
There’s a lot in social media and the press in the last 12 hours about Alex Lowry and Lawrence Shankland. Prior to Hearts’ comfortable win over Kilmarnock, Ibrox Noise posted a note of regret that we hadn’t made a successful move towards Shankland, while others hinted at Lowry.
A fine performance on the night from the visitors and Shankland and Lowry both heavily involved – while Rangers barely scraped through the previous round v Morton.
The response we got was mostly agreement about Shankland – comparing his performances at Tynecastle with what Rangers are getting from the £15M wastes of money we’ve brought in up front really is a depressing pursuit.
It’s even worse when you factor in the Lowry angle, an attacking midfielder deemed not good enough for Rangers, dumped out on loan to Hearts, and while he’s not played every match for them and has by no means rattled in the assists and goals, most supporters would agree he’d add more to Rangers’ fortunes than Sam Lammers or indeed the injury cases Rangers can no longer call on.
It’s just bad, stubborn, poor management, and Rangers have suffered this for seasons.
We’ll see a thriving player excelling either at Ibrox or in the Scottish Premiership for another side, so our scouts going running as far from that as possible, and find £10M to waste on a random nobody from Holland or Italy, rather than spending the £6M on the established fan favourite at the other club.
Or dump the performing quality Rangers player completely – Lowry, Arfield and Hagi to name just a few.
We don’t know why our club has done this for seasons, years – the popular choice, the player clearly the right man to sign, and our club does everything in its power not to please fans and instead spend big cash on some noname jonny from Switzerland or Iberia who ends up being ditched a season later.
Meanwhile, the player on loan or the player at the other SPL side thrives, scores, creates, excels and gets his big money move to Italy or the Premier League.
It’s a recurring theme of bewildering Rangers ‘management’ which sees £20M Lewis Ferguson thrive in Southern Europe, rather than at Ibrox where he wanted to be for a quarter of that price.
But them’s the way it is these days.