There’s so many posts I could reply to individually here, so best just starting from scratch.
“The majority of players cannot continue into next season” - well that’s just not true at all is it? We have a core of players who MUST continue into next season; McGregor, Tav, Barisic all must continue to next season. The next 2 will split opinion, but I think Goldson and Katic must also continue. I’m not saying don’t strengthen that area, but for the love of god don’t throw them off the wage bill just because they’re not world beaters.
Jack and Kamara in the middle of the park for me must stay. Again, build around them by all means, but they need to stay. Then we can throw in Kent (he’ll come good again), Jones still needs to be given a proper chance, and of course Alfie.
There’s 10 players straight away that I’d be disappointed if any were sold or released (think we can assume Alfie will be sold, but for a healthy profit so that can be forgiven).
This is the core of the team that led us into a great position pre-winter break 2 years in a row, and who led us to the LCF which we should’ve won.
Now on to the subject of winning, I must admit I buy into the whole bottling / mentality thing, I don’t see any other logical explanation for the collapse 2 years in a row and for the failure to bury the poets in the LCF. Yes we beat them in the league but was there a huge burden on that game as much as securing silverware as was the case in the LCF? No there wasn’t. Then since we came back from the winter break, once again our arses collapse cos we’re really getting to the nitty gritty.
I also buy into the ethos that “winners” on the park help the other team-mates who don’t have the experience in getting over the line. We have only McGregor and Davis who meet that criteria at the moment, and I don’t expect Davis to see much action next year. And therein lies the problem.
So what is the solution then? Well we can’t go and break the bank and sign 3-4 proven winners, they’ll cost money, so the only way I see forward is to add 1-2 in the summer, and then hopefully a third in the winter transfer window next year.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone though, should it? Every single rangers supporter and their dog knew this was the long term plan when SG was appointed. If anything, the players and management are being punished for being too good in the first half of the season and building up too many hopes. But I’ve no doubt success will come our way in the next 18 months if we stick to the plan. And I believe that plan always was to slowly build a solid, well-gelled team which needs to be done over a number of windows.
Calls to sack the manager and chuck more than half the squad away at the first opportunity is frankly absolute lunacy.