BOB Malcolm has admitted criticism of long-serving Rangers coach Billy Kirkwood and Ibrox icon John Brown has been hard for him to stomach - and argued the Nine-In-A-Row great could help to identify players with the backbone needed to play for the Glasgow giants going forward.
It was revealed last week that loans manager Kirkwood and scouting coordinator Billy McLaren were set to leave Rangers as part of a major shake-up of the recruitment department and a move towards a more video and data-led operation.
Meanwhile, it was reported that Brown, who returned to the Govan club he played for with distinction in the 1990s back in 2017 to head up their scouting network in the United Kingdom, was poised to move to a more ambassadorial role, while retaining some duties within the football department.
Malcolm, who spent seven years as a player at Ibrox and now attends Rangers matches as a fan, was bitterly disappointed when he saw online comments singling out the pair for the failure of the summer signings to make a significant impact in Scottish football this season.
READ MORE: Has Michael Beale weakened Rangers with his Ibrox recruitment?
“I read some things criticising Billy Kirkwood and John Brown,” he said. “It was blaming them for the recruitment. These are guys who have been at Rangers for years It makes me sick. It is nothing to do with them.
“They get asked to go and watch a game and a player and come back with a report. But that comes from the manager or the director of football. That is not on the scouts who go and watch the matches.
“I know that the guys who have come in have not shown it enough yet. I know that Beale wanted to go down a different route with more analysis-style scouting or whatever.
“But Bomber know what it takes to pull that jersey on. You need guys like that to go and watch these games. They need to see if these guys have got something about them, if they can handle what they will encounter here. That is a big thing. Everybody at Rangers is a great player. The important thing is how they deal with the fans.”
READ MORE: Rangers' new management team's UEFA Pro Licence situation explained
“Cyriel Dessers missed a chance after four or five minutes the other day and the fans got on his case straight away,” he said. “It is all about how he reacts to that. Sometimes it is not nice.
“But that is when you have to have something about you. You have to say, ‘It’s not happening for me at the minute, but I am going to give it everything’. The fans recognise and appreciate that. When he got that deflected goal last week I thought, ‘Maybe that is the bit of luck he needs to kick him on’. But it hasn’t work out that way.”
Malcolm believes his former Rangers team mate Kevin Muscat would be the ideal man to take over from Beale and is adamant the contacts the former Melbourne Victory head coach and current Yokohama F Marinos manager has built up in the global game would help to unearth some outstanding players.
“Kevin has done very well in Japan,” he said. “People may sniff at the standard of that league, but look at the Japanese players who Celtic have brought in. They are not even the best players out there. They don’t always start for their national team. Tapping into markets out there wouldn’t be the worst thing. Celtic have done it so why can’t Rangers?
“It didn’t work out for him in Belgium (Muscat was in charge of Sint-Truiden for six months in 2020), but the club weren’t willing to back him and let him sign players. He had to bring in guys on loan. And deals were falling through at the last minute. Sometimes it isn’t down to the manager himself.”
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