Have you heard the story about the young boy who looks after the sheep was how I wanted to start this post. Then I thought it was going in the wrong direction, so maybe it's best I focus on the football. And there is a post tomorrow about the match, this is a teaser.
It's a teaser because there is an increasing amount of nervousness around at the moment. And I don't mean because of what is happening elsewhere, I specifically mean at Aston Villa. There is a growing number of people that are losing confidence in our manager and are starting to believe it was a mistake in giving someone with so little experience such an important job.
And these people might not be wrong. The current Rangers manager is only 20 games in but has a better win record than that of Steven Gerrard and even Ally McCoist was better according to Wikipedia. And Ally McCoist came in to work most days with a hangover.
That hangover comment about Ally McCoist is not a fact, it's just me trying to demonstrate that you can be Rangers manager and go into work every day with a hangover and you'd be expected to get the win record he got. You have only one team you are really competing against!
And the thing is, we got the bounce and the bounce is never good. The bounce is a new manager comes in and the team perform for him and results go our way. This is the team trusting the manager, proving they can do it. But then with all bounces, we drop back to earth and after a couple of not so high bounces, things go back to normal.
The bounce isn't good because we learn a few things. One and the most important thing, is that team can do it and if they can do it for a few games, you've got to ask why they are not doing it more often. The next thing you learn is that they stop winning and there has to be a reason for that and I suspect that is down to personalities.
The thing you also learn that nobody wants to talk about too early is that the manager might not know how to get the team playing better again and when the manager has so little experience that conversation is going to start sooner rather than later. The thing is, it might not be down to his experience it might very well be down to personalities or something that nobody has figured out yet because football, while not rocket science, also doesn't have a blueprint to success, just a guide and how that guide is interpreted, might not be what is going to bring success.
No, I've not had a gummie yet, I'm just having a moment of clarity and that moment is also telling me that we need to win tomorrow. No win tomorrow and things are going to turn sour for our manager and CEO. Remember, this all started with the CEO and the narrative he created that we were not progressing the way we had hoped. The CEO is as much to blame for where we are right now and I can easily write that because when things are going well, he doesn't hide and he likes the limelight. It's a two way street Mr Purslow.
Stevie, I don't know what you said to the players or if you said anything to them when you took over, but whatever you did, try and get it back for tomorrow.