Rangers’ forgotten man returns – what now?

With all the summer flurry of activity (both incoming and outgoing) one man has been completely forgotten about from a small touch of focus by Rangers’ media channels.

The return of Jamie Murphy really has gone down as inconspicuously as you like, with the fit-again winger in the Algarve for pre-season and determined to be part of the new campaign under Steven Gerrard, but the truth is his prospects are extremely limited and if we’re brutally honest we’re only slightly surprised if nothing else that he actually travelled.

Bear in mind, Graham Dorrans (and others who have contributed even less than Murphy) was left in Glasgow on the basis of not being part of Stevie’s plans, and while the manager has signed attacker after winger after attacker, Murphy finds himself in the summer training camp pushing for a place?

The blunt truth, for us, is that unless Jamie Murphy has a gear to move into that he has only glimpsed at showing in our colours, we struggle to see what role he can play next season in the face of competition like Jordan Jones, Jake Hastie, and depending on flexibility of use, Sheyi Ojo and Scott Arfield.

Of course, he’s fit again, and he’s worked towards this the whole season, so we’d imagine taking this away from him would have borderline killed the lad. Plus it is only fair to let him prove himself and give him a real chance to stake a claim.

But with all these younger models coming in, we nevertheless see a pretty bleak outlook for the ex-Brighton man. If Steven Gerrard saw Jamie Murphy like a new signing, why would he bring literally three wingers in over the summer, two of which are specifically for his position?

It’s possible, we suppose, he views Murphy as a ‘replacement’ for Ryan Kent, but they’re stonkingly different wingers – Murphy cuts in a lot, dribbles at modest pace and lays the ball off – Kent drives at players, tries to beat them and assists and scores. It’s apples and oranges really.

But there’s equally no harm in giving the boy a chance.

We just wonder why certain others weren’t.