The disaster that is/was Frank McParland

If one appointment Rangers’ new board has made has been exposed as an unmitigated disaster, it was the placement of the now outgoing Frank McParland as Head of Recruitment in October 2015.

To describe the signatures acquired since then as abysmal is an understatement, and it is worth looking at just what rubbish Rangers have snapped up since McParland took over the transfer policy.

In the first window under his ‘guidance’, Rangers wasted £500,000 on Michael O’Halloran, picked up the inconsistent Harry Forrester for free, and brought in two pieces of dead wood in the form of Billy King (signed because of his name – still cannot get a look in at Hearts, he is now on loan at Inverness) and Polish goalkeeper Maciej Gostomski. The latter ended up turfed out two months later for reasons unknown.

It did not get much better with the summer window either. The likes of Matt Gilks, Joey Barton, Joe Garner and Matt Crooks darkened Rangers’ doorstop and with the draw v County featuring only three of the summer signings (and Senderos only showed up because Kiernan’s uselessness went too far and Wilson is not fully match fit yet) it is pretty clear that level of import was not exactly sufficient enough for a Rangers side wishing to establish themselves as the clear best of the rest.

This year’s winter window hardly made Frank McParland look like a genius either. Another two loans (both promising enough I suppose but still not ours) coupled with signing already on-loan David Bates permanently and bringing in a ‘body’ to replace the departed Matt Gilks is the stuff of mediocrity.

Rangers’ Head of Recruitment has really been a bit of a nightmare and his apparent exit does not surprise – it only suggests his ally Mark Warburton is not far away from such a move himself.