The scoreline of any cup final is the bit that gets remembered, and fair enough, you don’t get to rewrite history. But when Rangers fans talk about Röhl’s first final in charge, a lot of us aren’t talking about a moral victory. We’re talking about a moment where you could actually see a manager, in real time, trying to put a proper shape and mentality back into the side.

Inherited squads aren’t all the same

The comparison some folk like to make is with a new boss coming in and getting an instant bounce inside a week. But that only really works when the squad is settled and has years of understanding behind it. If a team has mostly been together, you can keep a lot of the old framework, tweak a couple of messages, and focus on lifting heads. Motivation and clarity can take you a long way when the players already know each other’s games.

Röhl’s situation felt different. He took over a new group that had been assembled with a particular style in mind, and the issue was that the style wasn’t working. When that happens, you’re not just changing a few details. You’re rebuilding basics: distances between the lines, when to press, when to drop, how to play forward without panicking, how to defend transitions without looking like you’re stuck in mud.

No time on the grass, and it showed

That’s the other thing that gets missed. If you’ve got a cup final just over a week after you arrive, and you’re playing games every few days, there’s barely any proper training-ground time. It becomes video, quick walkthroughs, and trying to get messages across in snippets. That’s not ideal for any manager, never mind one trying to undo habits that have been drilled in.

So you end up judging on signs rather than perfection. Did we look more organised? Were we harder to play through? Did we look like we had a plan even when the plan was under pressure?

The red card and the part people forget

Going down to 10 men for most of a final is usually the point where it caves in. And yet there were spells where it genuinely wasn’t obvious who had the extra man. That’s not luck. That’s players being asked to work in a specific way, stay compact, stay switched on, and believe they can still compete.

And that, truth is, is why plenty of Rangers fans came out of it thinking: we’ve got a good manager here. The result hurt. But the reaction, the organisation, and the refusal to fold told its own story.

Written by Angus1812: 27 January 2026

Tags: tactics transfers