The latest Scotland squad and the general news from the national camp certainly intrigued us at Ibrox Noise, and it’s pretty evident the state of play from the regime is far from healthy.
Having disgraced the nation with his ‘damage limitation’ tactics this summer, Backwards Steve has been rewarded with a contract extension. Nothing else demonstrates the lack of ambition more than this man being rewarded for cowardice. Which, we suppose, sums up this country at times.
However, even more intriguing is the squad – just a single Rangers player, while there’s four Celtic ones.
This isn’t bias in favour of Celtic, it’s a damning indictment of Rangers’ failings at signing and rearing Scottish players in recent years.
Just one youth product, in Nathan Patterson, gets the call, and Jon McLaughlin misses out, albeit his call up is generally pretty irrelevant anyway. As, in fairness, will Patterson’s be when Stephen O’Donnell plays instead.
Nevertheless, Rangers have failed when it comes to Scottish players. We used to have Barry Ferguson, Kevin Thomson, Steven Whittaker, Davie Weir, Steven Naismith, Allan McGregor – some our own product, others signed from elsewhere.
Today McGregor has obviously retired, and the only other Scots are Patterson, McLaughlin and Wright. Ryan Jack’s injury issues remain ongoing.
In terms of absolutely established first-team players who are fit and healthy, the closest we have is Wright.
That isn’t great.
And that’s reflected in the NT. No, we don’t care about Scotland, not any more, but it’s one hell of a indictment that a club whose players used to make up half the XI now barely get a call up.
Poor.
It’s sad that we don’t have more Scottish players in our 1st team but the quality of good Scottish players is poor , just watch some of the pish they call football here compared to England . Most of the Teams in Scotland don’t have any youth programs at all. Don’t get me ranting about the clique coaching slash ! Clarke’s a failure with total green allegiance , better coaches than him have been punted for lees than his failings. But as you say it’s all about this country and where it’s direction or lack of it is . . The anti English hatred and Rangers and Unionist hatred are suffocating this country. No wonder we don’t produce footballers , we’re struggling to produce much of anything these days .
I’m quite happy to have no Scottish players in my team. Generally speaking they aren’t very good. Just look at how our top teams, including us, performed in the various European competitions. Pathetic.
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