Giovanni van Bronckhorst should now be honest about failed season against Celtic

By David Walton

May 19, 2022

Now that Rangers have failed to win the Europa League, it’s time for Giovanni van Bronckhorst to own up to his failings this year.

Back at the start of the season, losing the league for our rivals was unthinkable. A total disaster given the automatic UCL spot that was at stake. Almost impossible too given how big a rebuild Celtic had.

Van Bronckhorst actually had the pleasure of walking into the job with a 6-point lead over Celtic too. The Hoops were just getting started under Ange, with the Rangers manager starting from a position of strength.

However, under his stewardship, the Ibrox club saw a 10-point swing come the end of the season in our favour. Celtic would win the title by 4 points after taking advantage of a host of domestic mishaps from our rivals.

In 2022 alone, van Bronckhorst has failed to win games against Aberdeen, Ross County, Dundee United, Motherwell, and 3 league games against Celtic with 2 ending in defeat.

That’s 16 points dropped in the second half of the campaign alone. These included a 3-0 hammering off Celtic at Parkhead and a 2-1 home defeat in April’s Glasgow derby. Could you imagine if these results happened to us under Ange?

Rangers boss Giovanni van Bronckhorst hasn’t impressed against Celtic

The Rangers manager has been able to get a pass for all of the above for the simple reason his side went on a deep run in the Europa League. The truth is success in that competition was always going to be unlikely. Therefore, where is the accountability for their domestic failings?

If this is going to be such a great season for Rangers, why are they only going to potentially end it with a Scottish Cup? Even then they’ve still to beat Hearts in the final, which could prove trickier after losing to Eintracht Frankfurt last night and the mental blow that will inflict.

Van Bronckhorst laughably stated in the run-up to the final that the Europa League is where Rangers had been putting all of their energy. Whether this was meant as some sort of cover-up for their dreadful domestic results is a plausible suggestion. But there’s no hiding place now that they failed to win the competition.

All Rangers truly have to show for this season is a second-place finish in the league and a European final in which they lost. Winning the Scottish Cup would end their campaign with one single trophy – not quite the treble that was being touted for them at the start of the season [BBC].

We won’t pretend that getting to the final wasn’t a great achievement for them. Of course it was. But it can’t be used to cover failings and glaringly poor results under their manager’s stewardship.

It’s time for some accountability over there. Goodness knows we’d be getting hammered if it was the other way around.

In other news, Celtic reportedly wanted Frankfurt hero Rafael Santos Borre last year