If there’s been a very common post-match reaction to yesterday’s debacle, it’s been critique of Rangers’ defence, or lack thereof.
Summer business in this area has been absolutely dreadful, and we at Ibrox Noise wanted to break it down, to analyse where we were and where we now are in this department.
Pre-window, Rangers were looking at losing Connor Goldson, the return of Niko Katic from Croatia, Filip Helander’s return from injury, Leon Balogun’s contract expiring and of course the jewel in our crown of Calvin Bassey.
We had January signing John Souttar arriving.
Over the course of the window, Rangers have lost a host of defenders, willingly and not so willingly, while signing a few:
Leon Balogun was freed, Filip Helander remains out of action, new signing John Souttar is unavailable, Ben Davies MAY be returning but we don’t know when, Niko left, Simpson was sold, and Bassey was sold.
The only ‘stability’ here is off-form Connor Goldson remained, albeit not overly popularly. Last but not least, the only man available to partner himself is James Sands, a midfielder, who’s had to learn on the job how to defend. He’s decent, but it’s not his natural position.
This is the absolutely SHOCKING state of our rearguard.
We have never known an SPL Rangers to have a defence this barebones, where there was, literally, only one senior defender available to the manager of the entire squad, and where ZERO new CBs were signed this summer – just a pre-contract already added, and two left backs (albeit one of them can play centrally).
So, we lost 7 defenders to injury or sale, and despite the club knowing the desperate state of defence, they didn’t bring in anyone else.
Just left it to Goldson and Sands, leaving just Leon King as the bench option.
This situation isn’t great going forward, and we can’t resolve it before January unless we get injury returns or a free agent.
Is it any wonder Celtic had a field day?
I understand us not strengthening at the back in the pre-qualifying stage of the window because of the finances but the lack of activity since the final whistle blew in Eindhoven is completely baffling. Here we are hoping to try and lay a glove on the likes of Liverpool, Ajax and Napoli and three of our four defensive positions are held by players whose abilities are often brought into question when we ship soft goals. Then to be filling the final position in with a mediocre midfielder when we do actually have Leon King (who might be inexperienced but is at least a natural) is another poor choice. Our no.1 is bad enough but we aren’t doing him any favours either with that backline. I really fear for the Champions League games and if we can’t claim the Europa parachute spot we could find ourselves facing a barren season with no European matches after new year. What was beginning to look like a decent window is now very far from what we should have had.
You forgot money from Patterson, Aribo, Bassey, Gerrard. Also reaching a E.L final too.
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