With defender Ridvan Yilmaz likely to leave Rangers in January, it points the finger at three men who did obscene and expensive damage to Rangers which continues to hurt the club to this day:

Stewart Robertson, Ross Wilson and Michael Beale.

Robertson was the original amigo who sanctioned Beale’s cash splash at Rangers, and while he was replaced by James Bisgrove, the agreement was nevertheless still in place.

Wilson was the man who sanctioned a combined £10M on Yilmaz and Ben Davies, not to mention £3M on Rabbi Matondo, not a pound of which has been well spent.

While Beale, of course, splurged unspeakable amounts on Danilo (£6M), Dessers (£6M), Lammers (£3M) and Cifuentes (£1.5M).

All-in-all those three men cost/waste Rangers a roughly-speaking total of around £30M.

If we are to include Nico Raskin, whose time at Rangers is fast-becoming a wash-out as well, that’s another £2M, but we’ll be kind and spare him. For now.

But the 2022 summer window and this year’s counterpart have been painfully expensive wastes of cash for Rangers with money we don’t have, being dismally-used on players who either patently weren’t good enough, or who have been almost entirely injured. Or simply unfavoured.

It’s horrendous.

When we look at the average starting XI from Philippe Clement, it tends to be:

Butland, Tavernier, Goldson, Balogun, Barisic; Lundstram, Jack/Lawrence; Sima, Cantwell, McCausland; Danilo.

Only two players permanently signed at cost (Cantwell £1.75M and Danilo £6M) get in the Belgian’s XI, and Cantwell’s struggles under this boss have been well-documented while up front we didn’t have any choice but to field either Danilo or fellow struggler Dessers because there was no one else.

Which means of the last three windows, not a single player has been good enough for Philippe Clement to play regularly, and the much of the entire XI still, absolutely flabbergastingly, remains Steven Gerrard’s 2018/2019 team with a hint of Pedro. 4 defenders and 2 midfielders all of which are Gerrard’s or Pedro’s.

It’s only into the front four that the players become post-Gerrard, and even then, McCausland is technically from Stevie’s time too. And none of them are clearly good enough – Sima of course is on loan.

It’s ludicrous how abominable this club has been in the transfer market since Gerrard left – not a single player signed since November 2021 has been value for money or, more to the point, has truly affirmed themselves in the starting XI, if we judge how things are this present season under Beale then Clement.

It’s remained Stevie’s team, which either means they’re protected players, or the stuff signed since January 22 has been diabolical.

Possibly a spot of both.

But the latter is definitely true.

Rangers have been ghastly in the transfer market for too long, rarely-to-never bringing in top players who improved our team and became permanent fixtures.

It’s no wonder that despite how rubbish ‘that lot’ in the east are, we remain even more rubbish.