We had a little bit of feedback from the fans about our Robin Propper article, with some Rangers supporters saying that in fact we have until two days before Dynamo to register new players, not August 1st.
So we dug a little deeper into the exact rules behind this.
In simple terms, these fans are correct in part, but there’s a huge caveat, and we’ll explain in a moment.
So, August 1st IS the deadline for the third round of the Champions League, which applies to Rangers and Propper, or any other addition.
The caveat allows clubs up till July 4th to add two more, but there’s a problem:
ONLY if they have the full allocation of homegrown players.
Now, homegrown means players from the club’s own youth system and assocation, players now in the senior squad, fully promoted, and who had been in that club’s youth system for 3 years between 15-21 years of age.
Rangers have Ross McCausland and Liam Kelly eligible, alongside technically Leon King and Alex Lowry.
There’s a further detail – you have to have 8 players total trained like this in your squad, trained minimally within the same association.
That would be Barron, Souttar and Wright. All spent 3 years in Aberdeen and Hearts’ youth, as far as we know.
But that still totals just 7 players.
Rangers are a speck short on homegrown players, missing one.
Yes, there’s the ‘extra’ players like Curtis, MacKinnon, Devine etc, but they’re really not proper senior squad.
Unless Rangers have now promoted King and Lowry to permanent senior squad (which shows how dire our Champions League squad could be at this point) the club falls a bit short on homegrown, with Adam Devine potentially making up the numbers too.
In simple terms, either we don’t have enough homegrown, and can’t add Robin Propper for Kyiv in time, or we massively dilute the quality of the UCL squad even further by having Devine, King and Lowry in there to help with the homegrown quota.
But they then take places of potentially better players to fulfil UEFA’s requirements.
Pity Rangers’ youth system has been so poor, isn’t it?