With four months of the Premiership season remaining, Rangers are six points clear of Old Firm rivals Celtic.
They have won every one of their last nine league games, scoring 24 goals along the way, and the early signs are that Giovanni van Bronckhorst is building upon the rock-solid foundations laid down by predecessor Steven Gerrard at Ibrox.
But if Rangers are celebrating in the streets of Glasgow again come May, one would suspect that the champagne will taste rather bittersweet as far as John Lundstram is concerned.
The summer signing from Sheffield United has started just one a potential seven league games under Van Bronckhorst. He was hauled off at half-time, too, as Rangers stumbled to a 1-0 victory over Dundee United in December.
Does John Lundstram have a future at Rangers?
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
After all, the one-time Everton man had shone during the 2019/20 Premier League season, establishing himself as a forceful, thrusting central midfield player capable of holding his own against the very best in the division.
Lundstram even finished as the third-highest goalscorer for a Sheffield United side who took the division by storm, securing a top-half finish after flirting with the European places.
But, though not for a lack of trying, neither Gerrard nor Van Bronckhorst have succeeded in getting the best out of a mercurial talent who played the best football of his career under Chris Wilder at Bramall Lane.
According to The Daily Record, Wilder would relish the chance to work with Lundstram again at Middlesbrough. Given the way things have gone for him at Ibrox, few would be surprised if the that feeling was mutual.
Can Middlesbrough earn promotion under Wilder?
“The way he has been in the changing room when he hasn’t played has been exemplary,” Wilder, who has transformed Boro from mid-table also-rans into play-off contenders in the blink of an eye, said of Lundstram in 2020.
“And then he comes back in and plays like he has. I think that’s a fantastic example of how you should be as a professional footballer.”
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