Despite his recent decent form, sadly Jordan Jones has missed out on a place in Rangers’ Europa League squad after Steven Gerrard chose Brandon Barker ahead of the NI star, amidst the ‘home-grown’ rule.
UEFA rules state you need to include 8 homegrown players, aka players raised by your football association, and if you don’t have 8, each one less loses you a squad place overall.
Meaning Rangers lost out on having a 25-man squad due to only having four homegrown players, those being Ryan Jack, Allan McGregor, Scott Arfield and Greg Stewart, so Rangers can only take a 21-man squad for the group stages.
And because neither Barker nor Jones is homegrown, Steven Gerrard chose Barker over Jones.
It’s another blow for Jones, just as he was starting to get a foothold in the team, but the squad setup is a bit unfortunate. Even more strangely, he’s not on the standby group either.
Jones’ time at Ibrox has been a rollercoaster and we admit Barker has shown just about enough to be included, while Jones still has some catching up to do.
Barker’s cameo v County probably sealed the deal for him.
A policy of moving on the likes of McCrorie and Docherty, while improving on them with foreign talent will leave us short in Europe. Its time for the Academy starlets to really start pushing for a first team slot like Patterson. We need a strong core of homegrown players to help fight on all fronts. No use having a 25 man squad but only being able to select 21 (22 if you include our young RB)
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