' technical director. Full story in comments ⤵️🔗 pic.twitter.com/PeMUosGBGw
— Sky Sports Scotland (@ScotlandSky) September 11, 2026
Dan Purdy’s Rangers record
Purdy, as we know, has been very poor at his job. Generally speaking, his department, whichever areas actually fall upon the technical director, has been doing next to nothing. We do not know just how much of a hand he has had in all the signings since he joined. We believe it has been a significant influence.
While Rangers fans are very happy with Olwethu Makhanya and one or two others who came in this summer, overall, of the 14 additions, not too many have had a positive impact. Kelsy is yet to fully find his feet, Min Su has been more miss than hit and nobody else outside of the South African has really been sparkling.
We don’t really give credit to Purdy for James Penrice, who had been linked with Rangers for a considerable period of time. He is a Rangers man and that one was always going to work out. But in general, Rangers’ work in the transfer market has been more miss than hit and an awful lot of money has been spent.
All of it could work out in due course. Rangers could go top of the league and Celtic could fall apart. We cannot possibly predict what the future holds, but Purdy was not popular. Dan Purdy was extremely unpopular with Rangers fans, just due to the general vibe around him and, of course, crucially, his association with Kevin Thelwell from his Everton days.
Ibrox Noise examined the system
Ergo, Ibrox Noise’s Tom wrote a massive exposé of Rangers’ Kitman Labs system, which was the system used at Everton when Purdy was alongside Thelwell. The writer of the original content and analysis that Tom himself was referencing is a gentleman by the name of Paul Quinn, an Everton fan and a huge contributor to the Analysis series.
Consequently, Tom explored Rangers’ use of this data and forensic analysis system in comparison with Tony Bloom’s outstanding Jamestown at Hearts and, of course, his other three projects. The findings were fairly damning.
The problem wasn’t with Rangers’ technology or its data. The problem was with the lack of proficiency of those who were using it, and this very much fell under Dan Purdy’s remit. Rangers’ scouting, recruitment and general data forensics system was spearheaded and ruled over by Purdy.
Only five days after Ibrox Noise published our findings, Purdy resigned. There can be little doubt that Purdy resigned in big part because of the extent of this piece. This piece was an outstanding piece of work by Tom and indeed the reference work by Quinn, and it exposed the problem that Rangers have had.
The problem with Rangers’ technology
The problem, in its essential basics, is having technology on site that the users don’t understand. There is, of course, a further paradox to Purdy’s resignation hence Dan Purdy expose. Ibrox Noise’s conclusion was that the technology was there, but the wrong people, or insufficient people, were using it.
In other words, we didn’t know how to use our own technology properly and were misusing it, unlike the Jamestown people, who are deeply versed in how they use their own technology because Tony Bloom is the pioneering force behind that system. He knows how to get the best out of his own tech, basically.
Kitman Labs is different. The technology is provided to the company or club and the users have to learn how to use it, like a user guide. This is not going to make for natural and easy use. Purdy was the boss of all this and, as we say, barely a week after we published our findings, the boss resigned.
And as we said, there is a paradox here. The paradox was part of our conclusion, which is not just the insufficient quality of those using the system, but the turnover in people who did. Too many Rangers staff were coming and going and no one was sticking around long enough to actually learn properly the technology that we were using.
Just about when somebody might have picked it up a little bit, they’d get replaced by somebody else. Or they’d resign, and Purdy is very much another example of this. Hence the paradox!
Rangers must get the next decision right
The idea here now is that Rangers get a new technical director or don’t bother at all. If they do get a new technical director, it has to be someone who sticks. It has to be a good individual appointment.
There are a number of candidates who have been floating around. Lee McCulloch is a big one. David Weir is a huge one. Graeme Souness is another possibility and some make a case for Barry Ferguson.
Either way, it has to be someone pretty smart. Someone who understands Rangers but understands the technical side of running a football club. This is not a CEO. It is not a manager. It’s the football administrator, the hands on worker who controls the whole club on the basis of both the business and football sides.
In simple terms, this is something that Dan Purdy is not very good at. It’s no wonder he’s quit amid Dan Purdy expose because he has been exposed by this article. We now await the next person or the decision not to have a next person.
Time will tell on that front.