The biggest surprise in today’s departures announcement from Rangers was that Steven Davis was not formally included in it, and appears to be clinging on for dear life, despite also being out of contract in 7 days.

Obviously he’s currently injured, but the statement expressed a vague utterance of him working alongside the medical staff in order assess his chances, which to us sounds ridiculous for a 38-year-old midfielder who is clearly at the end of his career.

It did not definitively include him as an exit, but did make explicit reference to his injury and status. It appeared, with all likelihood, that the club/board didn’t want to have his exit on their conscience, that he’s such a well-loved player that despite the fact that he is as old as he is, and completely counter to Rangers’ new younger trading model, there’s sentiment attached here.

And Rangers have to be ruthless on this one, sorry.

Now, you may be reading this and thinking ‘why you being harsh on Davo when you were so kind and generous about Arfield?’

Simple – Arfield has never once been injured as a Rangers player, and he’s only 34 – he makes impact from the bench and remains a solid performer as a starter, while Davo, unfortunately, was losing his legs at 38 and wasn’t performing at the same level he once did. No harm in that, but we can’t just keep a player simply because we like him. Especially when he’s mostly injured nowadays.

We’ll chew more over the announcements in due course, but we do repeat our surprise at the absence of Davo from departing.

We need to move forward and he’s not that.