Michael Beale’s enthused ‘ahead of schedule’ comment 9 days ago really was a bit of a jinx, or commentator’s curse, as Rangers haven’t closed in on a single signing since that capture of Dutchman Sam Lammers almost 10 days ago now.
Don’t get us wrong, we can’t expect a steady conveyer belt stream of players flowing into the front door, but only four additions as we close in very much on preseason (which begins on Friday) is not quite the work needed at this point.
We’ve shipped out 5 end-of-contracts, we’ve probably said goodbye to Steven Davis as well, and Malik Tillman has returned to Bayern and is 99.999% certain not to become a Rangers player again given the price, meaning we’ve only lost 7 players (all of whom were decent at least) and only signed 4.
And we’ll be blunt, only one of the signatures has us even remotely excited – we back them all and hope they all do well, but only Butland actually has any sense of being a top class signing.
The 7 who are gone were all good players, and they’re hefty to replace, and it’s safe to say that as June draws to a close, unless anything new comes over the next week or so, what we currently have is what will show up at Auchenhowie for preseason.
Incidentally this isn’t meant to sound fatalistic, or negative, or doom-laden – we clearly just need to have much, much better by the time serious action starts in the Champions League qualifiers in July – Beale will know this as well as anyone.
We need to ship the dead wood out at a much better rate than this, because as things stand, we’ve not got shot of anyone aside the 7 of them, which is of course better than nothing but some of those were major players in this squad, rather than surplus.
Yes, Beale’s enthusiastic ‘ahead of schedule’ claim seems to be famous last words at the moment, because we need more and quicker at it.
The club is of course working hard, and this is far from panic, but while things are creaking in the right direction, we can’t say at all that the summer work has come close to impressing us yet.
One or two really good signings will change that mood completely.
I would point out that Cifuentes cannot sign a pre-contract until 1st July. At that point, I expect him to do so and this will ramp up pressure on his club to negotiate or face losing him for nothing.
So I feel that one is close to the line.
Scotswhahae
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