Confirmed 

©IMAGO

Red Bull Salzburg announced the appointment of Rangers manager Danny Röhl as their new head coach on Wednesday morning. The 37-year-old German coach makes the move to the Austrian Bundesliga club on a three-year contract, hired as a long-term replacement to Thomas Letsch, who departed the club in mid-February. “I already know the club from my previous coaching experience and I’m aware of the potential, the quality within the club, and the ambitious goals they pursue,” said Röhl in a club statement. “That’s precisely what attracted me. Salzburg stands for courageous, intense, and attacking football – a style of football I strongly identify with and which also aligns with my own philosophy. Together, we want to develop a team that plays with energy, passion, and a clear style of play.”

While Röhl’s appointment comes early in the summer off-season, his departure from Rangers will come as no great surprise to fans of the Ibrox side. Over the course of his eight months in Glasgow, the German tactician was somewhat underwhelming as Rangers manager, averaging just 1.83 points per game across all competitions. This included failing to get out of the group stages of the Europa League, as well as defeats to Celtic in the quarter-finals and semi-finals of the Scottish Cup and Scottish League Cup, respectively. But what, ultimately, led to most Rangers fans turning off Röhl was the club’s tepid finish in the league, with the Ibrox club finishing 10 points behind their cross-city rivals and eight behind second-placed Hearts.

As such, numerous reports in Scotland have stated for some time now that Rangers have already found a successor to Röhl in the form of Hearts manager Derek McInnes. The Scottish manager guided the Edinburgh club to an impressive second-place finish, where the Tynecastle club were in the running for a historic league title until the final day of the season. McInnes’s imminent appointment will likely be greeted by many of the Ibrox faithful as a safer pair of hands in charge of the team and a manager who could get Rangers back in the running for challenging for next season’s league title.