With the Connor Goldson contract saga now running into its ninth month (been going since October last year) Rangers fans are starting to express a little touch of disquiet over the elongated soap opera.
There are two schools of thought to this affair and Ibrox Noise will take you through them.
First off, is the player himself. Football is a short career, and with Goldson already having lost two seasons of football due to heart surgery, few could blame him for wanting to maximise his returns while he’s young enough to do it. Word is he wants to be the best-paid player at the club, going into the £35,000 a week range, and he’s using his indispensability to Steven Gerrard to achieve that.
In short, Goldson wants to be paid what he thinks he is worth, due to the fact he is completely undroppable and has been given that position by his manager. He also had an outstanding season last campaign and that seems to strengthen his position further.
As we say, football is a short career so why not juice it for all it’s worth when you still have the stock to do that?
However, there’s the flip side of this coin – some Rangers fans are increasingly agitated that a player whose career the Famous and Steven Gerrard saved is apparently repaying none of that loyalty by ‘holding the club to ransom’. He’s the one to benefit from all of this, because either he’ll get the deal he wants from the club, or he’ll sign for someone else who will give him that.
And fans aren’t happy that a player who was on the scrapheap till Rangers gave him a second chance doesn’t seem to be quite repaying that faith.
In some ways, it’s a bit like the toxicity that was Cowdenbeath’s Darren McGregor, on football’s loser list until Ally McCoist and Rangers gave him a second chance and the biggest club he would ever play at. When he left, he made no mention of who exactly saved his career and only said he was delighted to be at Hibs. Utter lack of grace, gratitude or dignity.
Goldson hasn’t gone quite into that territory, so let’s not unfairly tar him with McGregor’s brush just yet, but there’s certainly rumblings now that this has taken as long as it has.
Of course, if he gets the deal he wants the interviews and club website will act like this was never in doubt and he was never doing anything other than signing, but that’s what PR does.
Our verdict?
We can see both sides.
We fans want loyalty, players who want to be at the club and don’t take 8+ months to sign a deal.
But equally football is a short career and there’s no room for loyalty when it comes to maximising returns.
Depends where you stand, really.
Goldson was at first not one of my favourites , he gave the ball away reguraly , at great cost on more than 2 occasion’s and had a bad habit of trying to see the ball out rather than make the challenge. Go forward to last season and you could see the improvement . We have matured him into a much more rounded player. He is entirely entitled to get the best deal he can . But if he leaves although I wish him well . We want at least £15 mill for him .
Let’s be realistic. Any good player at Ibrox should have the ambition to play at the highest level. We don’t want players comfortable in the shirt. We want them pushing themselves to be the best players they can be. Sure you could argue we saved his career, though he might have went on to be a fine player at Brighton, but he has repaid much of that with his solid performances. I trust the management to sort this out one way or another.
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