Judgement call – have Rangers made an error?

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Judgement call – have Rangers made an error?


When Motherwell hosted Rangers in the spring in Jake Hastie’s effective audition, until the visiting side opened the scoring the home side were playing some decent football, but Hastie himself, for our money, wasn’t.

Appearing awkward and trying too hard, his performance felt like the recently faded speculation had dodged Steven Gerrard a bullet, and we were frankly glad.

Moreover, we WERE impressed by his team mate David Turnbull, who was probably the best player on the pitch until Rangers swamped the Steelmen and ultimately ran out winners.

We indeed advocated at the time that while Hastie had failed to impress, Turnbull had surprisingly succeeded and this 19-year old midfielder would be a far better signing than his senior colleague.

As we know Rangers secured Hastie, and today news has broken that Celtic have agreed a £3M deal for Turnbull which, and correct us if wrong, is not only a Motherwell record, but the highest fee paid out by a Scottish club to a rival for a player under the age of 20. It will rise to £3.25M.

Have Rangers made a mistake here? Should Turnbull have been the one we went after? Or was he just too expensive?

For those who might argue that we have plenty of midfielders, well they’re right – we have even more wingers though so that argument is a bit thin in defence of Hastie’s capture.

We just find this one a curious development – Turnbull was extremely impressive last season and it was essentially his breakthrough year in football – he got a big move to Celtic and, let’s be honest, unless he turns out exceptionally well he will sink Scott Allan-style without trace at Parkhead.

Unless, of course, the fee for him implies Neil Lennon intends to use him significantly next season.

Turnbull is a talent, no doubt about it, and while Hastie’s stats for Motherwell were good last season, we can’t help wondering if we ultimately sought the wrong player.

Time, we guess, will tell.

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8 COMMENTS

  1. I don't know but I suspect either Turnbull made his preference clear, or we felt we already had too many midfielders. Would we sell Docherty to get Turnbull in?

  2. As much as i quite like david turnbull as a midfielder, for me he currently wouldn't get into our midfield.So I can see quite clearly why steven gerrard,
    didn't pay the £3million to sign him.We can't sign every good midfielder we're linked to and gerrard obviously rates joe aribo as the better option,with no transfer fee into the bargain.It makes perfect sense really.That £3million is much needed to be spent on other areas of our team.I'm certainly not too perturbed,we didn't sign the young man turnbull.

  3. It's obvious Turnbull is the far better player. We just can't afford to be splashing around £3m on prospects when we need players to step right into the starting 11. In saying that Turnbull did score 16 goals from midfield last season for a team in the bottom 6 and we do need a number 10 so maybe we should of went for him

  4. £3m is a gamble for one good season. Interestingly no bigger clubs in England were linked. Where as today west ham and Leicester have been linked with a 17yr old Motherwell midfielder.

    Probably means nitcham will leave. But Turnbull is probably not going to start unless more midfielders leave or they have injuries.

    Looks more like a panic buy as they're fans were giving them grief about this turning into another McGinn saga

    • Good comments GavE I agree they have panicked a little the lads a decent player but no were near MC Ginn who will move to an even bigger team in England . Turnbull and occasionally some other young Scottish players look good where we have a dearth of talent !

  5. Hastie was on freedom of contract so is worth the gamble and the time needed for development .Turnbull is probably better at the moment but £3 million is too much for us to fork out on a youngster at the moment.They can afford the gamble but we can`t , its as simple as that.

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