Rangers' Rocky Start: Fans Divided Over McInnes' Management
Rangers’ draw with Jagiellonia Bialystok has done more than drop the club into the Conference League play-off. It has ripped the lid off a support already simmering after a stuttering start to the season.
The mood? Split between patience and outright exasperation.
Patience wears thin – but not everywhere
Jim, a Rangers supporter for six decades, urged calm. He has seen worse, much worse, and he is not ready to turn on Derek McInnes.
“Give the guy a chance,” he insisted. McInnes, he argued, is not “deliberately playing for draws or losses” and needs time to mould a side that has been rebuilt at speed. Expecting instant miracles, in his view, is fantasy. For fans of his generation, this is another rough patch in a long history, not the apocalypse.
That is very much the minority tone.
‘Knocked out by a club nobody had heard of’
For Ronnie, Thursday night was a line in the sand. Being dumped out of the Europa League qualifiers by Jagiellonia Bialystok – “a club nobody had heard of and who have never qualified for the Europa League” – summed up where he feels Rangers are.
“We actually look worse than last season,” he said, pointing the finger squarely at McInnes’ approach. Tactics and substitutions, he believes, are only fuelling the anxiety in the stands.
The numbers haunt him. Four games into the campaign and not a single goal from open play. Four goals total: two own goals and a penalty. For Ronnie, that is not a blip, it is a verdict.
He went further. McInnes, he claimed, has had “the worst start to a season of any Rangers manager” and warned that defeat to St Mirren on Sunday would see fans “stay away”.
A team that doesn’t look like scoring
John called it “another dysfunctional performance”. What troubles him most is not just the result, but the utter lack of threat.
The almost total absence of clear chances this season has left him baffled. “It’s totally bizarre,” he said. When Rangers do not create, everything else frays. The defence, already “flaky” in his eyes, comes under even more scrutiny.
For John, there is an ominous familiarity to it all – “a worrying Russell Martin 2.0 feel”. A team short on ideas, brittle at the back, and drifting.
Millions spent, same problems
Derek, another fan, looked at the summer outlay and saw no return.
“New manager, new players, millions spent and we are as bad as last year,” he said. The fresh faces, he feels, simply are “not good enough”.
The decision to turn down big money for Youssef Chermiti only for the forward to be ruled out for the season has become a symbol of misfortune and mismanagement rolled into one. For Derek, Rangers right now are “a poisoned chalice” – a club without a settled team, trapped in a cycle of chopping and changing that history has already proved does not work.
His only consolation? “We’re not in the Champions League.” In other words, the damage could have been even more brutal.
‘Shambles at the back, toothless up front’
Steven did not dress it up.
“Shambles at the back, toothless upfront,” he said, summing up his view of a side that “lack everything needed to be successful”. Above all, he sees a shortage of character. Safe, predictable passing. No risk. No edge.
The goal conceded against Jagiellonia, with three defenders around the attacker and still unable to stop the shot, was, for him, the perfect snapshot. This is not about injuries, he argued. It is about quality.
Four goals this season – two own goals and a penalty – is, in his eyes, an indictment of recruitment, mentality and execution.
A crossroads already
Four games into a new era and Rangers find themselves under heavy scrutiny from their own. One voice calls for patience. Several others are already staring at Sunday’s meeting with St Mirren and wondering:
Is this just a slow start – or the shape of the season to come?
