The SPL is filling up with Rangers’ old dregs….

One look at the SPL these days makes something stand out significantly – the number of ex-Rangers players/loanees who have ended up at the weaker lesser sides following the Journey.

So many Premiership sides are now filled with our dropouts, our dregs, the ones who didn’t make the grade, and it does give some idea of the gross mismanagement from previous regimes to witness their prize captures now plying their trade at St Johnstone.

The Saints of course are only one side guilty of this, with their Michael O’Halloran, Cammy Bell and Sean Goss being the three former Rangers players on their staff.

Hibs too have Emerson Hyndman, Gael Bigirimana and Darren McGregor, Aberdeen have Dominic Ball, St Mirren have Lee Hodson, Ryan Hardie is over at Livi, and technically Killie have Kris Boyd.

In short, there are a tonne of Journey Rangers in there, players who our management considered good enough to fill the shirt at Ibrox, and then in most cases flopped horribly, not because they didn’t try or felt the pressure in many cases, but because they were just nowhere near good enough.

When we look at the level we now are, which in itself remains a work in progress, we see Ryan Jack over Dominic Ball, Ryan Kent over Michael O’Halloran, Allan McGregor over Cammy Bell.

To call this a seismic gulf is the understatement of the year.

Naturally, fans had to get behind whatever mince was in the shirt – they were our players and we had to support them. But when we look at all the mediocre players who ended up at bottom-feeding SPL sides or sides in the bowels of Scottish football, it’s certainly mixed emotions.

Some fans back in the day who used to think David Templeton or Fraser Aird were good enough for Rangers – it’s sort of funny now, when we look at what is really good enough for this club, or getting there.

We were always harsh on this site about the weak players we had – we did have the odd one or two we thought had some potential, but we always knew these players were to get us back to the SPL eventually – turned out most of them weren’t even good enough for that!

But even after Mark Warburton fixed that, he then went into the SPL with continuing weak players and made such a hash of his transfer windows.

We ARE seeing improvement now – some genuinely quality players are arriving, even if the work continues to make the consistency and level what it should be.

But no one can persuade us a single player who may face us this season having previously donned our shirt should still be in our shirt.