As we know, Rangers have made two confirmed signings this summer, Lawrence Shankland and Ross McCrorie. However, there has been a flurry of borderline confirmed activity in the last few days, including the following names: Jack Butland, Ivor Pandur, James Penrice, Ben Godfrey and Cammy Devlin. In fairness, most of these have come from the same source, FitbaZone on X. This is purportedly a former football agent who has contacts in the industry and is followed by some big players. Those players include Chris Jack and Sky Sports Scotland. So, we’re not talking small fish. Consequently, we can probably take these reports very seriously indeed.
Butland exit and Pandur arrival
What does this all mean? It appears, first of all, that Jack Butland’s Rangers course is run. His race is finished north of the border and it suits all parties for him to go back south. He will apparently be joining Hull in what amounts to a swap deal with Ivor Pandor. That is, of course, of more interest to Ibrox Noise. Ivor Pandur is, as we said in an earlier entry, a Croatia call up but not yet an international. A Championship regular, he has never played in the Premier League, but has a market value of around £10M. He is a top goalkeeper based on the Championship, but this would fall under what Ibrox Noise previously labelled as ‘EFL slop’.
McInnes deserves trust
The difference, of course, this time is that instead of an EFL slop manager making these calls, it’s someone who knows Rangers. Derek McInnes has better judgement on what Rangers need than either Russell Martin or Danny Rohl did. Consequently, even although this signing does not hit the high notes for shininess, it is still one that we can trust based on who the manager is. Of course, we would rather a Premier League level stopper. We would rather a top five league level stopper. Pandur, however, is good enough to get a call up to the national team. He has shone in the Championship as one of the best performers at that level.
Godfrey
We will have a separate piece on Ben Godfrey’s arrival but he does also appear under the ‘cautious’ category.
A cautious endorsement
But then, of course, those kind of excuses are exactly the same as what fans used to make about the acquisition of Joe Rothwell. Some were making the same ones about Dan Neil. Rangers should be shopping in a better area than this. We retain the ability to be reserved about certain acquisitions, even although we do trust Derek McInnes. We will always back the manager and we will back Ivor Pandur to do the job at Ibrox. But we do have a little misgiving about him joining. Hopefully, he is exactly what we need in goals because Butland has made quite a few errors, even although Ibrox Noise still considers he was still one of our better performers last season. We will see in time if this story really is true and Ivor Pandur is indeed to be Rangers’ first choice goalkeeper under Derek McInnes next season.