If one response to Friday’s Hamilton analysis was prolific and repeated, it was fans’ disappointment and borderline anger at how poor Rangers’ pre-season and transfer window appears to be going.
When it was early June, fans were spouting the ‘in Stevie we trust’ line about expecting better players down the road, and that the window was young.
Well, we’re deep into July now and after a pretty unconvincing win over Hamilton there is a touch of concern both about the manager’s tactics, the system, and the inexplicable level of incomings in the transfer window.
In short, supporters are starting to express frustration to us about the lack of real development this summer, the lack of big signings, and the lack of obvious work in preparing for the new campaign.
To be clear, Rangers have made three absolute signings:
Ianis Hagi, Jon McLaughlin and Calvin Bassey.
None of these gentleman are ‘bad’ signings, per se, and indeed in Hagi’s case is a downright good one, but the problem is those three probably aren’t enough alone to overhaul Celtic, and there’s a horrible feeling among some fans, particularly those commenting on our site, that what we have at present is absolutely not good enough.
And it’s hard to find a case to disagree with that.
Every summer this club NEEDS its refresh. Two or three decent squad signings, two, three or even four high quality first-team signings plus with a touch of luck another two or three in there as well. You need your summer work to refresh what you have, otherwise you risk going stale, even if your existing players are of a high standard.
And Rangers do have some high standard players, but clearly not enough, especially not in the squad as a whole, and with just three weeks to go till the first competitive match, fans on Ibrox Noise are starting to get genuinely concerned about the state of our personnel.
Don’t forget, we’re down a CB too with Katic injured and potentially four or five others are dealing with ailments so the squad is not exactly in a super-healthy state right now.
It all adds up to many of our readers being worried. So we’ll put it to you directly.