Shirking Rangers dugout duty was a catastrophic error that made him look weak- Day 1 Keith Jackson puts the boot into Gio

Giovanni van Bronckhorst has still to be introduced to the bought and paid for media partners but already Keith Jackson has carried out a hatchet job on the Dutch messiah.

Back in his Ibrox playing days van Bronckhorst will perhaps remember the fawning coverage that the Daily Record reporter served up for Mr Murray as they dined out on the Advocaat Revolution.

Changed times in 2021 and not just around the new club formed by Charles Green in the summer of 2012.

Jackson and the Record are now on the outside as the new PR regime inside Ibrox feed their favoured social media partners who constantly jibe at the Glasgow publisher and their veteran football reporter.

Highlighting the running sore, Jackson writes:

From being photographed having dinner with DUP Dave on Saturday night, to sitting next to sporting director Ross Wilson as another piece of silverware disappeared into the distance, the optics could hardly have been any more damaging for the new boss.

At Hampden yesterday they came for a coronation. Gio dutifully waved to the adoring crowd, he then sat back with the fat-cats to watch his new charges get turned over by a team that hasn’t won since mid-September.

Rather than head to the dressing room at half-time van Bronckhorst tucked into the buffet and topped up his vino at the bar. It wasn’t the image to project to hurting bears with Jackson jumping all over it in his Daily Record column:

What on earth were they thinking? If they didn’t see this car crash coming from the moment they put a qualified driving instructor at the wheel, then someone somewhere wasn’t doing his job.

And it turns out it must be catching too because, even though Giovanni van Bronckhorst is only just in the door, he too went missing in action yesterday – isolating himself away in an executive box when he was needed right there, down in the trenches.

It’s little wonder David McCallum’s hair was turning white as he attempted to perform duties way above his B team pay grade.

That the poor guy unravelled as the second half ran away from him – resorting to playing substitute bingo – merely added to the sense of farce. But, to borrow a phrase which used to belong to the previous man in charge, this one was not on him.

No, this was an accident which had been waiting to happen from the moment Steven Gerrard strapped himself into the driver’s seat and bolted down the M6 in a cloud of dust.

This was not just a catastrophic error of judgement for Van Bronckhorst who made himself look weak by choosing to watch on from the main stand, it was a shirking of responsibilities on an industrial scale.

The fixture list over the next 40 days isn’t very friendly to van Bronckhorst, including trips to Livingston, Hibs, Lyon, Hearts, Aberdeen and Celtic.