A new man in the dug-out. Fresh faces in the side. The slate wiped clean. Optimism abounding at the start of a new season.
For Rangers supporters descending on Tayside this evening, there is a familiarity to all of this. The same might be said for the sense of emptiness which has invariably arrived in the past five years when all the early hopes have turned to dust.
When Derek McInnes walks out of the Tannadice tunnel shortly before 8pm, he will be the sixth Rangers manager to do so on the first game of a new league campaign in as many years.
That speaks to the tumult and the unrest that’s engulfed the Ibrox club, the lack of palpable success in that period and, perhaps, a lack of patience among directors and supporters. It certainly underscores the lofty standards by which the 55-year-old will be judged.
Those who believe that it will be different on his watch point to his work at St Johnstone, Aberdeen, Kilmarnock and Hearts where he squeezed every drop out of players. It’s a compelling argument.
McInnes’ five years as a Rangers player in the 1990s, his upbringing as a supporter, also give him a head start on many of his predecessors. None of this will be easy for him, but none of it will catch him off guard.
New Rangers manager Derek McInnes has urged caution over hopes of instant success
He’s wary, however, that his rock-solid credentials for the job make him — in the eyes of so many — the surest of things.
The same was said by some of Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Philippe Clement — both title-winning managers at other clubs — when they began a new campaign in Glasgow. Neither man was around to see the next one.
McInnes’ record and reputation may have got him in the door yet he’s acutely aware that only if he justifies the faith which has been placed in him will he be the one to stop the recent churn.
‘The club can be so brilliant for a player and to manage because it can bring us so much. But we have to be the ones to drive it,’ he stressed.
‘Just because you wear the badge and play for a club like Rangers and work for a club like Rangers, it does not guarantee you anything.
‘You have to guarantee the togetherness, the work rate, being good enough to win games of football week in, week out. And not just being reliant on the strength of the club and the size of the club and 50,000 fans getting behind you.
‘We have to tap into that, but we can only tap into that positively if we are doing our jobs well.
‘No one is going to give us a title, no one is going to give us trophies. We have to work for it. It is the work rate part of it, the commitment part of it, that will make the difference.’
McInnes knows expectations of the Rangers support will be high, as he feels they should be
McInnes will remind his players of the pain they suffered last season before they kick off the new campaign at Tannadice this evening.
‘It’s not a place to be enjoyed if you’re not winning,’ said the manager. ‘You shouldn’t be comfortable at Rangers if you’re not winning. We’ve got to feel uncomfortable if we’re not winning.
‘It’s important for me to try and make the players realise that this club can bring you so much enjoyment and so much reward. It can be a brilliant experience. Yes, there is a lot of suffering at times and a lot of soul searching. There’s no worse feeling than somebody thinking you’re underachieving and not doing enough. That’s a horrible place to be.
‘Normally you get a job because something’s not quite right, because something’s broken somewhere and you go in and you’ve got to just try and implement what you want, how you want to work.
‘You have to try and galvanise the team and I do feel on the back of last season that although it’s a fresh start, we’ve still got to remind them that we don’t want to have the same feelings that they went through last season.’
Those fans who haven’t forgiven McInnes for turning Rangers down and remaining at Aberdeen in 2017 are now few in number. He had his reasons for doing so — primarily a concern over the way the club back then was functioning. But that was then and this is now. Under American ownership for the past year, he didn’t procrastinate when the offer arrived to take him from Hearts.
McInnes discusses tactics with winger Djeidi Gassama and has admitted his squad is youthful
He isn’t promising to immediately deliver the title that he came so close to landing at Tynecastle, but he’s vowed to stop at nothing to try and reach that ultimate goal as quickly as possible.
‘I know what needs to be done. I am determined to do that,’ he stressed. ‘I do not want to let anyone down.
‘The players and myself have to make sure we give ourselves the chance to be successful. There is work to do, but we will do it. I intend to do it well.
‘I want to enjoy being the Rangers manager. I want my players to enjoy playing for Rangers. We can only enjoy it if we are winning.’
While it would plainly be preposterous to make sweeping judgments on his newly assembled side by the time this evening’s game has come and gone, the importance of the outcome cannot be overstated.
In each of the past three seasons, Rangers have failed to win their opening match. Michael Beale, Clement and Russell Martin quickly discovered that playing catch-up is a fateful game in these parts.
Despite yesterday adding Olwethu Makhanya’s name to a squad already bolstered by players including Lawrence Shankland, Cammy Devlin and Dan Neil, McInnes’ rebuild remains a work in progress.
This fact will not be offered in mitigation by the manager if his side don’t get the required outcome.
South African defender Olethu Makhanya has become McInnes’ latest Ibrox addition
‘I just think that a lot of teams are not fully equipped at this stage in terms of all the recruitment,’ he stated. ‘We’re still a good bit short in terms of what we want to do. But we’ve got to look at what we have got rather than what we’ve not got, and I don’t want to make any excuses.
‘Dundee United have got an advantage in that they’ve played four competitive games and we haven’t. I do think that is certainly an advantage, but of course we’ve got so many more advantages over Dundee United.
‘In terms of the resource to bring in a level of player, it’s important that we actually look at what we have got. We are more than capable of going up there and getting a positive result.
‘I’m pleased with the fitness of the team, obviously some players are ahead of some others as is the way of it. But I really want us to make sure that we’re ready for the game. There’s no excuse if we don’t win.’
