Jim White and Simon Jordan clash over Rangers ability to compete in the Champions League
Jim White and Simon Jordan have disagreed live on talkSPORT over Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s comments after Rangers were beaten 4-0 by Ajax.
Talking to BT Sport (7 September) the Rangers boss suggested that it’s “too much to ask” for his side to compete in the Champions League because of the “hundreds of millions” required to be a force in Europe.
His comments after their Amsterdam defeat have caused White and Jordan to clash over whether the Gers should be competitive on Europe’s biggest stage.
“The stand-out line from Van Bronckhorst is that it’s too much to ask to compete with them. No, not it’s not, you are in there so compete with them,” said White, live on talkSPORT [10:53, 8 September].
Jordan replied: “It is a massive step up into the Champions League and what they’ve got from it is an opportunity to not allow Celtic to disappear domestically with a great big bag of money.
“Despite Ajax selling a lot of their players, they are miles ahead of Rangers financially and have a far superior spending pattern and their performances have been good over the last few seasons.
“He does have an argument and he’s competing with both hands behind his back.”
Excuses
The comments from van Bronckhorst were a little bit strange considering the Gers were coming off the back of a 4-0 domestic defeat to Celtic.
Regardless of the disparity in financial backing between Ajax and Rangers, they should have put up more of a fight than they did on Wednesday evening.
The football world is completely aware of what the Gers achieved last season where they showed levels far higher than what they displayed against the Dutch giants.
Rangers went to the likes of Borussia Dortmund in the 2021/22 season and picked up some wonderful results, so it is clear there has been a significant drop in performance.
Losing Joe Aribo and Calvin Bassey can’t be used as the only excuse when it comes to their significant decline this season.
The Rangers boss shouldn’t have tried to use the financial disparity between the two clubs as an excuse for the outcome at the Amsterdam Arena.
It’s time for the players, manager and board to answer questions both on and off the pitch.
In other Rangers news, Michael Stewart got stuck into one player after what he did in the past week