It has been officially confirmed that Rangers will, this summer, experience the biggest overhaul in playing staff since 2015 and the mass exodus of the 2012 crew.
That was followed by the Mark Warburton ‘revolution’ when 29 players left and 15 came in to prepare for a more serious assault on the Championship following the club’s abysmal failure first time around against Motherwell.
Manager Philippe Clement knows absolutely fine well that the majority of players we currently have simply aren’t good enough, and a huge departure cull is going to take place – none of those out of contract will be remaining possibly aside Leon Balogun, and the only loan that is possible to stay is Oscar Cortes (Dio is obligation to buy).
Speaking on the upcoming rebuild he said:
“There’s going to be a turnaround in the squad, that’s clear. The recruitment team is really busy looking at good profiles for next season. The club knows how necessary it is. But it’s also about now and we need to make the best with what’s available. It’s quite a rebuild, but you don’t want to start from zero. We need to do smart things for now and for the future of the club this summer. We need assets for the future and experienced players in. It’s not only in recruitment. We need to make smart decisions across other departments to improve the injury situation.”
It’s clear, this will be significant – as Ibrox Noise explained earlier, Clement had £30M at Club Brugge in the summer of 2021 and did spend wisely – they won the league from it, albeit, as we’ve discussed many times, Clement does not scout or pick players – he contributes, but it’s the Director of Football Recruitment and scouting system which finds the players.
He simply signs off on them.
That’s how it worked at Brugge as well.
Does this mean we suddenly trust him? Well, his recent comments post-Old Firm are a bit better – he didn’t defend John Lundstram, did admit his team fell short in the match, and in his presser, owned up to the idea he’s making mistakes.
We prefer someone being honest with us and trying to work to better themselves, which Clement SEEMS to be doing now, rather than the delusional nonsense of the past few weeks.
It’s like that match opened his eyes at last, to himself, his team, and made him finally wake up after living in denial since Motherwell.
And now we will see one heck of an upheaval this summer.
Badly-needed. But pity it took the league slipping away to make him smell the coffee.