The word on Rohl is wholly positive, though. Players talk at length about his many strengths. Barry Bannan says he’s the best manager he’s ever played for.
It’s not the same, but he has operated successfully in a demanding regime before. In Sheffield, before he was appointed, the team was in the grip of the worst league start in more than 150 years.
He had an owner, Chansiri, who was, to put it kindly, eccentric. He had fans in uproar over all manner of things. He had players who were not only demoralised but also unpaid at times.
So, though Rohl is only 36, he’s had experience of football’s turbulence. He’s young, but he may not be wet behind the ears. You’d hope not, for his sake. Once a defender, he was invalided out of the game with an ACL injury at 21. It takes talent and drive to do the things he has done since then.
Every Rangers fan will know the outline of his story, the assistant manager positions he held at RB Leipzig, Southampton, Bayern Munich and Germany.
He has said before that he doesn’t do dogma and is not a slave to any one system. He’s flexible, be it 4-2-3-1, 3-4-3, 4-4-1-1 or any other formation. It would appear that he’s tried them all at one time or another depending on the challenge staring him in the face.
There’s enough testimony out there about the endless hours he put in at Sheffield Wednesday and the improvement he made to the players he had – Djeidi Gassama, now at Rangers, being one of many.
The fans liked and admired him. He kept Wednesday up when most people had abandoned all hope. He got them to 12th the following season with a side high on energy and togetherness despite Chansiri-inspired mayhem behind the scenes.
The supporters didn’t want him to leave at the end of his second season in July this year, but thought he was better off out of the basket case.
He cited financial issues and a total breakdown in communication with Chansiri as the reason for a mutually agreed contract termination.
Rohl says the scale of the challenge at Rangers is part of the appeal, which is what you would expect him to say, but fans have heard too much chat from too many managers to be comforted by fighting talk.
Win games and he can be as quiet as a Trappist monk. Don’t win games and the eloquence of the greatest orator will not save him. It was ever thus.
