So we’re now five confirmed signings into the summer window, with Cyriel Dessers looking close, and seven departures, and it would be a mildly deluded and eternal optimistic who claims Rangers are blatantly in a stronger position now than the ramshackle squad that ended the season.
Ibrox Noise polled our readers on your satisfaction, and the overriding and overwhelming response was ‘underwhelmed but give them a chance’.
The reality is that Rangers have signed absolutely zero players wanted by their previous club, unless we count Kieran Dowell at a stretch, and the ones we’ve added were all surplus and struggling for form. We know that Dessers was a first choice at Cremonese but that one isn’t over the line yet.
That even includes Jack Butland, as much as we’re happy with that signing – the rest are all underwhelming at best though, and anyone putting a spin on that is just being baselessly positive. Which we’re not objecting to, incidentally.
It’s just that these are not the game-changing signings we needed, which is not to say we’re writing them off as fails already, although Dessers looks a handy hitman.
We already looked at latest recruit Abdallah Sima, a career fail from Brighton, who has been a borderline flunk at every club, and he barely even thrived at Slavia Praha either. We were kind and supportive as much as we could about his merits, bigging up the best of his frankly rather average season in Ligue 1 too, but we’re not going to spin his arrival as the dawn of Maradona.
He, like Sterling, like Lammers, are all players who could be classed as utter failed journeymen on paper – their careers a litany of struggle.
But this is the c*ck Michael Beale has to p*ss with. He can’t sign Neymar, Ronaldo and Modric, he has limited resources and he is, in fairness, doing the best with them that he can. Getting Dessers does help but it doesn’t change the picture completely.
Honestly, some of these additions are no better than stuff Hearts and Aberdeen could attract, and if we look at the career of Ross McCrorie, moving to Bristol for £3M from Aberdeen, can anyone explain how much better that is than ex-Coventry Sterling or Norwich Dowell or ex-Stoke man Sima?
End of the day we are limited, but 56-winning signings they appear not to be, and it doesn’t look anything like the upgrade we need yet.
If anything, at this precise moment, we actually look fractionally weaker than last season. Lost Morelos, gained Lammers. Lost Arfield, gained Dowell. Lost Kent, gained Sima. We keep hinting at Dessers but we’re not going to add him to the picture properly till he’s signed.
The only place we look better in now is goals with Butland, simply because McGregor was done and McLaughlin is a joke.
Otherwise, it’s hard to see the patent improvement here. It is of course still ‘fairly’ early in the window so there’s plenty of time for better to come in, such as Dessers, so we’re not totally fatalistic about things here.
The other good news we suppose is that lot on the other side are seeing a bit of an exodus themselves, and they’re struggling to attract much of gravity under their new manager, so for all the big budget they may have, they’re not getting all that much stronger. Their kit is also absolutely hilariously horrible!
But they remain ahead of us, by a distance, based on last season, and we need much better before the window closes if we’re to close the gap.
We hope for a strong July in the transfer window because as things stand at the time of writing, unfortunately we’re still quite a bit short.