January deals are a show of strength from Rangers Rangers are finally back on top in Scotland
AS the games, weeks and months have gone on this season, there have been small but significant shows of strength from Rangers.
The ultimate one will, of course, arrive sooner rather than later when Steven Gerrard’s side are crowned Premiership champions. It is a matter of when, not if, the long awaited 55th title is won.
But the business that Gerrard and the Ibrox board were able to sanction during the January transfer window was another real indicator of where Rangers are and where they are heading right now.
The aim for every manager is for their squad to be stronger and better at the end of the window than it was at the start and there is no doubt that is the case for Gerrard.
Those on the fringes of his group that were allowed to leave will, with all due respect, not be missed during the closing stages of the Premiership title race.
And the players that put pen to paper represent the first building blocks in what will be the bid for a second successive league crown next season.
Rangers are in a position of strength on and off the park at present and the biggest mistake they could have made would have been to settle for what they have today. Instead, they are pushing for tomorrow and there was never any sense of Rangers scrambling around looking for short term fixes or stop-gaps.
It was a case of evolution rather than revolution as Gerrard and sporting director Ross Wilson plan for a bright future at home and abroad.
It is no secret that there will be high profile departures from Ibrox at the end of the campaign, but Rangers are able to be proactive rather than reactive thanks to the squad and the structure that is in place at present.
Rangers find themselves in a position of strength and now is the time to capitalise on it and the deals for Jack Simpson and Scott Wright, and the precontract for Nnamdi Ofoborh, prove that plan is being put in action at Ibrox.
Rangers are no longer just operating in the here and now. Instead, they are able to look two or three windows down the line and plot their moves with careful consideration.
There is a degree of succession planning involved as Gerrard and Wilson assess who is likely to attract interest and who will come to the end of their Rangers careers and players can therefore be added at the right moments.
The process of ripping it up and starting again was one which Rangers went through too often as Mark Warburton, Pedro Caixinha and then Gerrard put their stamp on the squad they inherited.
That is never going to bring results in the short term and Rangers can now operate in a far more controlled manner thanks to the work – which was started by Mark Allen and Gerrard – that has been
put in over the last three seasons, with the financial backing of the board.
Gerrard didn’t really need to bring Simpson and Wright in on deadline day but their arrivals a few months earlier than initially agreed make perfect sense from all perspectives after suitable arrangements were reached with Bournemouth and Aberdeen for players that had already signed Bosman deals.
With George Edmundson heading for the exit door and a loan spell in the Championship with Derby, Simpson makes the move from Bournemouth to provide cover for Connor Goldson, Filip Helander and Leon Balogun this term.
Given the form of those three, Simpson will surely struggle for regular game time in what remains of the campaign, but he now has the chance to survey and assess Scottish football and settle into life in and around Glasgow.
It takes a certain kind of character to be able to handle all aspects of being a Rangers player and Simpson can now become accustomed to the way that Gerrard operates whilst under no real pressure given the Light Blues’ huge advantage over Celtic.
There are similarities when it comes to Wright. He won’t need a crash course in the Premiership having played here, but he will need time to adjust to the way that Rangers play and the demands that will now be placed on him by staff and supporters.
The space in the squad that has been vacated by Brandon Barker’s move to Oxford now belongs to Wright and he is a useful option for Gerrard to have in the coming weeks.
At times this term it has looked as if Ryan Kent could do with a rest or a couple of matches out of the starting line-up and Wright seems a more natural fit for that role than either Barker or Jordan Jones, who now finds himself on loan at Sunderland for their latest bid to clinch promotion from League One.
The three departures were far from a surprise and two – those of Edmundson and Jones – have been coming for some time following their Covid rule breaches in November.
Given the achievement that Rangers stand on the brink of, Edmundson and Jones in particular must be kicking themselves at the opportunity that they have blown in such spectacular fashion.
This is a squad that will be remembered for generations to come. Gerrard will be an Ibrox legend and his players revered forever more as the team that won the most significant title in Rangers’ illustrious history.
Instead, they find themselves playing lower league football in England and staring at a lowkey exit in the summer.
Rangers are finally back on top in Scotland. Now they are building for the future to ensure that they stay there.