Rangers: “Red flags for Danny Ruhl after the team’s defeat in the first match”

They have spent more than £30m on transfer fees and loan fees since the summer only to be humiliated by Brann. It begs for faith.

You have to feel for Ruhl. He is clearly an impressive coach, having worked at Bayern Munich and with the German national team.

Star names in the management game speak to his ability. The story of his short time at Sheffield Wednesday and how his players loved him and how the fans loved him is proof that he can be a good leader too.

It’s easy to dismiss Wednesday as ‘not Rangers’, which they’re not, but it was a compact job at a club with a very difficult owner and he did it really well.

What he’s got now is an incredibly supportive owner and a club hierarchy that prays for his success, but he also has players afraid of their own shadows.

He has players whose heads are full of mush and whose nerves are frayed from the torment of repeated failures under Martin and the profound abuse they have been subjected to by the fans. They are like quivering jelly.

They are so lacking in self-confidence that Ruhl has the coaching job on his hands alone. He needs to send sports psychologists.

This is not superficial. Those Rangers players lost confidence when Brann made it 2-0 with a header from a free kick. They were broken at that point.

The Rangers defenders groused with each other, but this was the kind of weakness everyone had seen from them for a long time. They have now scored 15 goals in their last five European matches.

For Ruhl, it must have been an education in how much work he had to do. Maybe he already knew that. He certainly knows that now.

What he wants from his team – speed of thought, speed of action, aggression, teamwork, ruthlessness – is light years away from what he already has, which is what he did for Martin, even though Martin did for Martin in many ways.

As often happens at Rangers, the honeymoon doesn’t last long. Rohl is now embedded in the reality of how difficult his new life is.