Earlier we discussed Rangers players and the lack of them for Scotland in the NT. There’s no doubt ever since the halcyon days of Allan McGregor, Barry Ferguson, Davie Weir, Kevin Thompson, Steven Whittaker, Steven Naismith you name it, Rangers have completely lacked in quality Scottish players.
There’s been a real poverty of talented Scottish players at Ibrox in the past decade, with the most promising youngsters (McKay, Macleod and Gilmour) all leaving for pastures new.
And let’s also be clear – in that Walter Smith squad I just named, only two of those players were actually reared at Auchenhowie so it’s not like we built our own team back in the day.
But the truth is Celtic for a good decade have been a tonne better for giving their youth a chance and either cementing them in the senior team or selling for a massive profit.
And despite the age of Steven Gerrard giving us 55 and amazing runs in Europe, he hasn’t exactly been great with youth.
There’s a misnomer about our manager that he’s ‘the right man’ to see the youth flourish or whatever, when in fact the only kid to have gotten a chance under him, Nathan Patterson, only got that chance because Tav was injured.
All the other youth has been fringe at best – the McCrorie brothers, Kennedy, Leon King, the list is endless.
And Stevie is neither anti Scottish or anti-youth – he’s pro Rangers.
Our manager has made 3 Scots firm parts of this side – McGregor, Jack and Arfield, so that demonstrates he doesn’t discriminate on anything outside ability.
As for youth? Our record could be better, a lot better – it’s less that Stevie is anti-youth, more that he doesn’t see much of our product as any good.
And neither have his predecessors.
Nathan Patterson could be the exception, but he isn’t going to supplant James Tavernier any time soon.
And we just have to accept for the foreseeable future, youth just won’t get a chance at Ibrox.
Is this wrong?
Rangers’ standards are now incredibly high – it takes a special kid with more than just ability to succeed in Govan – Kai Kennedy has the potential ability but does he have the temperament?
To get in Rangers’ first team now takes more than it has for a long time. It may even be one of the best Rangers teams in history.
And unfortunately if a kid isn’t cutting it, they ain’t cutting it.
Rangers come first.
This inst just about Rangers . Scottish football is totally shite . Poor coaches poor set ups no investment . Young kids in Scotland want to play football it’s not complicated . However the facilities the coaching the actual dealing with Scottish kids is wrong it’s been wrong for years
We are not even on the Top 10 in Europe for producing good kids we haven’t been for fucking years let’s not kid ourselves on . Look at the German Danish Sapish Portuguese etc etc Look at Iceland FFS. So it’s not just Rangers it’s the Scottish Set Up lack of investment lack of real coaching
I don’t think it’s lack of investment or a lack of coaching. Good quality coaching perhaps and learning to “win” superseding learning to “play”.
For me the biggest problem is the pro youth system that hoovers up all the best young players to clubs associated to the senior clubs. Sure they will get better coaching but go along on any match day and you’ll see 20+ players turn up in their branded tracksuits and 10 of them will get just a few minutes or no game time at all. Kids need to play.
Celtic have been able to do it for the best part of the last decade as we’ve not been there to challenge them to do so. I’d imagine it’s likely to slow down now they feel they have to compete with us. Most of us agree it was a waste not to use Youth to progress through the leagues but who knows where we’d be now if we actually had? However, the Rangers youth side is one of the best we’ve had so hopefully we will see one or two start to break through each season. I’m really hoping to see young Kelly and Kennedy get a break sometime next season. Kelly has proved he can do it at this level and Kennedy has shone in the Championship. Bodes well for the future.
Airfield is Canadian
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