One thing that was noticeable about Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s departure as Rangers manager is that there was no mention of any of the coaching team leaving with him.
Dave Vos arrived with a sterling reputation of youth development having been poached from the Ajax academy with an equally as impressive Dr Ceri Bowley leaving his development post with the City Group to go back to his coaching roots – it remains to be seen if both will continue in their current roles or be redeployed into something more suitable for their skillset and experience.
Bowley has learned the hard way though with a series of social media posts that have now been deleted, first of all thanking his former boss by saying that he had been a “victim of his own success” before backtracking and apologising for his choice of words.
Bowley spoke recently on a podcast about how, sometimes, things have to get worse before they can get better. The problem with that sort of claim is that we were hardly struggling before Van Bronckhorst and his coaching team came to the club.
We were far from our best but, we were league champions, top of the league and had a history of relative success in Europe. We needed fine tuning not to be ripped apart and re-built – which is exactly what Gio did, last season, at least.
Part of the problem is that we have never really been told what exactly the plan is. Are we planning to introduce academy players into the first-team and gradually replace experienced professionals with younger, fresher legs, if so, what are the tactics, because there hasn’t been much clarity about those either?
Sometimes, it’s better to say nothing at all.