Have we ever let a young player that has ever really been one we have lived to regret?

AndythephotoDr

Well-Known Member
A lot of chat on other threads about resigning McGregor and it being bad for McCrorie. Was also similar when we let his brother Ross go but doesn’t history prove that our club makes very few mistakes when we let players leave? Have many came back to really bite us in the arse after going into to bigger and better things?

I’m not bashing any players here but in general they find a level below Rangers. There are a few who have made it that we then have sold for decent money Like Alan Hutton or Nathan Patterson

Every season we have this mistrust of the board, management, recruitment, scouting but I’d suggest history has always proven that it’s been right to let players go or that they are not making more of an impact in the first team.

A squad can only be a certain size and if you have a better player in a position it can be hard to oust them unless the young guy coming in is exceptional, maybe look at Bassey totally making Barisic look like the backup guy now.

I know it’s preseason and we are all desperate for the football to start again but it’s maybe better to trust the management of the club and assume they know better than you about the players they work with everyday than you do.
 
No not really. Follow follow has been full of meltdowns of young players leaving and none have came back to bite us. Charlie Telfer or Reece McCabe for example.

As someone pointed out on another thread. Robbie mccrorie played himself out of being Livingston number one last time he was on loan.

Is he even better than say Liam Kelly?
 
No not really. Follow follow has been full of meltdowns of young players leaving and none have came back to bite us. Charlie Telfer or Reece McCabe for example.

As someone pointed out on another thread. Robbie mccrorie played himself out of being Livingston number one last time he was on loan.

Is he even better than say Liam Kelly?
You have to be exceptional to break into the Rangers team and better again to stay there. Lowery will be the next to get into the first team regularly then leave on big money.

Goalkeepers are a bit more restricted as they only play that one position and you can only have one keeper on the pitch. Sentiment doesn’t come into it sadly and I know the McCrorie grew up a fan and has been at the club since he was wee but if he isn’t as good as McGregor or McLaughlin he doesn’t get a look in. He would be much better going elsewhere and trying to prove himself as a player. Maybe if he does Rangers can buy him again in the future.


Opens up a bigger debate for me on whether the money a club spends on youth development would be better saved and used in transfer fees. In the old days it was smaller clubs who were the breeding grounds then a bigger team would buy the best and they would maybe move again to an even bigger team. It was that which kept the money moving round clubs.
 
Gattuso didn't fit into an Advocaat midfield so the little general tried to make him a Right Back.
Wee Rino was having none of it and there was a classic clash of personalities into the bargain.

I don't think letting him go was anything about ability, and he clearly wanted back to Italy anyway.
The original post doesn't say anything about ability

"our club makes very few mistakes when we let players leave? Have many came back to really bite us in the arse after going into to bigger and better things?"

We let him go to salernitana for around a £1m I think then they sold him a year later to Milan for £7m. He then won everything possible to win.


Edit Apparently 4m we let him go for
 
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John Fleck was one we maybe should have persevered with and tried to keep.

Didn’t really have the choice, he refused to TUPE his contract over.

There’s a few youths we let go that have had good careers. Kenny McLean is definitely one Sinclair was too quick to let go.

McCrorie isn’t a kid any more, he’s 24. It’s not nice to see kids who’ve been at the club for 10+ years leave but just like his brother, it’s not going to happen for him here.
 
The original post doesn't say anything about ability

"our club makes very few mistakes when we let players leave? Have many came back to really bite us in the arse after going into to bigger and better things?"

We let him go to salernitana for around a £1m I think then they sold him a year later to Milan for £7m. He then won everything possible to win.
I think we can make the assumption that the major factor in players being let go is because of ability.

You don't need to remind me about Gattuso's career, I'm saying it wasn't a mistake to let him go because he wanted to go, Advocaat tried to keep him.

The likes of McCrorie, McCabe, Telfer, Middleton, etc have all been released or sold because Rangers didn't want them anymore, which is what the OP is all about.
 
Didn’t really have the choice, he refused to TUPE his contract over.

There’s a few youths we let go that have had good careers. Kenny McLean is definitely one Sinclair was too quick to let go.

McCrorie isn’t a kid any more, he’s 24. It’s not nice to see kids who’ve been at the club for 10+ years leave but just like his brother, it’s not going to happen for him here.
Got my timing wrong with Fleck, forgot about that situation.
 
No not really. Follow follow has been full of meltdowns of young players leaving and none have came back to bite us. Charlie Telfer or Reece McCabe for example.

As someone pointed out on another thread. Robbie mccrorie played himself out of being Livingston number one last time he was on loan.

Is he even better than say Liam Kelly?

The Charlie Telfer meltdown was absolutely wild!
 
Every player from the third division even though they were all shite and everyone would’ve hated watching them week in week out
 
With Gattuso, I don't think he'd have had the career he ended up having if he stayed. As was mentioned he was being played at right back, I'm not sure if we keep him it would have worked out all that well
 
The original post doesn't say anything about ability

"our club makes very few mistakes when we let players leave? Have many came back to really bite us in the arse after going into to bigger and better things?"

We let him go to salernitana for around a £1m I think then they sold him a year later to Milan for £7m. He then won everything possible to win.
We sold gattuso for nearly £4m,and there was next to no complaints at the time from what I recall.
 
Eoin Jess everytime he scored against us for the sheep, the Scots media loved to remind us about how we let him go as a youngster and how he came back to haunt us.

The fact that he won a league cup and faded into obscurity speaks volumes.
 
Ross McCormack springs to mind. There was another striker who we let out on loan to Scunthorpe who ended up scoring a lot of goals down south. Can’t mind his name though so probably not that much of a loss.
 
I think it is nigh on impossible to asses the generation during the McCoist era TBH.

They were all dismissed as sh*te, p*sh and crap where as in reality, it was the coaching and standards that were sh*te, p*sh and crap.

At some stage Rangers are taking a talented football player from a youth system somewhere in the country, and doing so for a reason.

Either our talent identification or ability to coach up has been poor, and that era utterly highlighted that - McCoists "youth policy" was f*cking repulsive.

In more general terms, we just have rarely squad filled well with young players IMO.
 
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Ross McCormack springs to mind. There was another striker who we let out on loan to Scunthorpe who ended up scoring a lot of goals down south. Can’t mind his name though so probably not that much of a loss.
Was that Steven McLean who then went to hearts and St Johnstone?
 
I think we can make the assumption that the major factor in players being let go is because of ability.

You don't need to remind me about Gattuso's career, I'm saying it wasn't a mistake to let him go because he wanted to go, Advocaat tried to keep him.

The likes of McCrorie, McCabe, Telfer, Middleton, etc have all been released or sold because Rangers didn't want them anymore, which is what the OP is all about.

Something at the back of my head says that there was something to do with avoiding military service / national service requirements at the time he joined us?

If so, Gattuso was always likely to go after that requirement was lifted for age reasons. Might be talking pish. It wouldn’t be the first time :))
 
The Charlie Telfer meltdown was absolutely wild!
Still one of my favourite threads.

1000 posts tearing Ally McCoist to bits for letting him go.
The U20s usually played at 2pm on a tuesday in Dumbarton, when you'd be lucky if there were more than 60 of us at the games.

Even at that level, he never stood out.
It was so obvious that 99% on the thread had never even seen the boy play.
 
It's a funny one with young players, it's obviously all hypothetical as a player could go elsewhere and do nothing whereas if he'd stayed with us could have developed completely differently and been a star
 
John Fleck was one we maybe should have persevered with and tried to keep.
John Fleck suffered from the mentality that he was talented, quick and could pass the ball, therefore he was a forward.

I think the approach we’ve seen with Van Bronkhurst looking at Lundstram & Bassey in particular and moving them into slightly different positions that make best use of specific attributes may have seen Fleck moved back to do what he’s been successful at Coventry and then Sheffield United as a midfield anchor.

There was always this bit of needle between Fleck and Ally McCoist though - even before McCoist was manager there were stories of bust-ups between the two.
 
Robert Fleck? I can’t remember the circumstances but leaving in December 1987 when he was top of his game seemed like terrible timing. Went on to score a lot of goals for Norwich and set a record transfer fee to Chelsea (that didn’t work out).
 
Didn’t really have the choice, he refused to TUPE his contract over.

There’s a few youths we let go that have had good careers. Kenny McLean is definitely one Sinclair was too quick to let go.

McCrorie isn’t a kid any more, he’s 24. It’s not nice to see kids who’ve been at the club for 10+ years leave but just like his brother, it’s not going to happen for him here.
Sinclair knew exactly what he was doing.A bitter mentally challenged from a family of bitter mentally challengeds.How on he got into that position is mind boggling.Super had a lot to do with that.An associate from EK.
 
I would agree with others on McCormack. As much as he is/was a wee dick he had scored goals for us including in the Champions League. It was crazy that Le Guen let him go for nothing and replaced him with Stanger, a guy who looked as if he had never seen a football before in his life.
 
The original post doesn't say anything about ability

"our club makes very few mistakes when we let players leave? Have many came back to really bite us in the arse after going into to bigger and better things?"

We let him go to salernitana for around a £1m I think then they sold him a year later to Milan for £7m. He then won everything possible to win.
We got £4m from Salernitana (when they eventually paid up) so it was a very good deal for us.

Funnily enough, Gattuso did play right back early on in his Milan career if I recall.
 
Gattuso didn't fit into an Advocaat midfield so the little general tried to make him a Right Back.
Wee Rino was having none of it and there was a classic clash of personalities into the bargain.

I don't think letting him go was anything about ability, and he clearly wanted back to Italy anyway.
Not sure on the postional aspect. Even after he left, a lot of his early football was at right back before establishing himself back in midfield.
 
That’s one definitely but would keeping Gattuso have meant we wouldn’t have Barry Ferguson being the influence he was? Advocaat preferred Barry who It will be argued but in my opinion was a better player and had a far better temperament.

Rino certainly had a marvellous career
Did Advocaat not change Gattuso's position and that caused the move.
 
Duncan Ferguson.
About 22 or 23 so maybe not so young. Could have been a legend.

Treated appalling by everyone. But that’s for another thread.
The mistake was signing Ferguson when we did.
An outstanding player but not one who was needed, at that time.
Maybe the first of Murray’s “nobody says no to me signings”.
Although, his signing took Hateley‘s game up a level.
 
Duncan Ferguson.
About 22 or 23 so maybe not so young. Could have been a legend.

Treated appalling by everyone. But that’s for another thread.

IIRC he was essentially bought as a hateley replacement
i think it was assumed Hateley would be on the way down in his career, then after Dunc arrived he ramped up the form even more and was immense

partly bad timing for Dunc
 
There’s a difference between letting go and selling, in most cases we have made money on these guys so it has to be seen as a success.

In terms of have we regretted it, I don’t know that we have really, while I get that some people are up in arms that McCrorie might leave but even had McGregor not signed his deal I still don’t think he would have been out first choice keeper next season (or the season after for that fact)
 
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