Daniel Feliciano

Wed 4 October 2023 18:40, UK

Heart and Hand podcast have called for Steven Davis to be part of the new Rangers manager’s backroom staff as part of a “long-term succession” plan for the role.

Davis was named as the interim boss after Michael Beale was sacked on Sunday and will take charge of games against Aris Limassol and St Mirren before the international break.

With a new manager expected to come in after that, the club’s official partner took to their official Twitter account (3 October) to call for a “sensible” decision to start growing our own coaches to avoid this issue in the future.

“Regardless of how he does the next week, is it not sensible to add Steven Davis to coaching team with a view to long-term succession planning?” they wrote.

“Realistically if a manager does well for us he’ll get poached by a richer league, and if he does badly he’ll get sacked. So shouldn’t we be trying to grow our own coaches too?”

Why not?

It’s pretty clear that Davis isn’t ready to step into the full-time role as manager right now, and he isn’t qualified to do it anyway.

But there’s no reason why he can’t work under the man we select to come in, knowing that the person chosen will come with huge expectations where he needs to deliver, so that he can learn under them and get a head start.

We tried something similar with Ally McCoist and Walter Smith years ago and it obviously didn’t work out too well, and the club will no doubt be wary of having to part ways with another legend.

But as mentioned, any manager who pulls their weight and delivers is likely to be poached away by a richer club in a more lucrative league and if they don’t deliver then they will get sacked too and we’ll have to keep looking.

In either of those instances, it would be good to be able to hire from within, with someone who knows and loves the club to be able to step in and succeed. So why not? What harm could it do?

In other Rangers news, “sizeable compensation fee” needed for new boss to be hired at Ibrox.