The earlier piece on Ross McCrorie got yours truly thinking, about other ‘might have beens’ at Ibrox. We know, we know, we generally like to avoid ‘what ifs’ and certainly don’t torture ourselves over those when it comes to results, but in the bigger picture of the past and future, it can be worth an indulgence.
And one of the biggest maybes is the potential for what we’d call the ‘Scott Allan Fallacy’ whereby players who didn’t make it to Rangers or were shipped out Greg Docherty-style are dismissed as not good enough because Hull are near the relegation zone.
Fans defending the decision to not sign, or to sell, look at their post-Rangers career and consider it to be evidence this guy wasn’t good enough to play for Rangers.
However, this has a flaw. And we’d call it the ‘Aberdeen Flaw’ – in the way Aberdeen raise their game against Rangers, because it’s Rangers, players raise their game if they STAY at Rangers, or get the move to Rangers.
Scott Allan’s career ended up being a bit of a damp squib. Everyone can see his talent but he should have been a Scotland pick if that early Hibs potential had been realised.
It wasn’t, for one simple reason – he never got the move he wanted. Had he moved to Rangers, you can guarantee history would have been different. He had all the qualities of Barry Ferguson and a visionary 10 or winger rolled into one, but the moment he ended up going to Celtic, his career was over.
Had he moved to Rangers, that potential would have been realised, he’d have bloomed into so much more, and things would have been different.
It’s the same with Ross McCrorie, Jamie Murphy, Greg Docherty, Jordan Jones.
Talented players one and all but in these cases the manager wasn’t interested – just didn’t want them, and they ended up elsewhere. Had they stayed at Ibrox, been given the chance, say, Ryan Kent was (he was terrible to average for the first 4-5 months of his Rangers career), things would have worked out very differently. Jones was an NI international for chief’s sake.
But the sliding door didn’t let any of this happen. McCrorie ended up at the Dons, Murphy in loan hell at Mansfield, Docherty in the lower reaches of the Championship, and Jones at St Mirren.
Many would look at those clubs as confirmation these guys weren’t good enough, but that’s exactly our point.
The Rangers sliding door definitely changes how players’ careers go, that’s for sure.
I rated Scott Allan very much , and still do although it may have passed him by. He was an unusual thing , a Scottish boy who could actually play with class vision and quality. I have a personal reason that makes it so poinient for me Football is ruthless for so many reasons and in our country we are very poor at letting our shit system of thrashing skill out of our players in Scotland kill the skill. Our players always look at every level lacking pure skill and technical ability. . We are also totally horrible heartless and awful at the the let down route for those who don’t fit the poor selection process by clique SFA coaches and process. Are Jim Goodwin or Mark McGhee the right people to move clubs forward ….no I don’t think so …like all things Scottish it’s 2nd rate and lacks real commitment and financial backing.
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