So it is confirmed Rangers (and Celtic) have failed to sign Liverpool’s rising star Owen Beck who sparkled on loan at Dundee and is now being groomed as a serious player for the Anfield first team.

With regular left back Andy Roberton’s fitness now an issue (he is currently unavailable and only projected to return this month, and he is now also approaching 30) Jurgen Klopp did a rarity of recalling Beck from Dundee in order to install him in the first team.

Beck went completely under Ibrox Noise’s radar (and that of many Rangers fans we’d add) and looks like a certainty to make the step up from Wales’ U21 setup to the full squad, seemingly ready to make an impact on Liverpool’s first team too.

His loan, as has been reported, simply went ‘too well’ and Klopp is now aware of how good the lad is.

Rangers’ attempts to prise him to Ibrox confirm two things:

1: Just how good the lad is, including potentially how he’s ‘the next big thing’ in that position.

2: That Rangers most certainly are in the market for a left back and may be waving goodbye not only to Borna Barisic but Ridvan Yilmaz too. More on that later.

But Beck will not be coming to Rangers, with an official approach rejected, and same for ‘them lot’ over the city.

Which does show the esteem the lad is held in by Liverpool now, and how well he shone for Dundee to provoke Klopp to bring him back.

Players are only recalled early from loans under a few circumstances:

1: Is a personnel crisis. Be it injury or suspension, when a senior squad is down in numbers, the loanees are often solutions. Cedric Itten was a ‘beneficiary’ of this last January.

2: The player has impressed so much at his loan club that the parent club’s manager simply wants him back.

It may be a spot of both here for Beck, but either way, he’s not going to be a solution for Rangers’ left back issues, which are in a great deal of flux over this transfer window.