In further surplus Rangers news, the club are working on a deal to ship out Leon King, with the press claiming a loan deal transfer but we’re not so sure – it could be a sale.
King hasn’t impressed, bottom line. While the club made a patent error with few Auchenhowie graduate Lewis Mayo, the same cannot be said of King, who simply hasn’t seized the chance he had last season to shine.
His one ‘impressive’ performance came in skewed circumstances where the starting XI struggled horrendously in Amsterdam, shipping a glut of goals against the former side of ex-Ger Calvin Bassey, before King came on amid zero expectations and was solid enough.
This gave a false impression, making the lad stand out in a sea of below mediocrity, and since then he’s been completely unable to sustain that level, struggling enormously.
In short, he was given a chance before he was ready, and utterly sank. And was unable to ever surface since then.
It highlighted the bad timing when he had to replace Connor Goldson at Ibrox v Liverpool and absolutely drowned – an 18-year-old who was green around the gills – being beside the hopeless Ben Davies didn’t help, admittedly.
Now, it’s also worth pointing out his age shouldn’t be such a factor; while Danny Wilson for his part had experienced David Weir and Carlos Cuellar for company back in the day, he still looked a class above King at the same age.
And in a modest Rangers under Steven Gerrard even before we won 55, Nathan Patterson at the same age absolutely shone like a beacon. He then earned his move to Everton when Gio was manager.
So let’s not completely excuse King based on age. He hasn’t delivered, not for this club, simple as that.
We say this with a heavy heart incidentally, we don’t want our youth players to struggle, but he’s simply not made it, and is better off away from Rangers.
The pressure may have been too much, but he was not able to cope, and he’d do better with less expectation but at a high standard like the English Championship.
Hopefully this deal can get done soon.