For any Rangers fan with half a brain, Saturday’s Old Firm didn’t teach us anything we didn’t already know: Robby McCrorie is, by a distance, the best goalie at Ibrox now and it’s criminal he’s taken this long to finally get a chance.
Don’t spin us the ‘injury’ line, not only does McCrorie himself rather dispute that, but even when he was completely available he was always benched or rejected for McGregor or McLaughlin.
Furthermore, bit ‘suspicious’ that he only became fit when there was nothing left to actually play for, isn’t it?
Bit of a funny coincidence…
But paranoid conspiracies aside, McCrorie seized the chance yesterday with both massive goalie gloves and grabbed it for its life and Michael Beale has confirmed he’s new number one, at least for this season.
It is staggering, but Robby McCrorie is the only senior goalie in UK professional top-level football, possibly Europe-wide, to have conceded 0 goals in any of his appearances. Four outings as a Rangers full stopper, not a single goal shipped.
And he’s made some good saves, a particularly great one yesterday and a couple of big ones in the first Old Firm.
Yes, he’s kept goal twice against Celtic and done better than McGregor or McLaughlin, period.
So, obviously the question we must ask is Robby McCrorie our first-choice number one going forward?
The answer is yes for this season, and he’s played himself into serious contention for next season too. Yes, there’s the heavy rumours about Jack Butland, but nothing has been confirmed on that front yet, and Butland, like any other player, would need to earn his place, and McCrorie has now earned, entirely, the right to have the jersey unless he loses it.
See, a lot of fans tried, misguidedly, to credit Jon Mclaughlin with tonnes of clean sheets during 55 as justification for his legitimacy, but what they didn’t notice was not a single one was against a team who at that time were in the top 6. ALL of them were bottom feeders at the time. Both Saints teams, Livi, Killie, Utd, Hamilton, Ross County. 9 matches in the league, not a single clean sheet against Hearts, Aberdeen, Motherwell, Hibs – he conceded 2 v Hibs who were third during that period and he didn’t keep goal after the 8-0 drubbing of Hamilton.
Whereas McCrorie? Clean sheets against Celtic x 2, one in Europe, and one v Aberdeen. Already a gulf in class and he’s the one getting called up the past 12 months for Scotland.
It is a deep, DEEP source of embarrassment that McLaughlin was selected more than once for this club.
Anyway, we digress.
McCrorie is number one, unless a new signing can displace him. It’s your shirt to lose now Robby.