Rangers vs Dundee United preview: Koppen in a Winter Wonderland

Morning everyone, from a very snowy Edinburgh, I believe it is also snowy in Glasgow but slightly less so. I look forward to our game today being cancelled, which would really sum up how this season is going.

It was a surprisingly enjoyable international break as Scotland managed to avoid relegation from their Nations League group. John Souttar played very well across both of these fixtures, so hopefully he can continue that form at club level. It was great to see a Rangers player unanimously praised as Scotland's best performer in an international break. I'm not sure the last time we saw that, maybe Ryan Jack when Clarke first started playing that midfield 3 of Jack, McGregor and McGinn? And even then, that was praise for the way they worked together as a 3, rather than singling anyone out.

It's tough times when Scotland are probably more enjoyable to watch than Rangers. That reminds me, I actually have to talk about Rangers don't I? There was one big development over the international break, with Nils Koppen being promoted from Director of Recruitment to Technical Director of the club. This means his remit has been expanded to cover a wide array of footballing matters.

What this really means is that the club have changed direction again in terms of footballing structure. When Koppen was appointed last season it was made clear that we were compartmentalizing the traditional Director of Football role and employing specialists for each aspect. Koppen was pretty much the only appointment that ended up being made in this new structure, with the disruption at board level leading to a stall on recruitment.

Now given there is different leadership at the club, I can see why we might try and move away from the structure implemented by Bisgrove and co. However, I don't know if I agree with the approach of immediately giving the only person available a much wider remit, especially given we have no idea if he is capable of fulfilling it.

It's another sign of the inconsistent approach at the top level which has got us into this mess in the first place. Even with Koppen's promotion, we still need to recruit a CEO at the very least, I imagine Koppen might even be involved in that recruitment process given they will work closely together. So potentially it could be another person from a similar background as Koppen being appointed, and we are putting all our eggs in one basket again.

On Koppen himself, I think his body of work has been okay, promising even. On paper, his signings have been good and generally in the right mould for building a team with player trading value. I don't know if I've seen enough to say that this is the guy to lead us from this crisis, I know he has a good background in youth football, so that's good experience to bring to his new role. But aside from that, I'm really not sure what he's done to justify his technical director role.

I do really want him to succeed, and from his interview he spoke really well on his plans for the club and where he wants us to be. But that's about the minimum we can expect, if anything the PR team at the club must have intro speeches down to a fine art, they certainly get enough practice.

But onto the game today, we welcome the Terrors to Ibrox Stadium for a 3pm kick-off. Dundee United have had a very solid season so far, they've flown under the radar for me. Given all the praise for high-flying Aberdeen, it's been easy to miss that the Tangerines sit 4th in the table only 3 points behind us. So we know today won't be easy.

In our last game against United we triumphed 1-0 at Tannadice from a very early Tom Lawrence goal. It was one of our few away goals and wins this season. Today will be a very different match, with Dundee United looking to sit in and hit us on the break given they know how desperate we will be for 3 points to keep pace with the leaders.

Which means we can probably expect a carbon-copy of our recent home performances with us scoring early and then grinding out a victory by a single goal in the end. Always so much excitement when you watch Rangers.

Vaclav Cerny was on press conference duties yesterday. He was keen to talk about his understanding of the expectations at Rangers and that he recognises the size of the club and what it means to people. It's always nice to hear a foreign player talk about taking the club to heart, and there's a long list of fan favourites who've come from abroad and said similar. I don't know what our situation will be in terms of keeping Cerny permanently for next season, but depending on the financial situation he could be a real option, especially if he keeps this form up.

Clement didn't have too much to say in his conference. A bit of news I neglected to mention earlier was Kasanwirjo's bad-looking injury he sustained for the Dutch u-21s. From the sounds of it, he will need surgery and Clement confirmed it would be a wait and see situation with a return date, but definitely a long term injury. Ridvan will be back with the squad and Cortes will be back soon too, it's always nice to have options. Especially Ridvan, given we've run Jefte into the ground a little this season.

But that's all I have to discuss for today. Let's hope for a very early Christmas miracle and a Rangers win by multiple goals. Have a good day everyone.