Who replaces Russell Martin? How about Brian Priske… | OneFootball

As Russell Martin’s Rangers era starts to appear inevitably clankering to a dismal halt, although there’s nothing official yet, we can definitely sense that his time and days are numbered at Rangers. So who’s replacing him? Well, this has been one of the biggest questions that fellow Rangers fans have thrown at us every single time we’ve argued against the appointment of Martin. Who else replaces him? Who would you want? All these kinds of questions have come in from other fans implying that there is ‘nobody else’. Well, that’s not exactly true. You’ll always find somebody else, the right man.

Now, we would never pretend to be holding a monopoly on the truth or on projected wisdom. We got Clement wrong, we got Beale wrong. We wanted both of them. Beale, based on his impressive record for Queen’s Park Rangers, which of course in itself was a misnomer. Then Clement because he had won three titles in a row in Belgium. We misunderstood both, we misread both, and we got both wrong. There are a number of reasons for that, which we may elaborate later in this piece.

But who replaces Martin if he goes? Our answer would be Brian Priske. Brian Priske is a former Feyenoord, Midtjylland and Sparta Praha manager. He has come from an excellent stable and while many would compare him to Clement in terms of his CV, there are a lot of reasons why that’s not a valid comparison.

The big deal here is that Brian Priske won in Denmark. Big deal you might say. That’s not necessarily a huge achievement. It is a pretty decent one to have in your CV to win the title there. And that’s fair play, but it’s not why we’d want him at Rangers. The reason that we want him at Rangers is his Czechia days.

He arrived at Czechia, at Praha, at a club who had not won the title in ages and were down on their luck. The big deal about Praha is that they have, or did have when he arrived, around 36 titles. By far the most in Czechia. They are expected to win the league every season, but were deeply down on their luck. Sound familiar?

Add to that the fact that he then immediately took them from that to title winners two seasons in a row before being headhunted by Feyenoord. Shows that he understands must win and taking a down-on-its-luck team that are expected to win the title every season back to the top. So he knows how to do it.

The difference with Clement is fairly stark. He took an unexpected and unfancied side in Genk and took them to the title. But there was no pressure on him to do so. It was against the grain. It was against expectations. And he defied that to win. So there was no pressure on him.

Now you might be thinking at Club Bruges there certainly would be. Not really. They have only won half of the titles that Praha have. Around about 18. So they’re not expected to win every season. Nevertheless there is a level of pressure, but it’s not like Rangers or Praha. Priske, on the other hand, does have that experience of that kind of pressure. And he succeeded in it.

He went to Feyenoord where it did appear to be a little bit too much for him at that club. And he still managed a very good win rate of around about 60%. He didn’t win the title and he did get fired or left his job early. But the seeds are there. The seeds are there. Feyenoord are a bit of a basket case of a club. Our Giovanni van Bronckhorst, of course, did manage to win the title there. But they are also not expected to win the title every season. So it’s against expectations when they do so.

But Priske, it just didn’t really work for him fully at the Dutch side. But it did at Praha where they’re expected to win every season. Just like at Rangers. If we had someone that we would pick of all those names that surfaced during the previous manager hunt, it would be Priske that we’d be most interested in.

We are not saying definitively that we must appoint him. He is the answer. Because we don’t believe that we know enough about anybody and can predict the future well enough to know that anyone is the right answer definitively. Only one man is and he is sadly no longer with us.

But Priske is the closest to hedging our bets that we have of all the names that surfaced. Statistically, personality, CV wise, he would be the best shot. But then, what the hell do we know?