We mentioned this earlier, this ‘dependency trend’ we’ve seen a LOT of under Steven Gerrard.

Cast your mind back to July 2018 when Rangers signed a glut of Croatia-based players – Nikola Katic, Borna Barisic and Eros Grezda.

From thereon in Steven Gerrard was linked to a TONNE of either Croatian players, or Croat-based players. Not a single other one did he sign.

Fast forward to January 2020. Rangers secure Ianis Hagi on loan from Genk. Kemar Roofe came that summer from Anderlecht and Hagi was made permanent.

Cue a TONNE of Belgian-based players linked to Rangers. Not a single other one did we sign.

Now it’s the turn of Colombia. Alfredo Morelos heavily linked out amidst interest from Porto, so the press use it for more attention and traffic. First they lazily link to the Borre story, claiming Rangers are to get a £15M player for free, before that story fades and now it’s replaced with another Colombian, this time Santiago Moreno.

Rangers, ever since Stevie took over, get pattern-linked to players who have a connection in markets or nationalities with a player we’ve bought or sold, or been linked to.

We’ve not seen this before to this extent – even when Dick Advocaat had his obsession with Holland and signed half the league, he didn’t get linked to everyone under the sun with a Dutch connection, and anyone he did get connected to he generally signed.

Warby, admittedly, did have something like this – the Magic Hat seemed to be linked to Watford and Brentford on a pretty much permanent basis, which was really ambitious (!)

But Stevie – when he makes a move into any market or nationality, the press seize that and use everyone under the sun who has a grannie of the same nationality to make the ‘serious connection’.

Are all these links fake?

Whether it’s the press making it up out of thin air or an agent using the Gerrard and Rangers name to get their client a move/pay rise, there’s rarely smoke without fire, but we can’t help feeling it’s just a lot of steam in this case.

But what do we know, right?