Andy King has presented Rangers with a major problem

“As a manager you have to try and be as respectful and honest as possible to every player. The squad is big right now. We have 28 players with us right now. The board haven’t said and they haven’t put me under any pressure but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out the squad is too big.”

-Steven Gerrard, 24/06/19.

Yesterday Gerrard and Rangers confirmed another signing in the form of Andy King.

For someone trying to trim the Rangers squad, we have to admit Stevie is going an odd way about it.

The entire first-team roster at Ibrox is looking just a little bloated:

Allan McGregor, Wes Foderingham, Andy Firth, James Tavernier, Niko Katic, Connor Goldson, Filip Helander, George Edmundson, Jon Flanagan, Andy Halliday, Borna Barisic, Ryan Jack, Steven Davis, Glen Kamara, Joe Aribo, Scott Arfield, Greg Docherty, Jamie Murphy, Andy King, Matt Polster, Brandon Barker, Jordan Jones, Sheyi Ojo, Jake Hastie, Greg Stewart, Graeme Dorrans, Andy Halliday, Jason Holt, Eros Grezda, Jamie Barjonas, Glenn Middleton, Eduardo Herrera, Ross McCrorie, Jordan Rossiter, Jermain Defoe, Zak Rudden, Alfredo Morelos.

38 players. 10 more now than when Stevie said the squad had to be thinned. If we remove those out on loan, it reduces to 34 (Herrera, Rossiter, McCrorie and Middleton).

To quote Stevie himself it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out the squad is even bigger now than when he complained about the size.

There is just too much dead wood on the books, and Rangers have made extra signings without managing to get enough off the payroll.

Yes, the ones coming in generally appear to be of higher quality, but the flip side is the ones they’re replacing are still at Ibrox, and cost about the same.

How on earth are Rangers going to carry on with almost 20 players more than the traditional match-day squad?

It doesn’t seem a reasonable amount of excess.

This is probably nitpicking such is the work we’re doing on the pitch and the success so far of Gerrard’s methodology – but ultimately these 20-odd players are being paid and we’re getting no return for that.

Hopefully far more trimming is going to happen before the 2nd of next month.