Gers impress with their youth level recruitment

A GLUT of impressive signings have arrived at Rangers

– just not for Giovanni van Bronkhorst.

Six of the country’s most talented kids have arrived as the club look to supplement their youth academy with those who have not been reared through the system. And while the stars haven’t quite aligned for Ross Wilson in adding to the first team, you have to say the youth levels beneath are having a storming transfer window.

Yesterday’s signing from Motherwell, Bailey Rice was highly sought after with Celtic reportedly also in the mix for the 15-year-old. He is joined by Cameron Cooper from Partick Thistle, winger Kieron Willox from Inverness and keeper Mason Munn from Glentoran. Also signed up, this time from down south, are Paul Niso from Lambeth Tigers and Souleyman Mandey from Pulse Academy.

If you add in the move to sign 16-year-old prodigy Zak Lovelace, who already has five appearances in the English Championship, the future looks rosy indeed.

Last season saw 10 academy kids make their debuts in light blue with Alex Lowry, above right, and Leon King, right, are now important cogs in the first team wheel. The former will play a huge part next season and a measure of how highly the management team rate the latter can be made via the decision to let Leon Balogun depart on a free. A pacy, dependable defender with a fantastic attitude, the Nigerian never let the club down and earned a new deal on the pitch. The fact he wasn’t given one is a testament to how important the club now view a pathway to action for the best youngsters.

And the wheels of that journey have been significantly greased by the arrival of Rangers B in the Lowland League last season. It’s a move that has the potential to be the single most important event in the academy’s recent history.

There are some within the framework who admit they were not convinced themselves what playing at such a perceived lowly level would give the kids, but even they are now coming around to the idea having seen first-hand the accelerated development that’s followed a first season playing against men.

And never was that more obvious than a final day of the season win over Hearts at Tynecastle. Seven youngsters featured and two scored in a dominant 3-1 win against the

third-best team in the country. The way these kids adapted that day was a window into a brighter future and left academy staff convinced their methodology is starting to bear fruit.

The club are still pushing for what they see as the apex of the developmental opportunity which is access to the Scottish football pyramid and the potential to one day be testing the kids at Championship level. That will be a fraught journey given the tribal nature of Scottish football and how that thinking affects the rational decisionmaking process, a reality Rangers have had to endure more painfully than anyone in the last decade.

But push for it they must, because while the first team transfer story is what’s gripping in the here and now, the battle for the years ahead is already quietly raging.

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