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Rangers manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst told to manage St Mirren
Rangers manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst has been told to get on with it after complaints that he didn’t have the budget to compete.
The Dutchman has watched over successive 4-0 defeats against Old Firm rivals Celtic and then Dutch champions Ajax and there have been claims that the club should have spent more in the summer to strengthen the squad.
But St Mirren manager Stephen Robinson thinks that is nonsense and suggests that he should try managing a smaller Scottish club to gain some perspective.
“He wants to try managing St Mirren!” he said, as quoted by the Daily Record. “It is difficult with the money in the Scottish game when you compare it to a lot of other leagues. It just isn’t the same.
“And it isn’t the same for Celtic and Rangers when they encounter teams like Ajax and Real Madrid. It’s fantastic that they have both got there. It’s the type of stage Scottish teams need to be on to try and build that money up.
“But there’s obviously a vast difference in what you can recruit at that top, top level. If you look through Madrid’s team, it’s crazy the players they have and crazy the players they have on the bench.
“But we experience that every week. If you look at Celtic’s bench, they’ve got David Turnbull, who I sold for £3.2million, sitting there. I’d say that fee is about two-and-half or three times our budget, and David can’t get a game.
“That puts it into perspective of what 90 per cent of the league is up against every week. Celtic and Rangers experience the same financial disparity when they come up against the top sides and it’s very difficult to bridge that gap. It’s a challenge. It’s not a complaint, but it is a fact and it’s something we get on with.”
Levels
If St Mirren were able to consistently challenge as one of Scotland’s best teams then they could have an excuse to back themselves on but they have been irrelevant to Rangers for as long as many can remember.
No team in Scotland can claim to have the same issues as Celtic and Rangers and while it may be for a variety of reasons, these two sides are carrying the flag for the nation.
Hearts were embarrassed in the Europa Conference League by Basaksehir on Thursday in a 4-0 defeat of their own and they are comfortably the third best side in the country behind the Old Firm.
van Bronckhorst is well within his rights to claim that the finances weren’t there for his side even if there was far more than at most clubs because the aims are totally different.
There are levels to this game and St Mirren are nowhere near that of Rangers.
In other Rangers news, Calvin Bassey reacted to a special night for him on Twitter as he was relatively untroubled by his former teammates.