With Rangers’ boss Mark Warburton’s startling admission that any Rangers player could leave in January for the right price, the rather worrying possibilities now start to fester that key players could be on their way after only six months at Ibrox.
To be exact, Warburton said:
“The fact of the matter is I don’t want anyone to leave the football club. (but) If they leave for a sum that offers value to Rangers Football Club, it means the recruitment has been right because they’ve produced a level of performance which has attracted a bigger club from down south that can afford to pay us a fee above and beyond what we’d want to get for a player. It’s simple economics. If a player comes in and gets offered quadruple his wages to play down south in lower Premiership or top Championship, we aren’t going to stand in his way as long as we get the right fee for the player. We don’t want to be a selling club but it’s the nature of the beast. If the price is right for all parties it’s going to happen. What we provide here hopefully is a shop window. You look at it and say we are going to achieve what we can achieve, hopefully go up, hopefully get back into Europe and then if we lose a player for the right sum our job is to replace him.”
Currently Rangers’ marquee players include Lee Wallace, James Tavernier, Jason Holt, Barrie McKay and Martyn Waghorn, all of whom have shone wonderfully at Ibrox under The Magic Hat.
Andy Halliday has been slightly wasted at defensive midfield but has done a decent enough job, if not one that might see him cherry picked; but his peers certainly have excelled and could be vulnerable.
The most obvious targets are Tavernier and Waghorn, who absolutely exploded onto the scene at Ibrox and are viewed as vital cogs in the Warburton machine, but Jason Holt’s impressive displays will not have gone unnoticed either while McKay’s emergence as a key player this season makes him vulnerable too.
Rangers would do brilliantly to sustain the existing squad but, sadly, as Warbs said – if an EPL or solid Championship side wants anyone at Ibrox, assuming they stump up a lavish enough fee, it is unlikely the player will remain.
“The nature of the beast”, as Rangers’ boss puts it.