A difficult path – Rangers must arrest a troubling direction after reports…

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A difficult path – Rangers must arrest a troubling direction after reports…


As we alluded to earlier, with the Ryan Kent deal now looking dead in the water following Aston Villa’s reported £10M bid for his permanent signature, Steven Gerrard turning to Sheyi Ojo from the Liverpool Academy instead is frankly not good news for Rangers fans at all.

While the player himself appears a significant upgrade from Kent and could actually do a lot more damage to the SPL, sadly the pattern Rangers fans are suffering is that every single loan we’ve had since 2012 bar Jamie Murphy (and technically Declan John) has ended either in failure or us boosting the value of the asset and earning his parent club a massive fortune.

And with the possible signing of Sheyi Ojo we can’t see much difference here – the kid will either fail Oduwa style (bears an uncanny resemblance to our former winger) or be such a success we boost his value and Liverpool get a sexy profit.

It’s just not the way we want to go forward but until we start having the cash to significantly buy players, it’s a depressing pattern we see no end to.

The only other route is the free transfer, and that too is penny pinching at its best.

It’s not that we want to see spending for the sake of. Look at the failures of Lafferty, Grezda, Barisic to name just three. But we also know that not having a major budget and seemingly being linked with little but loans or Bosmans isn’t the route to stopping Celtic.

Of course we can’t ‘magic’ money. Magic beans don’t buy you very much in the way of quality top-flight players – but it’s evident that we’re at a bit of a quandary.

The last two summer budgets were ultimately £10M a time. And as much as that will give us second place, more or less, stopping 9IAR depends on a much grander scale of investment. It’s hard to overcome a juggernaut like Celtic purely on momentum, and while the majority of the split performances were simply outstanding, we couldn’t rely on those XI or so players or indeed that system for the whole season.

But the crossroads is do we really want to end up as Liverpool’s developer club? Rather than feeder club where we give them our best players, or best youth, instead we’re paying their unwanted youth then earning them a massive profit at the end.

That is a path that it is not in Rangers’ interests to go down. But it’s one we seem to be on.

The only defence of it would be if Ojo and any other loans and Bosmans help to actually win us the title next season.

Otherwise all we’ve done is the same as we have for the past few years, and that is a worrying trend.

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13 COMMENTS

  1. NO MORE LOANS PLEASE WE DONT NEED THEM NOW WE HAVE COME A LONG WAY ,2 SIX MILLION POUND PLAYERS IS ALL WE NEED ,STRIKER AND DEFENDER ,WE HAVE 2 NEW PLAYERS IN MURPHY ,DORRANS ,INFACT LETS BRING IN 1 12 MILLION POUND STRIKER ,NO MORE EXCUSES WERE READY ,LETS GO

    • Stevie,
      2 £6 million players? Kent is valued at £10-12 so you want two players HALF as good as him? Or a £12 million striker. What does that get you in England? Kent. Or the Watford striker we were linked with. Hardly world class. But he is also on £70,000 a week. We can't pay that.
      Next, gonnae stop using capitals

    • many years ago I was a seller of the Rangers pools at the time Rangers could only use the money to improve the Stadium but we now have one of the best stadiums in the world so why cant some of the pools money be released to build the team that is good enough to play at the Stadium ?

  2. I,N YOUR WRONG CALLING EASTENDERS A JUGGERNAUT ,THERE IN SAME BOAT AS US THERE PENNY PINCHERS REALLYING ON THERE CELTIC MINDED PLAYERS THATS WHAT GOT THEM OVER THE LINE ,ITS ALL ABOUT MANAGER NOTHING ELSE ,STEVIE G HAS BEEN A BIG LET DOWN THIS SEASON , COME ON WE AINT GOING TO WIN ANYTHING WITH PLAYERS LIKE GREZDA, BARASIC, E,T,C IN YOUR TEAM MY SON EVEN KNOWS THIS ,

    • Stevie G a big let down? Really? So who do you want and what should they do? SG has been exactly what we hoped. A name that would attract better players, but inexperienced so willing to come and learn with us and make his mistakes.
      Tell you what, why don't you call Mourinho and get him to come for SG wages. Then call Messi and ask him to take a 95% pay cut to come and play for us.
      Let us know how you get on:-)

    • STevie g ,got 3 bites off the cherry didnt even get us to a final ,enough said ,if his surname wasnt gerrard he would be fired. he got plenty backing , i thought he was here to win trophies ,what a shite sellic ,team what a shite sellic manager ,they still won everything ,what you on about mourinho, messi ,give me shankland ,lampard ,r,t,i,d

  3. The alternative to these loans is not another £10, £30 or £50 million. We cannot compete with the Championship never mind the Premiership, so we cannot go and buy good quality players. What is left is players who have passed theirp peak, those young yet to peak and those who have failed to peak.
    So it is always a gamble. We are trying to build our youth team so that we can generate a steady stream of decent young players into the he first team squad.
    Where there are gaps, we buy or borrow. Villa have shown we can't afford to buy. So loans are the only option.

  4. It's the reality of where we are at the moment. In an ideal world we would sign all the players that we want, although that of course exposes us to the risk that players we sign don't cut the mustard. Shame that we didn't sign Pena and Herrera on loan deals, on the other side of the coin thank goodness that we got Russell Martin on a loan deal.

    The ideal use of a loan deal is where we get a player on loan, and at the end of the loan are able to sign him if he does well. Steve Davis is a good example of that.

    But I also think there is room to sign one or two loan deals with players of a quality or potential that we couldn't afford, and if they have done well for us during their loan spell and then return to their home club and get sold by them for a profit, then I don't think there is anything wrong with that. Take Kent, as an example, he has done extremely well and Rangers undoubtedly will have been given the opportunity to sign him permanently. The fact that we can't afford to is not Liverpool's fault, it is just a sign of where Rangers are at right now. But imagine if we hadn't had Kent on loan, that we only had Grezda. Our season, most likely, would have been much less successful, and Celtic wouldn't have been terrorised by Kent. There is a good chance that we wouldn't have beaten Celtic at all if we hadn't had Kent.

    So I, personally, am in favour of loan deals if it can give us an edge that we wouldn't have had otherwise. That should improve our chances of winning the title, although of course there are lots of other factors come into play.

  5. I used to be quite a big fan of your posts,and whilst yes you're being somewhat realistic with these latest articles you're also being extremely negative. Thank God Gerrard doesn't have the Ibrox Noise attitude. If we get a loan player and he does well for us I genuinely don't care about us raising his value. If we bring in a loan or two and they help us to 55 and/or other silverware then great. We're already investing a lot into our youth and with the success they had I'd say it's paying off already. Only time will tell if we can do a Man Utd and bring 4 or 5 through at the one time who'll actually improve us and take us forward.

  6. Ryan Kent’s loan was a success. What are you moaning about. So was Steve Davis. We had failures sure. But we are not a million miles behind Celtic. First game of season Morelos was wrongly sent off when we were winning.Had he stayed on 2 points more. In game at Parkhead Ryan Jack missed great chance to win match but they then scored. 6 point swing. These two games alone would have seen us finish a point behind. SG will improve squad. Celtic with all their money have been failures. Scottish football needs stronger teams. Hearts and Hibs are getting act together but Celtic have only had sheep to contend with for many years. We are on right track , our club is now financially stable and incompetent SFA will be worried. With fairness Rangers will win title.

  7. We don`t have unlimited cash or potential for a massive investment , so we have to build the squad the best we can.If we can bring in loans and decent frees and it lets us invest the money we do have on two or three quality players then that is the way to go.You cannot expect the board to bankrupt themselves and the club just to please you.After all the mob across the city bring in loans and they have more cash than us. Any signing is a risk and you constantly highlight the same three mistakes but who knows if Grezda or Barisic will be better after a season , if not I`m sure we will get some money back but I do admit , predictably Lafferty has been a flop.Against that we have had McGregor , Arfield and Kamara who cost next to nothing so its swings and roundabouts .

  8. It would be great if we could turn the clock back and go out and sign 4 or 5 players for around £4-5m each but those days have gone and we need to be realistic. Like it or not our signing strategy for the foreseeable future is a couple of decent Bosmans, a couple of good young loan players, a couple promoted from the youths, then hopefully a couple of players around the £2-3m mark. It may not get us immediate results but it will grow the club steadily. Ryan Kent made a great contribution last season and I'd rather we had him for one year rather than not at all.

    • Rob, that is it exactly. We bring in roughly 8 players a season. 4 make it, 4 don't or are loans that go back. That way we are refreshing the squad every 6 years on average. Gradually we reduce the older players as our young players mature. Players like Jack, Goldson and Tavernier replace Arfield, Davis and McGregor as the senior players, new youngones come through.
      We also have to factor in that as we improve other, richer, clubs will want to buy our players. As long as we can replace them, that is ok. I am not saying that Tavernier is perfect, he isn't. But he has twice the assists of Kent and people are talking about £10 Million + for him. Tav is a better defender than Kent, a better attacker based on many more assists and same goals, takes responsibility for penalties and he is club captain. So let's not undervalue him. If he goes, someone pays. Big. That money is then recycled.

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