Where does Lee Hodson leave James Tavernier?

With new-signing Lee Hodson confirmed among the ranks at Ibrox, Mark Warburton has taken his impressive summer business up to eight, and we have only barely made it into July.

The work to recruit and strengthen Rangers’ already decent squad has ramped up significantly, and the Govan side go into next season in near perfect shape to tackle the new campaign and the step up in quality.

However, with aforementioned new signing Hodson on the books now, where does his capture leave James Tavernier?

For those slightly less familiar with the former MK Dons defender, Northern Irish international Hodson is a right back but quite capable on the left, and is technically what one would describe as a versatile full back.

Initially described by some as cover, the truth is it is very rare to sign an internationalist with well over a dozen caps and leave him to languish on the bench. Meanwhile Tavernier undeniably struggled as the season wore on, with admittedly impressive attacking being disappointingly punctuated with abysmal defending.

Nothing summed up his failures at the back more than how easily he was beaten in the air by Hibs’ David Gray which lost Rangers the Scottish Cup final. Obviously I am not blaming Tavernier for the entire result, but his inability to defend certainly contributed to it, on top of the multitude of other inadequacies throughout the team that day.

Ergo, does Mark Warburton see his new signing as competition for Tavernier, or a replacement? Rangers could do a lot worse than a double-digits capped fullback regularly in the side, in a defence which saw more than its fair share of calamities over the campaign, and having one quality international on one side with another his counterpart would certainly be a pretty decent spine to build from.

I am not advocating the dropping of Tavernier, he deserves better than to be dismissed off hand, and I am absolutely sure he will be working hook and by crook on his defending this summer, but I do wonder why Warburton went for such a lavish player as ‘cover’ if that was the intention.

Of course, Hodson is no Roberto Carlos, but he is a step up from the kind of ‘quality’ Rangers have had in that position in recent years, and arguably is a step up too from Tavernier too.

But it may be literal – that Hodson really has been signed as cover and will be content with fitting in as and when needed. That would be an intriguing situation but maybe the spade on this occasion can quite bluntly called a spade.

There is, naturally, one other possibility, however; that Hodson will replace Tavernier at RB and the Englishman will shift further up the pitch, where he is arguably more effective. Of course that forces the conclusion of where to fit the Forresters, O’Hallorans, Windasses and other attacking options Rangers have plentiful resources in, but that is the kind of selection problem I am sure their manager will be thriving on.

Things are certainly moving in the right direction.