Rangers brought in a pile of shiny new players this summer, in a massive swathe of recruitment on a par with last summer. It has shaken up the squad massively, left the group of players at Gerrard’s disposal with only a few too many surplus.

Four were dispatched out (including a summer signing in itself) but it still left small clutch of unneeded players on the payroll.

Ibrox Noise now takes you through our calls of the ‘surplus’ or ‘squad’ players we now have, those who are only good enough for the squad or aren’t good enough at all. And we exclude all players out on loan from this:

Andy Firth:

Absolutely at a loss as to why we brought this guy in – probably a bit too good for the dev squad but nowhere near good enough for the first team’s reserves never mind consideration for the XI. He’s Barrow Town level for goodness’ sake.

Andy Halliday:

He’s an honourable campaigner we have massive respect for, and we’ve rated him highly many times on here – he usually delivers an excellent shift and never lets his team down. Well, rarely does – had a shocker at St Mirren. But he’s just not quite good enough to be anything more than squad, and in fairness to him, he accepts that honourably.

Matt Polster:

We actually like this guy from what little we’ve seen of him – physically and game style similar to a supercharged Lee Hodson, the American has the unfortunate issue of being permanent deputy to James Tavernier and probably not being quite good enough to compete for a midfield slot at present. He’s a decent player, even if like everyone else he stank at Fife, but we can’t see a big role for him going forward. He was omitted from the UEL squad.

Andy King:

Still at a loss as to why we brought this lad in, in a recent piece we got a few bits of criticism for suggesting he’s a DM, where the claims were he’s an AM. Well, if you look at his career, it’s mostly as a CM or DM, especially for Wales, Leicester and Swansea where he’s played a full season worth of matches as DM, 130 as CM, and just 13 as AM. We’re not sure where this AM stuff is coming from, in all honesty. So, sorry chaps, yes, he was brought in to replace Ross McCrorie and provide competition to Glen Kamara. We just have no clue why.

Brandon Barker:

He was secured in the belief we weren’t getting Kent. He’s now kind of surplus and while he might be a half decent player, circumstances make him completely expendable. Sort of. A little unfortunate really. We’ll see how much game time we get but don’t be shocked if he doesn’t play too much but the ‘ambiguity’ of his surplus nature with the signing of Kent is the sudden apparent Gerrard dislike for Jordan Jones. So Barker may well have a big role to play and he was included in the Europa group squad. We’ll see how it pans out for him.

Greg Stewart:

We covered him in an earlier piece. He’s limited to numbers, really, not a lot else we’d imagine.

Greg Docherty:

We’re big fans of Greg’s all-action style and the heart he wears on his sleeve, but he’s just never been a Gerrard favourite even if he does have a place at Ibrox this season. Stevie’s signing of Joe Aribo gave some idea of where he holds Docherty in terms of esteem, and the Scot has had to make do with a bit-part role this campaign so far. He will likely continue to be a squad player and sub and little more. Was excluded from the UEL.

Jamie Murphy:

Was supposed to go out on loan but it just didn’t happen – out of favour at present and another one outside the UEL squad, Murphy does have a little opening with the injury to Jordan Jones, but we have no idea if Gerrard will go that route. Nagging feeling the club has outgrown Murphy now.

Eros Grezda:

A total wage thief, we can’t see anything other than dev squad appearances for this guy. We’ll either mutual constant him in the near future or hope to hawk him off in January.

The rest of the squad, that’s:

McGregor, Foderingham, Tavernier, Goldson, Helander, Katic, Edmundson, Flanagan, Barisic, Kamara, Davis, Jack, Aribo, Arfield, Jones, Kent, Morelos, Defoe and Ojo, is effectively Rangers’ main selection pool and it’s not half bad.

So, 19 players who essentially make up the marquee slots, while another 9 rotate between the bench, dev squad and occasional starts.

Overall a current operating group of 28 is a much better squad size than the absurd 37 we had at one point and we have to applaud the club’s work in trimming a lot away.

There’s only a few bits of waste we’d get rid from the 28 now and we’d say it’s good to go.