Shock turnaround for Rangers’ 23-year old? Press says yes…

There’s an AWFUL lot of hype this pre-season about George Edmundson – the press are bigging up the returning defender as being given a second chance at Ibrox, with the 23-year old defender having spent last season in the Championship with nearly-relegated Derby.

Indeed, the media are really plugging the lad, implying strongly that Steven Gerrard is ready to use him firmly in his first team next season, which is, frankly, news to us.

We do actually like Ed, we really do. He’s an honest, old-fashioned defender with an especially brilliant right peg for distribution, and he gets stuck in physically.

The problem for him is not only the quality ahead of him (Goldson, Helander, Balogun and Katic) but the traditional ‘Stevie doesn’t like loan players’ issue, which is a blight for all those who spent time at other clubs.

Once the manager offloads you to a different club, your chances of success at Ibrox, under this boss, are literally nil. No exceptions. Not yet, anyway.

And even then, that’s in the case of players who thrived at their loan clubs – Edmundson only made 10 appearances for Derby in 20 matches – 3 benches he never got called from, and 7 absences from the squad completely.

We didn’t watch his displays for Wayne Rooney’s men, but he clearly wasn’t that great.

If he’s not good enough for nearly-relegated Derby, is he good enough for Rangers?

We have great doubts.

As we say, we do like him a lot – his style is honest and so is the man – we just don’t think he’s remotely in this manager’s plans.