It all but seems confirmed that Rangers will sign a new number one in the shape of ex-England goalkeeper Jack Butland.

While many fans welcome this signing as a step up from the aging McGregor & the out of depth McLaughlin, questions have been raised about whether we should be getting better than Butland. He’s an ‘experienced’ 30-year-old who’s played in the Premier League & Championship for a number of years, but how many of these have been as a number one?

Recently he’s bounced about clubs as a number two & three, and while he was once rated as having a transfer value of over £20m it’s fair to say that he’s not maybe lived up to the hype or potential that he had.
In the past three seasons (including this season) he’s only played 14 top level games for Crystal Palace (no appearances in the current season, and is currently on loan at Man Utd), in these 14 games he’s conceded 20 goals, with only three clean sheets being recorded – which doesn’t make for good viewing (granted Palace are not a top 6 six, however that stat is a bit of a worry).

Butland has not played a full season of football since the 2019/2020 season, and we are looking at him being our number one for the 2023/2024 season. Out of the past 10 seasons there are only 5 seasons where Butland has played more than 30 games; yes he did have a bad injury while on international duty in 2016 that kept him out for almost a year, but this might be a cause for concern.

Since season 2012/2013 he has managed to play in 266 games, which some might say is a good return, but goalkeepers generally don’t get rotated in & out of the side – but there is still a large number of games missed for someone who was meant to be the next big thing when it came to England goal keepers – he couldn’t remove Joe Hart as their number 1.

So should we worried about him coming in as our new number one given the lack of game time in the past three seasons? He did manage to retain the number one jersey at club level after his bad injury in 2016, but since he left Stoke in the Championship that’s where the lack of game time comes into play.

From the keepers on Palace’s book, you would have thought that more game time would be given to Butland, as his only competition for two seasons was Vincente Guaita and this season Sam Johnstone was added, and Butland slipped down to number three pick (hence why he was allowed to go to Man Utd on loan as cover).

Butland will also take a sizable wage when joining us, anywhere between £20K-£30K a week, which could be seen as a risk. He could turn out to be a great signing as goalkeepers don’t peak till late 20s/early 30s.

Just worried that we have not seen enough of him recently for us to be excited for him being potentially our new number one (I hope I am proven wrong!!).