Hindsight is a wonderful thing but those of us with decent memories will remember a time back in 2017 when there was a real sliding doors moment in the recent history of Rangers Football Club.
Ross Wilson rejected the chance to become our sporting director, preferring instead to stay in the Premier League with Southampton, what happened next set our club back years as a failed experiment went badly wrong.
With Graeme Murty acting as caretaker manager, there was a need to appoint somebody permanent, we had, however, been actively been searching for a figurehead to lead the recovery of the recruitment and scouting teams and someone with high level expertise in this role.
Surely the right thing to do was to get the sporting director in place first, then appoint a new manager with their guidance?
We didn’t and ended up with Pedro Caixinha.
Everyone knows what happened next with regards to recruitment and how much it cost the club over the next few years to pay players and staff off from their contracts, to rebuild the squad again, that the only decent transfer fee we received was for Josh Windass says it all.
Mark Allen did a half decent job in terms of bringing players in – he got plenty wrong as well though – but the arrival of Wilson into the role has seen a notable change in terms of a tangible strategy to, not only improve the first-team, but also the bank balance.
It’s all “ifs, buts and maybes” however, having an individual who is a specialist with a proven track record in the role could have seen us return to our rightful place at the top of Scottish football an awful lot quicker – just take a look across the city to see what happens when you get that appointment wrong.