Is it time to go radical and play the kids?

JC85 said:
Has Rice even made a squad under Clement?

It's the usual pattern this time of year. League done, we'll see 2 or 3 youngsters, they'll look decent, then we won't see them again until we play some 2nd division team at Ibrox in the cup next season.
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I would rather see a couple boys making their way in the game than guys who earn 10-20k a week struggling to take apart a Dundee team who’s combined 11 probably make 20k a week.
 
Coza said:
I remember reading an article 7-8 years ago about how so many of the secondary leagues (Greece, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium etc) were being competitively killed due to champions league money supporting the winning club over and over. The earth disparity was leading to multiple leagues with 4-5-6-7 in a row champions and no signs of it ending.

But then the article switched tone and highlighted in Greece where AEK I believe reversed the trend by hoovering up all the young talent in Greece and persisting/building with them over 1-2-3 seasons. Culminating in them breaking the dynasty using a back bone of young hungry talented kids they wouldn’t necessarily given a chance to before.

Should we be looking at the approach scattering in some senior pros with a host of young kids? Bailey Rice for example gets rave reviews but we never see him. Or Lennon Miller at motherwell getting massive reviews about being a superstar - should we be buying these guys and building longer term?

For those who will reply our kids aren’t good enough - I’m talking actively going and hoovering up all the young Scottish talent throughout the league to supplement our own.
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Our youth team is a total waste of time. For whatever reason our club is not the place to develop if you are a youth player. I don't know if it's the pressure or the fear from managers providing these chances. I would love to see Lovelace get a chance.
 
Phil'ieve said:
He won't do it. Let's just say against all the odds they lost at Rugby park and we win our game by few goals. We'd be going in to the last game of the season in a scenario that if they lose and we win, we win the league. Obviously I know that's not going to happen but the manager has made it clear it's not done until it's done. He's also more likely to try and use these games to figure out his cup final team.
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This exactly nails it as to why I don’t think we will see any youth in the last 2 games. Not tomorrow night anyway, because as it stands, we as a support know the league is over but PC is saying it’s not done to its mathematically done. So imo it’ll be the same losers lining up tomorrow night again Dundee. We will scrape a 2-1 win and hopefully the bulk of the squad will have played their last game at Ibrox
 
We should have started playing them when we were down the leagues. May have taken more time than expected but we had a good enough squad of kids to bring us up i would have thought.

in all honesty they are not kids either.
 
Perhaps we should've been plugging gaps more by using these types of players.

Sterling offers physicality only at RW. Surely we could've filled a shirt there and let DS play centrally?
 
Not a comment on the OP but how depressing is it to be back here again, debating whether we should throw the young lads in due to the failure of the first team.
 
Scarface said:
We should have started playing them when we were down the leagues. May have taken more time than expected but we had a good enough squad of kids to bring us up i would have thought.

in all honesty they are not kids either.
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we did play a lot back then

some were good - McLeod, McKay, Little
some were better after leaving - Naismith

some were utterly dreadful - Perry, Hegarty etc
 
Scarface said:
We should have started playing them when we were down the leagues. May have taken more time than expected but we had a good enough squad of kids to bring us up i would have thought.

in all honesty they are not kids either.
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Go back and have a look at some of the teams we put out during that period. Loads of 'kids' got their chance. In most cases they simply weren't good enough to deliver.

Little, MacLeod, Hegarty, Hutton, Perry, McKay, Aird, Crawford, Naismith, Hemmings, Cole, Gallagher to name but a few.
 
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Valley Bluenose said:
Go back and have a look at some of the teams we put out during that period. Loads of 'kids' got their chance. In most cases they simply weren't good enough to deliver.
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But at the same time, they never got a second game to gain consistency. A one off game and dropped?

How shit is that?
 
Scarface said:
But at the same time, they never got a second game to gain consistency. A one off game and dropped?

How shit is that?
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nah a lot played 20+ games
the likes of Gasparotto and Stoney barely featured
and since then they've disappeared
 
Scarface said:
But at the same time, they never got a second game to gain consistency. A one off game and dropped?

How shit is that?
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Well, that's a nonsense.

Season 12/13 the following had more than 20 appearances each: McKay, Little, Hutton, MacLeod, Hegarty, Crawford, Naismith, Perry and Aird.

There's more in subsequent seasons.

Your memory is fading.;):)
 
Macdonsj said:
nah a lot played 20+ games
the likes of Gasparotto and Stoney barely featured
and since then they've disappeared
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Just curious. Would we have got back through the leagues without the Mccoist signings, or get through with the young ones developing which may have taken a few seasons more?
 
KensingtonBlue said:
The time to do that was 2012. We pissed away a glorious opportunity
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This 100%! I said at the time we didn’t need to sign the players we did to win the 3rd division! With the players who remained we could have had

Alexander

Cole Perry Bocanegra Wallace

Crawford McLeod Hutton

McCulloch Little McKay



With other youngsters coming through. We shouldn’t have been allowed to sign anyone and imagine the wages and money we’d have saved to struggle up the leagues and ultimately get there the same time!
 
ecossebear said:
This 100%! I said at the time we didn’t need to sign the players we did to win the 3rd division! With the players who remained we could have had

Alexander

Cole Perry Bocanegra Wallace

Crawford McLeod Hutton

McCulloch Little McKay



With other youngsters coming through. We shouldn’t have been allowed to sign anyone and imagine the wages and money we’d have saved to struggle up the leagues and ultimately get there the same time!
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See post #63. Contrary to popular perception, plenty youngsters got their chance. I think they'd have been good enough to get us as far as the Championship. Highly unlikely, given the presence of Hearts and Hibs, that they'd have got us any further.
 
There’s a few reasons kids rarely make the grade at Rangers.
From not being good enough to the fan base not having the patience to have kids succeed.
As for poaching other sides kids. All for it, the issue comes with other clubs bending us over a barrel knowing that they can usually get a decent fee from a no mark English club.

So in an ideal world we would have a side filled with Barry Fergusons, Alan Huttons, Ian Durrants. But history tells you it won’t happen. Who was the last kid to come through and actually make it with us? Patterson Id say would have but he had a better player ahead of him and we got silly money for him.
McKay and MacLeod maybe only due to circumstance. Before that? Fleck bombed and he was the hottest prospect since Barry.
 
Valley Bluenose said:
See post #63. Contrary to popular perception, plenty youngsters got their chance. I think they'd have been good enough to get us as far as the Championship. Highly unlikely, given the presence of Hearts and Hibs, that they'd have got us any further.
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Yeah my point was that they got games because they high paid new boys were atrocious. If we hadn’t signed these players we could have been up in the championship and then spent £5-10m on a team to get us up and give us a platform to work from. As it is we’ve spent the last decade with only one exception talking about the huge size of the rebuild in front of us.
 
DadoAlbertz said:
Our youth team is a total waste of time. For whatever reason our club is not the place to develop if you are a youth player. I don't know if it's the pressure or the fear from managers providing these chances. I would love to see Lovelace get a chance.
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I wouldn’t be giving Lovelace any time at all, he wants back to London and isn’t signing a new deal.

Nsio, Wylie, Ishaka, Gentles should all be ahead of him imo.
 
JW1988 said:
There’s a few reasons kids rarely make the grade at Rangers.
From not being good enough to the fan base not having the patience to have kids succeed.
As for poaching other sides kids. All for it, the issue comes with other clubs bending us over a barrel knowing that they can usually get a decent fee from a no mark English club.

So in an ideal world we would have a side filled with Barry Fergusons, Alan Huttons, Ian Durrants. But history tells you it won’t happen. Who was the last kid to come through and actually make it with us? Patterson Id say would have but he had a better player ahead of him and we got silly money for him.
McKay and MacLeod maybe only due to circumstance. Before that? Fleck bombed and he was the hottest prospect since Barry.
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It might not produce the next Barry Ferguson but it could certainly save us money on squad players and let us focus money only on game changing signings. This year would it have made much difference if we had went with Mayo over Balogun, Lowry over Dowell and Rice/King over Cifuentes.

These guys could all have contributed 15-20 games with us playing in 4 competitions and you never know if giving someone the chance might push them to become a first team starter. The last few years our managers have basically only introduced any youth players as an absolute last resort.
 
IbroxMainStand said:
It might not produce the next Barry Ferguson but it could certainly save us money on squad players and let us focus money only on game changing signings. This year would it have made much difference if we had went with Mayo over Balogun, Lowry over Dowell and Rice/King over Cifuentes.

These guys could all have contributed 15-20 games with us playing in 4 competitions and you never know if giving someone the chance might push them to become a first team starter. The last few years our managers have basically only introduced any youth players as an absolute last resort.
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And why would that be?
Other than they don’t believe they’re good enough
 
JW1988 said:
And why would that be?
Other than they don’t believe they’re good enough
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Pressure of the job and despite our injury problems we have far too many options. Each of the last few seasons we have had around 30 players with 2-3 from the youth team. Its why we have such a huge wage bill and not much quality.

If you have an experienced pro as a back up option its very easy to go with them instead of throwing in a youngster. The recruitment team need to take away that option and get the squad numbers down.
 
Presser by PC today confirmed Dev players are involved this week possibly even starting .

No idea who but he did mention Bailey Rice is injured for tomorrow at least
 
Not a chance: despite our manager telling the fans he would like to introduce mccausland gradually, he has been forced to play him when not fully fit and out of form due to other injuries. Have our fans been patient with that? Nope. They have crucified the lad and written him off. Could you imagine 3/4 of them in team?
 
Gameboy said:
I wouldn’t be giving Lovelace any time at all, he wants back to London and isn’t signing a new deal.

Nsio, Wylie, Ishaka, Gentles should all be ahead
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I would be want to be moving if I wasn't being given opportunity, regardless of how poor the strikers are playing in our squad. He has been injured, but what does it take to get a chance? We don't take enough chances with the youth team. Billy gilmour should have been in that first team as early as he could have and we may have had a chance to keep him. Not saying we would, but there isn't a lot of success stories recently to get the youth players excited. The ones that have been given a chance haven't done well enough. It's also been the case that a lot of the players improve as soon as they move. This could be down to the pressure from the fans in general but we have had a shocking return in recent years.
 
DadoAlbertz said:
I would be want to be moving if I wasn't being given opportunity, regardless of how poor the strikers are playing in our squad. He has been injured, but what does it take to get a chance? We don't take enough chances with the youth team. Billy gilmour should have been in that first team as early as he could have and we may have had a chance to keep him. Not saying we would, but there isn't a lot of success stories recently to get the youth players excited. The ones that have been given a chance haven't done well enough. It's also been the case that a lot of the players improve as soon as they move. This could be down to the pressure from the fans in general but we have had a shocking return in recent years.
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Prove you're better than the senior player that has the shirt by working hard in training grab your opportunity and impress the manager. Lovelace can't stay fit he's out with his 3rd injury of the season so that's why he's not been seen again.

Gilmour couldn't play for us until he was 16 so he couldn't have been put in any earlier. How many players do you expect us to bring through a year?

We've had in recent times featuring with the first team Lowry hasn't kicked on, Devine not had much game time, King slaughtered after struggling in Champions league, McCausland another getting slaughtered. Before that we've had the likes of Kai Kennedy, Josh Mcpake, Nathan Patterson etc with the first 2 not kicking on and one being a record sale for us.
 
We don’t have many if any good enough I’m afraid maybe Lovelace if fit , I would like to see Robbie Fraser get a start at left back he deserves it also Leon played holding midfield where scotland 21s now play him , big Cole possibly aswell but when a team is struggling it’s not the best time to bring in kids ,
 
bkerr72 said:
Prove you're better than the senior player that has the shirt by working hard in training grab your opportunity and impress the manager. Lovelace can't stay fit he's out with his 3rd injury of the season so that's why he's not been seen again.

Gilmour couldn't play for us until he was 16 so he couldn't have been put in any earlier. How many players do you expect us to bring through a year?

We've had in recent times featuring with the first team Lowry hasn't kicked on, Devine not had much game time, King slaughtered after struggling in Champions league, McCausland another getting slaughtered. Before that we've had the likes of Kai Kennedy, Josh Mcpake, Nathan Patterson etc with the first 2 not kicking on and one being a record sale for us.
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You make a good point. I do think as fans, watching the dross we have had over the last few months, surely we have some players good enough rather than play first team players out of position. It's the old idea that they aren't given enough opportunities to show their ability consistently, but if we don't take a chance then we will never know either way. We aren't forgiving enough when it comes to a bad performance or two, and like everything else at the club at the moment it just drains confidence.
 
If they are good enough play them. Sadly I don't think they are. Thought McCausland was badly found out on Saturday.
 
EVERY SINGLE SEASON we pose this same question at this point - usually, whilst trying to re-assure ourselves, that ‘next season will be better’ (it rarely is!). Might it not be a better idea, to actually sign some players, whose arses don’t collapse, three-quarters of the way through the season?? I’m pig-sick oh hearing mediocre noneties talking shite on social media, about being the dominant team in the country, when they can’t even lift the weight of the shirt, in the first place.
 
This happened once for last few games in 2003/04 Ibrox was empty and it was brutal
 
We don't need to develop superstars, but low cost, good squad players. There have been plenty of opportunities for youngsters this season, which weren't utilised by the manager.
 
I had a game tonight so missed ours. How was King? Seen everyone else mentioned. Highlights look as if he could have done better for the first goal but could have been wrong.
 
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