Rangers: 'Red flags for Danny Rohl as side routed in first game'

And so it begins for another Rangers head coach. More timidity to observe, more vulnerability in defence, more powder-puff stuff up front, more wide men running in ever decreasing circles.

Another defeat, another performance that along with zero goals and zero points had zero positives.

In the last few seasons, Rangers, for all their other faults at the time, went toe-to-toe with Athletic Club, Benfica, RB Leipzig and Borussia Dortmund.

Now they're getting routed by Brann, Norway's third best team.

The collapse in standards has been stark. It's not just ability that these Rangers players lack, it's character, it's stomach for the fight. Memo to Danny Rohl - are you absolutely sure you know what you've let yourself in for here?

Before Brann scored their easy first, their soft second and the third that turned a pitiful debut into a mortifying one for Rohl, there was a moment (the first of many) that will have sent a chill up the spine of the new Rangers boss.

The German preaches speed and intensity, pressing and hunting, and he saw plenty of it, but not from any of his players.

His players were the same as before. The same as the dog days under Russell Martin, the same as the demise under Philippe Clement, the same as the downfall in the Michael Beale months.

What he'd seen from his team to that point was lack of organisation and lack of belief, but at least they were level. They were a touch lucky to be 0-0, but they were - and then they should have been ahead.

The chance missed by Youssef Chermiti was a glaring one, a rare piece of Rangers accuracy in the cross from Nico Raskin, but a poor attempt from the young striker, a tame header from a brilliant position. Nine minutes later, the deluge began.

This must have been the first of the red flags for Rohl. It wasn't just that Chermiti failed to score, it was that he never really threatened to score.

His effort was harmless. A lack of confidence, sure. A young player, no question. But a player, also, that Rangers have spent £8m on.

By the time he was taken off deep into the second half, his goalscoring record at Rangers, Everton and Sporting stood at three goals in more than 25 hours of football.

That touch from the header was the only one Chermiti managed in the Brann penalty area all game. That's as much a criticism of his team-mates' desperate inability to create chances as anything else.

The 21-year-old's passing accuracy was the joint-lowest of any player on the pitch and he won only four of his 13 duels.

Chermiti might come good, but Rohl does not have time to wait and the chances are that if he was given the £8m splurged on the striker he'd think of any number of other ways to spend it.

The striker is a Kevin Thelwell project. The sporting director is all-in on him, lauding his promise as recently as a few days ago when Rohl was unveiled.

Thelwell's faith in the £8m spend seems unshakeable, which is quite something given that Chermiti's last senior goal was the fourth in a 4-0 win for Sporting over Pacos Ferreira in May 2023.

So far, the striker is a proving to be a symbol of what is wrong at Rangers and what Rohl must somehow fix - poor decision-making and the bizarre feat of investing a lot of money on a team only to make it even worse.

They have spent over £30m on transfer fees and loan fees since the summer only to be humiliated by Brann. It beggars belief.

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

Stellar names in the management game talk of his ability. The story of his brief time at Sheffield Wednesday and how his players and how the fans loved him is evidence that he can be a fine leader, too.

It's easy to dismiss Wednesday as 'not Rangers', and it isn't, but it was a pressurised job at a club with a monumentally difficult owner and he did it really well.

What he's got now is an incredibly supportive owner and a hierarchy at the club that is praying that he succeeds, but he's also got players who are afraid of their own shadows.

He has players whose heads are full of mush and whose nerve is all but shot from the torment of the repeated failures under Martin and the visceral abuse they have endured from the fans. They're like quivering jelly.

They are so lacking in self-belief that Rohl doesn't just have a coaching job on his hands. He needs to send for the sports psychologists.

That's not being glib. These Rangers players lost any faith they had in themselves when Brann made it 2-0 with a free header from a free-kick. They were broken at that point.

Rangers defenders remonstrated with each other, but it was the kind of frailty everyone has seen from them for quite a while. They've now shipped 15 goals in their last five European matches.

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

What he wants from his team - speed of thought, speed of movement, aggression, togetherness, relentlessness - is light years away from what he actually has, which is what did for Martin, although Martin did for Martin in many ways.

As tends to happen at Rangers, the honeymoon doesn't last long. Rohl is now embedded in the reality of how challenging his new life really is.

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