Not only did Kai Kennedy’s switch to the USA fall through, but Rangers fans were treated last night to firm evidence why the attacking playmaker fell well short of making it at Ibrox.
Featuring for the visitors Falkirk at Recreation Park for their ultimately routine cup passage over ‘the plucky Darvel’, Kennedy not only showed a lack of professionalism with a very poor dive, but his quality on the ball was below average and his final product poor.
In short, Kennedy might have looked marginally above average for his Rangers cameo a couple of years ago, but he didn’t outright impress back then, and his mediocrity in Scotland’s lower leagues with modest sides like the Bairns gives some idea of why our management knows what it’s talking about when 99% of our kids don’t get close to Rangers’ first team, despite fan romance of giving them a chance.
They will always give the youth a chance to shine at senior level, but unless a Charlie McCann or an Alex Lowry or a Kai Kennedy absolutely strolls it on their debut like Todd Cantwell or Nicolas Raskin did, there’s absolutely no point wasting their or our time.
Most of these players fall short of being even good enough for Rangers’ bench, it’s why they end up at Falkirk and Arbroath and why we spent £4M instead on the Englishman and Belgian – the point of Auchenhowie is to rear decent kids, who will play for lower league sides and are sold to them for a solid profit. Every now and then a Nathan Patterson will surface, but that’s the exception.
If McCann or Lowry or Kennedy were good enough, they’d be playing for Rangers, and it’s not just about being decent. It’s about being better than Raskin, better than Cantwell.
Both of these players blatantly shone, and not just in a ‘oh he was actually ok’ kind of way ala Lowry, who didn’t do much wrong rather than actually shining like a beacon – they have to be clearly better than what’s there otherwise there’s zero point.
Kennedy? Well below even the reserves, a poor player – probably falls a bit short of that move to Bayern Munich as well we think…