John Gilligan’s first formal meeting with the press has been received with some mixed reviews over the last few days. I think that is unfair.

John has been following Rangers all his life, supporting from the terraces home and away for more seasons than he would care to admit. From fighting against David Murray as part of the Rangers Supporters Trust to standing up to Mike Ashley and the Easdales back in 2015, John has always put himself there - ready, willing and able to do what he believed was best for his club.

Fast forward to September 2024 and he’s once again stepping up to help Rangers when it really needs him. He’s swapped his supporters' hat for his chairman one at a time when no one else on the board was prepared to do so. He’s showed the courage that has been missing in our football club on and off the field. 

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John is best known for being the managing director of Tennent's and a successful figure in the industry. He started out with Drybrough & Co and worked with Scottish Brewers/Scottish & Newcastle and Wm Morton before joining C&C following their acquisition of Tennent’s.

He is retired now. Rangers remain his love and almost a decade after regime change he finds himself back in the boardroom, for a short time at least.

I found my first encounter with John interesting. He seems a good strong man, a Rangers man, like from my uncle's generation. I’m disappointed in the criticism of how he came across. At the end of the day John considers himself a ‘punter’ the same as you and I, someone who was asked to help and is giving up his time to hopefully leave Rangers in a better place.

This situation is not of his doing but his short-term remit is to appoint a CEO to lead this football club and a chairman to take over from him. The chairman will hover behind the day-to-day running of a club that must led by a high-calibre chief executive. That candidate, which John says in a dream scenario will be here by Christmas, must be the right man for the job. The timeline perhaps grinds the gears of every supporter who already thinks it has taken too long already.

It will be those appointments that shape Rangers for the next few years so they need to be the correct ones because the fanbase have had enough of things simply not working. Rangers need to return to normality. When something is due to be done - stadium, NEH, statues, car parks - it needs to be done with minimal fuss and little disruption.

It will be up to Gilligan to set those wheels in motion. I wish him all the luck in the world and instantly want to trust him, because after all, John is just like you and I, a supporter first and foremost and one that is simply trying to do his best. 

As for on the pitch, a nice victory against Dundee Utd was neither flashy or outstanding but it really was welcomed. The challenge to follow that up against Dundee at Ibrox was a necessity. 

Rangers did that with minimal fuss, a Cyriel Dessers double sandwiched between our first penalty of the season and first goal for our much maligned captain James Tavernier. There was more promising performances, with Connor Barron, Jefte and Nedim Bajrami impressing subtly once again. Rangers fans were left wanting more. 

Three goals, a clean sheet and a fairly encouraging outing, at least at some points if not quite throughout was welcomed. It gave Rangers encouragement as we headed to Sweden to tackle Malmo in the Europa League.

And Rangers started in a whirlwind. Dessers latched onto a slack through ball and his shot hit the post for Bajrami to tuck it away. Less than a minute on the clock and we were in dreamland. 

The truth is we were excellent in that first half. The team was well organised, the press was good, we passed it well and genuinely we looked a very good side. Every single one of us would have been delighted at half-time, but we couldn’t help but worry that those guilt-edge chances, squandered by Vaclav Cerny and then Dessers/Bajrami as we were twice through, were going to come back and haunt us. 

We waited for the second half with almost a resignation. Anything less than three points and the chances in the first half would have caused such a frustration. But this team continued to play brilliantly individually and collectively. Malmo had the ball but they created little and Rangers defended so strongly. 

Of course there was still time to miss chances but then one of our own, Ross McCausland, popped up to fire home a second and Rangers had three really important points in the bag. If Rangers had won 5-0 there should have been no complaints.

Is this the first sign of Philippe Clement's Rangers team finding their feet? If it is then there may even be a tinge of excitement amongst the support. 

Positivity on the pitch, three strong wins, three clean sheets. Off the pitch, good luck John Gilligan