Rangers Fans, Blame Culture And A Broken Bar

One supporter uses a barroom analogy to question what any manager can do with an unmotivated squad, and why Rangers fans are desperate to pin the anger on someone new.

A Rangers supporter has summed up the mood around the club with a simple barroom analogy that asks a brutal question: what can any manager really do when the staff do not care?

The bar manager and the broken staff

Imagine you are running a bar. You are the manager, you have an assistant, a supervisor and a dozen staff. The problem is that eleven of them are poor at their jobs, know it, and are not particularly bothered. They treat the place as a stop gap, a wage until something better comes along. Only one member of staff is genuinely diligent and naturally hard working.

You would like to empty the place and start again, but you cannot. Head office have told you there will be no new hires until after the festive period. You are stuck with what you have for months, right at the busiest time of the year. You know standards will slip, the place will be a mess, but you can only work with the staff you have.

The key question in that picture is obvious. How do you motivate that group of people who are not invested in the bar, who do not see it as their destination and who are largely content to coast? How do you make them buy into standards, culture and effort inside a month or two when they have already shown they are not that way inclined?

From the bar to the Rangers dressing room

That imaginary bar is really Ibrox. The supporter is asking whether it is realistic to expect any manager to come in and transform a squad if too many of the players are not truly invested in Rangers or are mentally done with the place. You can change the gaffer and reshuffle the backroom team, but if the core group on the pitch is checked out, what then?

The mood in the stands reflects that frustration. Fans are fed up and angry after too many seasons of inconsistency and big moments slipping away. When that happens, the natural instinct is to find a target. First it was figures like Ross Wilson and James Bisgrove. Then attention shifted to recruitment heads such as Nils Koppen and others involved in the football structure. Once some of those people moved on, the spotlight simply swung elsewhere.

Now, as the supporter points out, the blame is spread around: some are pointing at the new faces brought in, some at long-serving players like the captain, others at midfielders or forwards who have not delivered often enough. Increasingly, some are already turning their frustration towards Danny Röhl and his staff, despite the reality that he has inherited a group, not built one.

Blame culture and the reality of rebuilding

The underlying point in the bar analogy is that there are limits to what motivation, team talks and tactical tweaks can do if the personnel are wrong. You can demand more intensity, you can shout, you can massage egos or lay down hard lines, but you cannot completely change the nature of players who have already decided this is not where they want to be.

That does not mean players are literally as bad as the image of eleven useless staff in a bar, but the feeling among a section of the support is clear: too much of this squad feels temporary, soft, and too quick to hide when pressure comes. Until that core is turned over, the fan believes, any manager will be working with one or two genuine leaders and too many passengers.

Supporters are right to demand better from anyone representing Rangers, and criticism of performances is absolutely fair. The challenge is separating that from a constant hunger for a new scapegoat. If the underlying squad issues are not properly addressed over several windows, the cycle continues: a new face to blame every few months, but the same culture on the park.

Rangers News Views aims to give supporters honest, thoughtful coverage without the usual rumour mill. The bar analogy is a reminder that shouting at the manager might offer short-term release, but the real hard work lies in shifting a dressing room from stop gap mentality to genuine, long-term buy-in.

Written by AyrshireMurphy 4 12 2025