Steven Gerrard & Mark Hateley have made a big Rangers claim

There’s no getting away from it, Mark Hateley and Steven Gerrard were correct, as we knew they were, when we look at what they both said in the past year.

When Gerrard was manager, having been dispatched by Malmo, he publicly bemoaned the lack of funds, and how you simply need money to beat teams at that level.

Now, of course, Gio overcame Dortmund and Red Star so he’s diluted the gravity of Gerrard’s claims a tad, but it didn’t make them wrong.

Then Hateley in recent days has slaughtered the board for not investing in new players – we’ve lived on frees and loans in the past two years and Rangers cannot improve from that.

And while the conditions and details of both claims may lack consistency, the overall picture is correct.

Rangers haven’t paid serious money for a player since summer 2020. Hagi, Roofe and Itten were the big investments and in 3 windows since, it’s all cheapos, Bosmans and loans.

Wright, Simpson, Ofoborh, Sakala, Lundstram, Bacuna, Sands, Diallo, Ramsey and Zukowski are all the additions since then, and just Lundstram of that lot has looked a truly good addition, and that took 6 months of being played out of position to get there.

The rest?

Not a penny spent and nothing in there that made Rangers stronger otherwise. And yes, we include Ramsey in this.

You need to buy players. You need to spend money, and whether Rangers won’t or can’t doesn’t matter.

The Patterson and Gerrard sales brought in £20M, but it all went on closing down the deficit, and it’s safe to say this summer is beyond critical.

If Rangers do not bring in new talent this summer, new quality talent having spent serious cash to get it, we fear to imagine the medium term future of the club.

We won 55, and did not capitalise on it with fresh talent. Not enough of it anyway, with just the former Sheffield man turning out a stellar signing. And he was a Bosman who wouldn’t have come if his hero Steven Gerrard wasn’t manager.

And that’s what Hateley is getting at. And Gerrard was too.

Yes, we need new talent, and yes, we need to spend.

It’s not rocket science.