Giovanni van Bronckhorst is well aware that the walls are closing in all around.
He’s heard the angry calls for his head and the chants advising him where he ought to get to. And he knows the clamour will become ear-splitting tonight should Rangers drop any more league points at home to Hearts. But yesterday the Dutchman showed a defiant side when he insisted he’s not yet ready to throw in the towel or be hounded out of a club that he loves. Nowhere near it.
“Well, it’s hard not to be aware of it. I don’t live in a basement!”, is how he put it when asked if he has his finger on the pulse of the fans’ discontent. The truth of the matter is, this is a support which is only just short of mounting a full-scale revolt following a desperate run of damaging defeats, the latest of which came at St Johnstone on Sunday, when the fury spilled over into the McDiarmid Park car park. Van Bronckhorst added: “So it’s obvious for everyone to see and for myself as well.
“The only thing is I can focus on my performance with the team and focus on winning games. That’s all that matters. I know how it works in football. I’m 47. I’ve been here for many years. So for me, that’s not a problem at all.”
And yet this does feel like a crisis point nonetheless. Van Bronckhorst has two more games to get through before the domestic campaign shuts down for the World Cup.
One further wrong move tonight, or at the weekend away to St Mirren, is likely to mean his services won’t be required after FIFA’s circus has left Qatar. With a team ravaged by injury and performing so erratically, the pressure on the manager must be almost unbearable.
And yet van Bronckhorst refuses to play the sympathy card at a time when so many are suffering more seriously out there in the real world. He said: “You read the papers and see what is happening in the world. For me, that’s always been the case. I love my job, I love being a coach, I love being here at the club. But it’s not ‘tough’ for me. It’s difficult but it’s not tough. Other people have it more tough and I always put that in perspective. I look at my family. Some people out there are having very tough moments. That doesn’t mean I won’t give it 100 per cent for the job because I know it’s a difficult moment for all of us. But we just have to keep going.
“I’m like any other football manager in the world. If you win games that’s always a start. Look around you at how many managers there are already without a job this season alone. That’s the same for me. But I just keep going and try to work hard to reverse it.”
It almost beggars belief that he should be here, in this wretched position, just a few short months after leading Rangers to a Europa League Final in Seville. So much has gone wrong in such a very short space of time. But van Bronckhorst is now clinging to the belief that it can turn around again just as quickly.
He said: “The passion is unbelievable here and when you win games and everything is fine like last summer you were like, ‘I want this every week!’. But you’re also aware that it can change like we see now.
“We qualified for the Champions League and everything in August was really fine. Then the tough games began. After dropping five points in the league in the last two weeks you know the pressure is on.
“So you enjoy the moments when you have success and when things get tough you have to show your character and keep on going. Maybe I don’t show that with my body language but I do with my players and in the meetings every day. The passion is still there and it will always be there.”
That, of course, was another stinging reference to Brian Laudrup’s suggestion that van Bronckhorst looks like a man who has already given up. Yesterday, it must be said, he most certainly didn’t sound like one. Rather, he continued to insist that his side can receiver from this maelstrom to claw back Celtic’s seven-point lead at the top of the table.
He said: “Of course we have the belief. It doesn’t mean just because you are losing games that you don’t have the belief. There is still a long way to go. We have made it more difficult for ourselves by losing points for the second time in the last couple of weeks, so we have to change that because we need to get the points every game now.
“It’s very important to get two wins, that’s normal. Then we have a break for five weeks so hopefully we use the break to get some players back and be stronger when we continue after the World Cup.”
Asked again if he truly believes a relentless Celtic might be careless enough to let such a lead slip away, he responded: “Why not? Everything can change in football and we saw that also last season when we had a six-point gap and that changes at the end of the season. That’s football. You have difficult moments over the period of a season and you have to come out of them as quickly as possible and get points. There are a lot of games to be played and a lot of points to be won. But the most important thing for us is to change it tomorrow by winning the game.
“Of course I can turn it around – otherwise I’m not sitting here.”
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