‘This is what I know and don’t know about Danny Rohl’s Rangers move after phenomenal Sheffield Wednesday scenes’
Rangers find themselves in the all-too-familiar position of searching for a new manager to take on the demanding hot seat at Ibrox.
Russell Martin was sacked by Rangers after a 123-day spell that was, frankly, nothing short of a disaster and yielded just five wins from 17 competitive games in charge.
Rangers chairman Andrew Cavenagh sent an open letter alongside vice-chairman Paraag Marathe to accept culpability for getting their first managerial appointment wrong since assuming control of the Light Blues.
But there is little time to dwell on past failures and the next move simply has to be right, and the rumour mill is already in full swing as to who will replace Martin at Ibrox.
Steven Gerrard has been linked with a return to Rangers, and given he was the last coach to deliver a Scottish Premiership title in 2021, he would have a large swell of support.
Danny Rohl to relish Rangers manager opportunity
But Ben Jacobs shared via X on Sunday that former Sheffield Wednesday boss Danny Rohl, who was reportedly on Rangers’ summer shortlist, remains a name of interest to the hierarchy at Ibrox.
Sheffield Star journalist Joe Crann spoke exclusively to Ibrox News about Rohl and said the German would relish the opportunity of managing a club that has such demanding expectations.
“It’s difficult to say what Danny would and wouldn’t accept at this point in time, because I know that when he left Wednesday, it did feel like he was a little bit spent, a little bit tired,” said Crann, who has over 200,000 followers on his personal X account.
“Everything at Wednesday was so stressful at that point in time. His exit was long and protracted, I know he said at the time that he wasn’t going to be rushing into anything, but he’s had a little bit of time now. He’s a football man, he’s one of those people who just lives it, so I think he will be itching to get back into it, but obviously the Rangers job is very high pressure.
“The way things went with Russell Martin wasn’t good at all, so you’ve got to come in and turn things around. I think it’s the sort of challenge he’d like, managing a big club like Rangers is certainly something he’d be interested in doing. It’s difficult to say on timing, I think, whether it’s something he’d be looking to do now.
“In terms of what sort of manager they’d be getting – obsessive. That is what Danny is. He lives and breathes the game, he’s the sort of person that I think if you turned up at this house at any given point, there’s probably a game on the TV somewhere, that is just (him). He works incredibly hard, he’s the sort of manager that will be obsessive about what he does.”
Danny Rohl is no stranger to a crisis
Rangers are a club that have found themselves perennially in crisis in recent years.
Rohl is no stranger to working in tough circumstances, though. If you’re talking crisis clubs, then no team fits the bill more right now than Sheffield Wednesday, with the financially stricken English Championship outfit currently placed under as many as six EFL embargoes.
The 36-year-old drew plaudits for the exceptional rescue job he did during his first season at Wednesday, who he led to survival despite the fact they had just three points from 11 matches by the time he took charge of his first game against Watford in October 2023.
- Rohl had a 38.2 per cent win percentage at Wednesday.
- The Owls finished 12th during his one full season in charge at Hillsborough.
- Rangers winger Djeidi Gassama flourished under Rohl in South Yorkshire last season.
Adored by the Owls faithful for that great escape, the German departed on a somewhat sour note as fraught tensions with owner Dejphon Chansiri led to a public game of cat-and-mouse surrounding Rohl’s exit, which was finally announced on 29 July this year.
But Crann believes the hugely ambitious Rohl will be keen to show that what he achieved at Hillsborough was no fluke and that the lure of managing a club like Rangers, where trophies are demanded, could potentially be a huge selling point.
“Danny did a phenomenal job at Wednesday during the time he was there. It all went sour towards the end for a plethora of different reasons. I don’t think anybody was particularly faultless in how any of it played out in the end,” Crann added.
“I think Danny will be very eager to get back on the horse and sort of show that what he did at Wednesday wasn’t by chance. And obviously at Rangers, you’ve got a real shot at winning things as well.
“At Wednesday, he wasn’t really going to win anything; he had an impossible task working with a very, very difficult man at the top, whereas at a team like Rangers, your goals and things change and there’s a lot more scope to have real success.”
Read more: Rangers sources have named two front-runners to replace Russell Martin
Danny Rohl will have no issue with Rangers’ demanding expectations
Martin himself acknowledged during his brief tenure that he was an unpopular choice among many supporters right from the off, and Rangers fans protested against Martin as frustration over poor results and his possession-based style of play boiled over.
One criticism aimed at the former Southampton boss was that he never really understood the gravitas of managing a club the size of Rangers.
Rohl may still be in the infancy of his head coaching career, but his impressive CV includes working with now Barcelona boss Hansi Flick during his stints as Bayern Munich and Germany head coach. Indeed, he was part of Flick’s coaching staff when Bayern won the Champions League in 2020 with a star-studded cast including Robert Lewandowski, match-winner Kingsley Coman, Thomas Muller, and Joshua Kimmich.
As such, Crann thinks Rohl would have an immediate grasp of the sort of expectations he would work under at Ibrox.
“I think absolutely he gets it,” he said.
“It’s obviously different when the whole pressure is on you as manager rather than as assistant but Danny will absolutely have felt real pressure when he was working with Hansi Flick.
“The national team at Germany and Bayern, they’re two massive institutions. I don’t think Danny is too worried; he’s not the sort of person who gets too worried about demands and pressure and that kind of thing.”
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