If timing is everything in football then Rangers may just have won themselves a watch.
Yes, the men in charge of the club may have been caught in a state of paralysis when Aston Villa crashed through the front doors to carry out a ram raid on Steven Gerrard and his entire coaching staff.
Now that Gerrard and his entourage have disappeared, it does feel as if the Ibrox regime may have landed on their feet quite unexpectedly.
That Gerrard’s decision to cut and run came at a moment when the likes of Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Frank Lampard are currently out of work is a happy coincidence where director of football Ross Wilson is concerned. If he can pull all this together in the space of the next 24 hours it really will feel as if he had the succession planning all neatly lined up from the start.
By Saturday night, after meeting with Van Bronckhorst and his super agent Guido Albers in London at lunchtime to open talks, word was being leaked from the club’s wonky PR machine that ex-England and Chelsea talisman Lampard was not under serious consideration.
A most intriguing twist, given that Lampard also had a dinner date in the English capital to discuss the vacant hotseat.
It might have been polite had someone bothered to tell him he was wasting his time before he ordered his starter.
This shadowy briefing had all the optics of something from the old Soviet bloc.
But this Politburo approach to ruling Lampard out of the running also suggests that Van Bronckhorst made quite an impression earlier in the day.
That ought to come as no surprise because the former Arsenal and Barcelona man is a highly impressive individual with a track record in trophy winning.
It’s very difficult to fathom why Rangers wouldn’t want him at the helm, which is where the whole timing issue comes in.
There is every reason for Rangers to suspect some of the players left kicking around inside Auchenhowie will have been seriously put out by Gerrard’s decision to leave them behind.
It’s probably fair to assume the likes of Joe Aribo and Ryan Kent were only attracted across the border in the first place to work under a man of Gerrard’s huge clout.
How fortunate for Rangers that, in Van Bronckhorst, they could land a man with an even more impressive playing career, not to mention a medal collection which would give Gerrard an inferiority complex.
A World Cup runner- up with Holland, Van Bronckhorst also piled up league titles in Scotland, England and Spain as well as bagging a Champions League crown at Barcelona.
In other words, if there are some players at Ibrox who were attracted more to the manager than to the club itself, then they are likely to feel every bit as keen to get on board with a man of Van Bronckhorst’s lofty credentials.
That’s a solid starting point where the former Feyenoord boss is concerned. The fact that he can back up his successes as a player with five trophies won in four seasons at De Kuip in his first job in management also trumps what Gerrard has put down on the table over his three- and-a-half years in Glasgow.
These happy coincidences don’t end there.
Best of all for Wilson and his board, is the improbably precise nature of the fit of this job in terms of the 46-year-old’s own well established philosophies.
Gerrard’s squad was designed with one playing formation in mind and Van Bronckhorst is also an unshakeable believer in the virtues of 4-3-3.
Granted, he prefers his wingers to have the white paint of the touchline on their boots rather than drifting inside to do their damage, as the likes of Kent, Aribo and Ianis Hagi have specialised in over Gerrard’s tenure to create space for full-backs like James Tavernier and Borna Barisic.
If Van Bronckhorst is indeed the man to take command, then only the most minor tactical tweaks and adjustments would be required. If any at all.
And that has to be the most attractive spin off of all for sporting director Wilson who will not have to overhaul the playing staff while helping build an entirely new coaching team.
Van Bronckhorst is likely to ask long-term assistant Jean-Paul van Gastel to join him, having previously taken him from Rotterdam to China shortly before the pandemic wiped out their best laid plans.
The manager chose to quit Guangzhou City and go back to his family home for lockdown while Van Gastel stayed on board, where he remains today.
The Chinese Super League has only weeks remaining so it would make perfect sense now for the pair to be reunited if there is a job to do in Glasgow.
That would only be the start of a rebuild because Gerrard left Auchenhowie’s coaching quarters like a ghost ship.
As many as five or six further additions would also be required and, even in spite of his own experience as a Rangers player, Van Bronckhorst will probably want to rely on the local knowledge of at least one Scottish member of staff.
While timing is everything, there is little of it to waste.
The smart play would be to get him in the door as quickly as possible while taking full advantage of this unlikely set of circumstances.
The next 24 hours, then, should be fascinating.
