If there’s been one massive fail the past few years, it’s been the transfer windows. That Rangers have mostly wasted millions in the January and summers of most seasons since promotion gives some idea of why we’re second and Celtic, sadly, are miles ahead in first.
When we look back on the litany of expensive fails, garbage Bosmans and awful loans, there are so few players brought in by this club for nearly half a decade to offer true value for money and enhance the team.
That Nicolas Raskin and Todd Cantwell are about the first new signings to immediately impress fans for the best part of over a decade is a real blemish on so many transfer strategies that have left the club with a massive wage bill, flopping players, and tonnes of injuries.
Rangers, frankly, are not a well-run club anymore. From merchandise distribution disasters (Castore), to PR disasters in general (cinch nonsense), to Old Firm friendlies in Australia, to no beam back from Sevilla, to a conveyer belt of poor signings, the amount of bad decisions from top to bottom in the club has led us to where we are now.
We’re trying to think of all the good or/and high value signings we’ve made since around and fractionally before Steven Gerrard took charge.
We’ll name them:
Morelos, McGregor, Balogun, Bassey, Arfield, Barisic, Davis, Kamara, Aribo, Kent, Lundstram, and now seemingly Cantwell and Raskin.
In almost five years, of 58 signings, maybe 13 have been genuinely definitely successful and have added to the squad in value. The rest are all loans, injury-blights, or plain bad.
We’re not picking on Rabbi Matondo, but sadly for him he was the chosen pin up for the unofficial Legends Rangers calendar this month – we barely even know where to start there, but his arrival at Ibrox sums up how bad the signings have been for around half a decade.
There have been successes, and some might make a case for a few of the other additions as well, with some possibly arguing for Goldson, Hagi and Jack, but we’d have to disagree on all three (not that good, then injury blight).
Regardless though, the majority of around 60 signings, that’s £54M outlay in around 5 years, have been a bum note, and Ross Wilson is feeling more than a spot of pressure in heading that department.
How does it change?
Well, January saw Cantwell and Raskin, who are both high quality, so maybe it already is, but the damage done previously is clear for all to see.
We’ve wasted too much money on too many players who didn’t work out, stuck with lots of rotten loans (thankfully those have dried up a little in more recent times) and brought in too many players who ended up on the treatment table.
If we were sitting here with the League Cup in our hands, yes, the picture would be COMPLETELY different, but again, the margins for success are so thin, that when you fail, your every indiscretion previously is magnified. Win, and it’s all glossed over.
This is why football is a results-based business, and Rangers simply aren’t winning anywhere near enough silverware any more. Two trophies since 2011 is deeply below standard, and when that happens, when another trophy slips away, the club has to be held to account.
And that certainly begins with recruitment.