Warburton's Last Selection for Rangers

[Souness04/86]

That was the Wednesday before. Took off Hyndman off when he was our best player and said that we "had a responsibilty to Bournemouth and protect their asset"

Drew 1-1 with Ross County on the Saturday and we were booed off the park. The following Friday Warburton was gone.

To this day I have no idea how we paid £1.8m for Joe Garner. He was everything Warburton didn't want in a footballer. The dud couldn't even strike a ball cleanly.

Garner was alledgedly a brown envelope signing
Switched to a warburton family member as his agent just before signing for us

 

[Starting Anew]

He did very well in the Championship and had us playing our best football in years too, worlds away from where we were before he came in, and for a spend of only £500k or so too I believe. Probably similar to what Dundee Utd spent on Lawrence Shankland's signing on fee.

His signings were also largely profitable. It was mismanagement on our part that we sold the likes of Martyn Waghorn so cheaply.

He tried to do too much in one window when we got to the top tier, with no real scouting system in place, when he should've just tried to build upon his foundations and get us a decent centre back, defensive mid, attacking mid and right winger instead of a whole new team.

His departure leaves a sour taste but he cost us nowhere near what the likes of Pedro cost us and I'd far rather have held on to him and given him the £5m Pedro wasted on Hererra and Pena before getting Stevie G in.

I’ve said this several times before but Warburton was very much a charlatan.

Our board clearly have gone for a very specific skillset in a manager and that is someone who adds an extra bonus in transfer dealings. Gerrard has been dramatically the most successful because he has proven to be the best manager and his ‘added extra’ has proven genuine and sustainable. He added the nearly unmatched star power of his name and brand plus incredibly close unofficial ties to the scouting network and infrastructure of Liverpool. Caixina, in theory, added knowledge of a few untapped foreign markets and a draw to players of Latin origins. But it turned out his draw was not that great and the markets, though untapped by Scotland, were tapped by others with deep pockets so there were no valuable bargains to be had.

Warburton had the added extra of a huge knowledge of English youth markets and connections to folk within the English game and development system. However, at the time he came to us, these contacts were fast expiring. Most came from his involvement in the under 19s NextGen series tournament that he developed and organised. This ran from 2011 till 2013. He joined us in 2015. At this time, he had extensive knowledge of the players from this tournament who stood out and these players knew him. So he had great knowledge of English youth talent between the ages of around 20 to 24. He knew players who had potential but had not fulfilled it - like Tav and Wes - who we could get access to. However, as time progressed, this knowledge got older. By the time he left in 2017, the NextGen players were 24 to 27. They had either already made it in the game and were outwith our price range or their failure was established and they were not recovering. Warburton has no great football insider knowledge beyond this. Hence his transfers getting progressively worse each window.

Moreover, many of his transfers were more than a little suspect, most coming from an agency represented by one of his family (daughter, I think?). Hard to know which is chicken or egg here. Did Warburton in good faith suggest NextGen stars to his daughter’s firm and so went back to them for the players he knew. Or was he just giving money to the firm from the clubs he worked for? Either way, the talent pool dried up quick.

This, coupled with his crazy football philosophy that defence or winning ugly didn’t matter led to increasingly diminishing returns. We could be sand dancers when our players were massively superior to the opposition. But, once the playing field got more level, you need warriors in defence and guys who can outmuscle as well as outplay the opposition. Every great team has some hard Bastards in it.

His football philosophy was wrong. And his ‘added extra’ in transfers had a very short time limit.

He brought us on from McCoist’s chaos to at least have a football philosophy (albeit a wrong one). And his initial transfer window did get a couple of gems. But I would argue that Pedro actually left us in a stronger position when he left. We had a functioning set of tactics and some players with backbone. Gerrard, of course, has taken us to a massively elevated level.

 

[CaliforniaBlue1872]

It's easy to ridicule this team but the truth is that the road back to being the best team in the country is progressive and accumulative; every Rangers team since 2012 is better than the last one.

You only need to look at, let's say, the semi-final against Aberdeen last year - Flanagan at left back, Worrall in the middle, Ejaria on one wing, Coulibaly in the middle and Sadiq up front - to realise the folly of taking the piss out of what was, at the time, regarded as a upgrade from the year before.

I notice that the posters mocking this team have conveniently left out some of the duds from this year and accelerated straight to the 2019/2020 season.

100% spot on IMO

While we look back now and struggle to remember the positives due to how it ended this squad and Warburtons time were a massive upgrade on the players and approach during Ally and then McCall

It's been a long road but we're about to reach our destination

 

[Denimdemon]

I still think he should have been punted after the SCF. Judging his time at ourselves and Forest he seems to galvanise his teams for the first 6 months then things go tits up. I expect the same outcome at QPR

 

[Gersboyjohn]

I suppose it was part of the journey, thankfully we are nearly there.

 

[Molly Sugden's Bridesmaid]

has garner done anything since leaving us?

Of course not.

 

[BlueBougie]

Not many pass marks in there

 

[Staunch!]

Just watching the game v Leeds and was wondering what his last eleven was like for us

Wes
Tav
Senderos
Hill
Wallace
Holt
Hyndman
Torral
Miller
Garner
McKay

I think only Tav can really say he got better although Clint Hill, Senderos and Kenny Miller were coming to the end .

Shivers