Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s Rangers career is ultimately marred by grief. The club called the former Ibrox midfielder back in 2021 when Steven Gerrard, dissatisfied with the lack of transfer activity, left for the Premier League’s bright lights.
At first, under Ange Postecoglou, Gio provided stability while Celtic slowly recovered. However, a catastrophic batch of signings and dubious Omicron call-offs made the January transfer window a pivotal one, costing Rangers the chance to win the Scottish Premiership.
In the end, Giovanni van Bronckhorst lost out on league form despite trailing by seven points, as he managed to avoid elimination by making it to the Europa League Final and won the Scottish Cup.
After the next season, the barriers fell down. The strain on Van Bronckhorst increased even though they qualified for the Champions championship as a resolute Celtic team started to easily win the championship.
Gio will be happy to be receiving the support he never received in Glasgow from his present employers, but, as the summer window approaches the possibility of yet another Rangers Board disaster.
Rangers board let Van Bronckhorst down. Rangers supporters believe that even though Giovanni van Bronckhorst helped the team to great success, he was never given much support at Ibrox. Gio managed the high-dollar sales of Calvin Bassey and Joe Aribo while leading the team to both the Champions League group stages and the Europa League final. Rangers felt terribly short going into the season, despite this, as they were humiliated in the Champions League and ultimately defeated by Celtic to win a triple.
Gio paid the price, but in the wake of the incident, Dave Vos, the Dutchman’s former assistant, openly criticized the team’s lack of depth. After sitting ominously in the Ibrox audience, watching the pressure rise on Van Bronckhorst, Rangers supported Michael Beale the next summer with a £21 million budget. After nearly two years away from the game, Gio is back in command of Besiktas, and it’s safe to say that the Turkish team is approaching the former Rangers manager in a new way.
Besiktas is supporting the Dutch coach. Besiktas has been hard at work this summer molding the team after legendary former Feyenoord, Barcelona, and Arsenal player Van Bronckhorst.
Van Bronckhorst has added a number of high profile players to his team as Besiktas look front up the challenge of Jose Mourinho’s Fenerbahce and Okan Buruk‘s Galatasaray next season.
Experienced Benfica campaigner Rafa Mir and Atletico centre-back Gabriel Paulista have joined on free contracts but undoubtedly decent wages.
The Turkish side have also spent around £2.5m bringing in Italian striker Ciro Immobile whilst loan Libyan midfielder Al-Musrati has just joined the club permanently in a record £9.2m deal from Braga.
The spending is not expected to end there either, with Turkish outlet Milliyet reporting that Van Bronckhorst has approved a move for Real Madrid midfielder Dani Ceballos.
This level of backing was almost non-existent as an apprehensive Rangers moved into the post-Covid world.
Whilst Rangers did spend a combined £12m on bringing Antonio Colak, Ben Davies, Rabbi Matondo and Ridvan Yilmaz into the club, this was well short of the necessary investment the squad needed.
A poor record of investment at Rangers has brought the Ibrox board’s recent decision-making in the transfer market under the microscope.
Only this week was Philippe Clement clear that Rangers need to sell before they can buy.
No-one at Ibrox can hide from the fact that there have been some seriously poor transfer decisions made in Glasgow over the last three or four years.
Not least this includes a certain Dutch striker, Sam Lammers having the potential to cost the club £7.5m come the end of his contract.
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