'Rohl jumps from Wednesday frying pan into Rangers furnace'

Danny Rohl has signed a two-and-a-half-year contract at Ibrox

In the business of crisis management Danny Rohl served his apprenticeship at Sheffield Wednesday.

As wacky a place as Wednesday was - and is - under the ownership of Thai tuna tycoon Dejphon Chansiri, the German's time there can be seen as an 89-game warm-up routine.

From frying pan to furnace, Rohl is the new Rangers head coach.

He becomes the eighth permanent manager/head coach of the Ibrox club in little over a decade and the 16th when you factor in all those interim guys who have drifted across their landscape.

Only one of the previous seven Rangers managers has lasted 100 games - Steven Gerrard - with plenty of them considerably fewer than that.

Russell Martin lasted 17, Pedro Caixinha was around for 26, Michael Beale survived for 43, Giovanni van Bronckhorst didn't get beyond 70 and Philippe Clement fell short of 90.

Having withdrawn his interest in the job only last week - we wait to hear his explanation of what changed in the meantime - Rohl has now decided to join a club with rancour and uncertainty at every level, a third-choice candidate (that we know of) in a place that is under siege from angry fans.

'Rangers board about as popular at Ibrox as a late Celtic winner'

For the longest time, boardroom chaos was as much a part of Rangers as mascot Broxi Bear - a revolving door of owners, chairmen, chief executives, sporting directors and recruitment specialists.

And, of course failed players, financial waste and precious few trophies.

The new ownership was supposed to bring an end to the pandemonium, but it hasn't. There was supposed to be stability but instead there's wholesale unrest. And almost unprecedented amounts of fury.

Chairman Andrew Cavenagh, vice-chairman Paraag Marathe, chief executive Patrick Stewart and sporting director Kevin Thelwell have pulled off the most extraordinary feat of taking a really poor team, investing £30m-£40m in it and making it worse.

With their appointment of Martin, their failed pursuit of Gerrard and their slapstick move for Kevin Muscat, Stewart and Thelwell have been portrayed, on social media and elsewhere, as Laurel and Hardy, Dumb and Dumber and two ends of a pantomime horse.

They are about as popular at Ibrox as a late Celtic winner.

'Rohl has accepted one of toughest gigs in world football'

So, welcome to Glasgow, Danny. Hopefully you are arriving with your eyes wide open.

You are now in charge of a team that many Rangers fans are saying is the worst in their lifetime and you have people at the top of the club - Stewart, Thelwell and Thelwell's son, Robbie - who the fans desperately want rid of. It seems they won't rest until those people are driven out.

You saw what happened to your predecessor - escorted out of Falkirk Stadium by police on his final day in the job.

You'll be given time - call it a game, maybe two - to show that you're improving things.

The fans won't come for you in the same vicious way they came for the unwanted Martin - their sights are firmly fixed on those people above you - but best not anger them all the same.

You have to assume that the transfer kitty, or most of it, has been spent, so don't hold out much hope of signing many players in January.

Even if there was cash to splurge that job falls largely to Thelwell Snr, the operator who thought it good business to spend £8m on a striker who has scored three goals in more than 50 games in his career. Youssef Chermiti is only 21. Turning him into a goal machine will be high on Rohl's to-do list.

Making silk purses of sow's ears might be too long a job description but that's a huge part of the role now.

A case could easily be made that Rohl, with fewer than 100 games as a manager, has now accepted one of the toughest gigs in European or even world football.

The incendiary nature of his new environment - the utter bedlam - is going to be a shock.

He may think that he's prepared for it. Others thought that, too.

For a decade the supporters have been counting them in and counting them back out again - and all of their frustration at having watched failed managers in the past tends to settle over the new guy like an ever-darkening cloud.

It's not fair, but it's reality.

'Action - not words - is the only thing that will cut through'

The word on Rohl is wholly positive, though. Players talk at length about his many strengths. Barry Bannan says he's the best manager he's ever played for.

It's not the same, but he has operated successfully in a demanding regime before. In Sheffield, before he was appointed, the team was in the grip of the worst league start in more than 150 years.

He had an owner, Chansiri, who was, to put it kindly, eccentric. He had fans in uproar over all manner of things. He had players who were not only demoralised but also unpaid at times.

So, though Rohl is only 36, he's had experience of football's turbulence. He's young, but he may not be wet behind the ears. You'd hope not, for his sake. Once a defender, he was invalided out of the game with an ACL injury at 21. It takes talent and drive to do the things he has done since then.

Every Rangers fan will know the outline of his story, the assistant manager positions he held at RB Leipzig, Southampton, Bayern Munich and Germany.

He has said before that he doesn't do dogma and is not a slave to any one system. He's flexible, be it 4-2-3-1, 3-4-3, 4-4-1-1 or any other formation. It would appear that he's tried them all at one time or another depending on the challenge staring him in the face.

There's enough testimony out there about the endless hours he put in at Sheffield Wednesday and the improvement he made to the players he had - Djeidi Gassama, now at Rangers, being one of many.

The fans liked and admired him. He kept Wednesday up when most people had abandoned all hope. He got them to 12th the following season with a side high on energy and togetherness despite Chansiri-inspired mayhem behind the scenes.

The supporters didn't want him to leave at the end of his second season in July this year, but thought he was better off out of the basket case.

He cited financial issues and a total breakdown in communication with Chansiri as the reason for a mutually agreed contract termination.

Rohl says the scale of the challenge at Rangers is part of the appeal, which is what you would expect him to say, but fans have heard too much chat from too many managers to be comforted by fighting talk.

Win games and he can be as quiet as a Trappist monk. Don't win games and the eloquence of the greatest orator will not save him. It was ever thus.