Rangers kicked off the new season exactly where they left off last term as they picked up a comfortable 3-0 win over Livingston at Ibrox yesterday, but for one Scottish journalist there needed to be something to take a pop at the Light Blues over.
Guardian reporter Ewan Murray took umbrage at Rangers’ squad and the lack of ‘outfield Scottish players’ in the Gers’ 18, taking a dig at the club’s very public push to improve youth development in Scotland.
Murray highlighted that there were just two outfield Scottish players in the matchday squad, Scott Wright and Nathan Patterson – but it conveniently ignores the reality of what has gone on at Ibrox in the last decade (as well as the two Scottish international goalkeepers in the matchday squad).
While the club’s financial meltdown was well-documented in how the Rangers first-team was affected, it also lead to massive changes at youth level as costs were reduced and a host of players moved on, leaving the Light Blues starting effectively from scratch.
The initial years following the club’s demotion to League Two saw little emphasis on the club’s Academy and it has only been following the appointment of Craig Mulholland as Head of Academy at the end of 2014 that there was any focus on trying to bring youngsters through.
Since then, Rangers have slowly but surely built up what can only be described as the top Academy in the country with various Scotland youth squads regularly containing as many as half-a-dozen Ibrox starlets.
Since Mulholland took the reins at Auchenhowie, there has been a huge shift in philosophy as the Gers move away from simply focusing on on-field success at youth level and trying to produce players who will go on and have good careers, whether at Ibrox or elsewhere.
With the likes of Glenn Middleton, Robby McCrorie and Stephen Kelly spending last season out on loan at Premiership sides while others such as Lewis Mayo and Kai Kennedy were regulars in the Championship, suggesting Rangers aren’t trying to promote youth development is laughable nonsense.
A look at Rangers’ B team in the Lowland League is further proof of how much the Gers want to help push the best young players and challenge them as much as they can.
In the current footballing financial landscape, developing young players and selling them on is going to be the main model for clubs like Rangers and Celtic to have any chance of making an impact beyond Scotland.
It will almost certainly never look like Rangers having a team full of homegrown stars who all grew up within 50 miles of Ibrox – but there will be plenty of young talent given a chance to thrive.
Whether it is truly homegrown players like Nathan Patterson – the only teenager to ever represent Scotland at a major tournament – who go on and establish themselves at Ibrox or others like Billy Gilmour who owes, at least part of, his success to his grounding at Rangers, youth development is hugely important at Rangers.
Anyone who has had the chance to speak to key figures in the Rangers Academy such as Mulholland, Graeme Murty, David McCallum or any of the array of coaches, analysts, medical personnel and other assorted ancillary staff, can tell within moments just how important turning the talented kids who arrive at the club’s training programmes into players capable of following in Gilmour and Patterson’s footsteps.
Then again, given Murray’s only real interest in Scottish football seems to start and end at Tynecastle, it shouldn’t be a surprise he’s so wide of the mark.
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