Nobody Wants the Job – Rangers Becomes Football’s Biggest Red Flag

Rangers have turned managerial exits into an art form & with Kevin Muscat joining the growing list of refusals, the door at Ibrox is spinning so fast you’d need a crash helmet just to step through it.

There’s chaos, there’s calamity, and then there’s Rangers Football Club. While Celtic are not exactly a picture of calm - we’ve had boardroom battles, tactical calamities, and PR disasters that would make even the Vatican blush - it’s comforting to know that whatever nonsense we get up to, the blue half of Glasgow somehow manages to take it a step further. If Celtic are a basket case, Rangers are the entire wicker factory on fire.

This latest managerial saga has to be their magnum opus. After a season of lacklustre results and talk of “losing the dressing room,” Russell Martin finally got the boot - a decision met with the kind of inevitability that only Rangers can muster. They hailed him as the bold new face of their rebuild just a few months ago, promising attractive football, youth development, and stability. Turns out, what they actually got was a leaky defence, a toxic dressing room, and a manager who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else by the end.

But here’s where the real comedy begins. Since Martin’s sacking, Rangers have somehow managed to turn a managerial search into the longest-running humiliation event in Scottish football. Every name linked with the job has either distanced themselves immediately or publicly rejected it in record time. It’s been like a conga line of refusals - Steven Gerrard was interviewed and then quickly rejected, Danny Rohl knocked it back before a meeting could take place, Sean Dyche ruled himself out of the job as soon as folk started linking him with the job, and now Kevin Muscat’s interest barely lasted longer than a week, while Derek McInnes laughed off any notion of returning to Ibrox. Now any managers being linked with the job will be telling their agents, “Don’t pick up if it’s a Glasgow number.”

The real question is: why would anyone take it? The Rangers job has become a thankless, high-risk, low-reward gig that no serious manager wants. The board demand miracles with a Championship-level budget, the support expect immediate trophies, and the people actually running the show have all the charm and control of reality show producers. Managers can’t even sign their own players, because the Thiewell father & son duo handle recruitment from start to finish. Imagine trying to rebuild a squad when your new striker’s been chosen not by you, but by a father-and-son act who still think scouting footballers on YouTube is advanced data analytics.

What makes Rangers’ situation so deliciously absurd is that they’re trapped by their own mythology. They still sell the job as if it’s a European powerhouse post - a “massive club” where managers are expected to restore past glory and “challenge Celtic.” The problem is, this is a club that’s financially stretched, organisationally chaotic, and emotionally combustible despite the recent 49ers takeover. You can’t rebuild when your supporters expect domination with immediate effect.

And good luck surviving the abuse that comes with it. The treatment of past managers has become downright infamous. Michael Beale went from “the man to bring us back” to a viral meme inside six months. Philippe Clement arrived promising stability and ended up with fans chanting for his head before Christmas lights went up. Russell Martin got the same routine - lauded as a Vegan messiah one week, chased with fury and bile the next. It’s hard to see any serious manager looking at that track record and thinking, “Yes, please, sign me up for some of that.”

The so-called “loyal” Rangers support have made a sport of eating their own. The social media witch-hunts, the Ibrox car park protests, the chants, the conspiracy theories - it’s all part of the modern Govan meltdown package. One bad result and you’re branded a fraud, a bad appointment, or even part of a secret fenian plot. The fanbase might boast about passion, but these days it looks more like a collective nervous breakdown on repeat.

Meanwhile, the board that supposedly runs the club continues to lurch from one fire to another. The same executives who hire the wrong managers then blame those managers for failures entirely of their own making. The transfer policy is a joke, the recruitment team runs like a closed shop, and their financial statements read like a bad pub quiz in creative accounting. And yet, they continue to parade around as if they’re running Real Madrid.

For the neutrals watching this unfold, it’s like sitting back with a pint and a front-row ticket to sitcom gold. Yes, we have all had our fair share of chaos. Boards can be tight-fisted, communication is often abysmal, and decisions from the top don’t always make much footballing sense. But compared to the circus in Govan, even Celtic currently look like a well-oiled machine.

Rangers are once again tearing themselves to pieces. No manager, no plan, no money, and no sense of direction. The talk among their own fans has shifted from ambition to pure survival as their club is closer to the bottom of the table than they are the top - and are now hoping someone, anyone, agrees to take the job before Christmas.

It’s a remarkable fall from the bombastic self-confidence that oozed out of them when the heralded the arrival of the 49ers and titling themselves as the richest club in football. Do you also remember the “back where we belong” lines? The talk of “challenges to Celtic dominance”? Those words now ring hollow in the face of the shambles they’ve created. They can’t even tempt a manager to take their vacant job, never mind mount a serious title charge.

So here we are, Celtic fans watching from across the city, shaking our heads - and laughing. Because yes, Celtic are in the midst of their own chaos. But as long as Rangers keep finding ways to self-destruct bigger, louder, and funnier, we’ll always have something to smile about.

At least when Celtic implode, we do it with a bit of style. Rangers, on the other hand, turn every setback into full-blown Shakespearean tragedy. Their board blames invisible enemies, their fans eat their own, and their next manager will walk into a job that’s broken in advance.

So yes, we might complaint about being a basket case - but thank God we’re not that basket case. Because if there’s one thing football in Glasgow has taught us, it’s that no matter how messy things get at Celtic Park, Rangers will always find a way to make us look stable by comparison.