What does the Rangers future hold for one of our own?

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What does the Rangers future hold for one of our own?

If one Rangers player has divided opinion among fans over the past year or so, it is Andy Halliday. Widely loved in the beginning due to his obvious love for the Club, Halliday inspired the phrase ‘One of Our Own’ to describe a fellow fan breaking into the Club he loves and becoming a major player.

However, as time has gone on, Halliday has come under a little more scrutiny, probably not ironically helped by his support for Rangers. The more off days the midfield anchor would have, the more outrage it would spawn, with constant accusations that he gets off lightly with poor displays. Because he is ‘one of us’.

There has to be a little bit of common sense. Halliday has not played his proper attacking midfield role at Ibrox for any serious sustained time. Yes, he got a little stint there when Tottenham’s Dominic Ball slotted in the holding role last season, but overall the ex-Bradford man has sat in the defensive zone in front of the back four his entire spell at Ibrox and consequently out of position.

He has had to learn a role unfamiliar to him, and the harsh reality is for all he praised his ex-manager recently, the Loafy One failed miserably to deal with the DM problem, instead just lumbering Halliday in there instead.

And that praise?

“I will take this time to obviously praise Mark because I’ve not had a chance myself personally to talk about it but clearly we had some unconvincing performances, some inconsistent results and the previous manager left in uncertain circumstances. The players never really knew what was happening and I’d like to just take this time to say Mark did a fantastic job. He came in and he got us all together.”

A bit of a contradiction to say he did a fantastic job and yet the performances and results were not good enough; but nevertheless, these comments about an ex-boss who has become utterly toxic to the support will not go down terribly well with them.

One could argue he is even angling for a move to rejoin the former Brentford boss at Forest, but the following comment pours cold water on that one:

“In my opinion the only way is down once you leave this football club so it’s up to us to try and stay here and fight for our place.”

By his own admission, Halliday is not interested in leaving, but his performances of the past year or so have done little to ingratiate him to fans who doubted his worth. But, again, you must accommodate the mitigating circumstance of his being out of position most of that time.

He divides the support, and has probably used up most of the goodwill afforded him by his own love of the Club – Andy, like the rest of the squad, has a new manager to prove himself to. If he can force his way into the reckoning and show he has value, Ped the Ted will surely take note.

With Rangers’ new 4-2-3-1 system Halliday would be less vital as a DM, given how Caixinha deploys it. The ex-Livie attacker might just get a new lease of life anywhere else in that new-look midfield.

But, as with it all, time will tell.

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8 COMMENTS

  1. Halliday may be 'one of us' but he's not suited to the DM position, and, I'm sorry to say, nowhere near creative enough to play as an attacking midfielder. He's slow, can't best a man or play incisive passes through the defence, unlike Hyndman who is much more productive in this area. Unfortunately he will leave come the end of the season, with no real possibility of a permanent move. That will leave a big gap to be filled, but Halliday isn't capable od doing it.

  2. If we want to win the league and progress in Europe then we need better than Halliday. He lacks guile, he has been poor in the top league with poor defending, poor passing and a lack of aggression that was on show for all to see when we played Celtic. He was never a defensive midfield player and Warburton should not have played the boy in that role. It did him no favour whatsoever and he has suffered because of it but we need to set our sights higher for the future.

  3. I'd like to see him get the chance in his proper position. Last year in the semi against Celtic, with a decent dm behind him he dominated the midfield, the thing I want most is crooks to come
    Back. He was one warburton hung out to dry, played one game at dm and did well, and then For some unexplainable reason warburton played him behind waghorn and then seemed to push all the blame on crooks, and now look how he's getting on down south playing in his position.

  4. If we cannot replace an average midfield player like Halliday, we will really struggle to compete for the league. He cannot tackle a fish supper and his passing is slow and meaningless. Always the easy nothing pass to someone close to him. He has no vision and lacks pace. Need I say more?

  5. There's no doubt Hydman is a real quality player who I will be sorry to see exiting Ibrox in the near future as it will be very difficult to get a replacement anywhere near as good BUT to compare Halliday to Hydman is unfair as they are completely different types of players and in truth Halliday is probably more suited to the week in week out nature and style of Scottish football than Hydman, the previous nugget of a manager played him out of position for vast majority of his time at Rangers and this became more apparent in every game and must have effected the players confidence etc.

    Unlike a good few of current squad (Tav, Waggy, Chib Man Joe, Kiernan, etc.) I would give this guy another season as I do think he is good enough and will never go awol when our backs are against the wall, it seems that the initial plus point of the boy being a true blue has, for some warped reason, become a handicap to his future at Ibrox, give him another year and if it doesnt work out, fair enough, he can move on elsewhere but no matter what, either way he is always going to be one of us and should be treated with the traditional decency and respect that being a fellow Gers man demands.
    WATP

  6. Graeme Murty got more out of the squad in a month than MW did in 18 months. So let's see how the same players perform under Pedro. Maybe Andy H will surprise us. They've all got a chance to perform. Hopeful for a great performance tomorrow.

  7. Good article guys. Halliday great Rangers person …not unfortunately good enough fro the Team , sorry Andy …no pace , limited ability, not dynamic or hard enough, for what Pedro is looking for . Hopefully he will get a decent move , downwards however though . Wish him all the best. Like Hyndman but he will go back south , we need to look further afield Portugal maybe ??

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