by SlightlyJames » Jun 21, '17, 11:39 am
Been quite the interesting month to be keeping track of Rangers news so prepare yourself for a wall. Yesterday they announced the Man City academy director Mark Allen as our new Director of Football. It's a role we've not had at the club as far as I can remember but they were very clear in their feeling that this was the structure they wanted since Mark Warburton left so clearly they're confident that this is the right way forward.
On top of that, Dave King had a press conference today to announce that Rangers are finally free of that ridiculous retail deal the old board signed with Sports Direct. Before the arrangement was said to be that Rangers were getting something like 7p from every Pound under the old arrangement, with a 7 year notice period for altering the deal. Still can't believe to this day how those fucking vultures did that to Rangers. Thank fuck it's over now.
Supposedly the new deal for the coming season has a massive swing back in favour of Rangers, they've had to partner with Fat Mike again for at least the next year or he wouldn't have agreed to rip up the old deal. On the plus side it seems to be a legitimate partnership this time as opposed to SD essentially owning the retail end of Rangers.
Basically the take away from today is that Rangers fans are actually able to buy club merch in good faith for the first time in several years knowing that it's actually going to benefit the club. Couldn't be happier about that.
In the actual football end of things, Caixinha has not half been busy. We've had six signings announced so far with another two players waiting for work permits. Biggest name to have come in this summer is Bruno Alves. At 35 he's an experienced head, still playing internationally for Portugal. He's a beast in the air which will be of great use to Rangers as a large amount of the goals that were let in last season were from crosses and set pieces. Quite excited about that one.
Besides Bruno, we've also brought in another Portugese Centre Back in the form of Fabio Cardoso, who's just a bit younger than Alves at 23, and a pair of wingers from Benefica, Daniel Candeias and Dalcio, the latter coming in on loan. Pedro has said he's hoping to get a lot more natural width into the team as opposed to the Loaf's old strategy of playing strikers in wide positions and hoping for the best. Would expect the two of them to be starting most games unless Barrie McKay changes his game and actually decides to start going past defenders. He absolutely has the ability to do that but he can't seem to stop cutting inside.
Ryan Jack, who captained Aberdeen last season, signed at the start of the month. Last year Rangers had a difficult time keeping control of the game, and often if we ever fell behind it was incredibly difficult to stabilise and fight back into a match. Jack is a solid hand who knows the league well so should be a valuable presence in midfield. Supposedly Jordan Rossiter is finally training with the team again after being gone for the better part of 9 months. What appearances he did make for the team were very promising, if he can maintain fitness I would expect him to be a big part of the team going forward.
Rounding out the confirmed signings is Alfredo Morelos, a young Colombian striker who has supposedly been doing very well for himself playing for Helsinki. Quite the exciting addition as beside Kenny Miller, Rangers have struggled for natural goal scorers in recent years. That said, among the two signings waiting for work permits is Eduardo Herrera. A real target man and occasional Mexico international, who should compliment our new style quite well. The other one waiting to be announced is Carlos Pena, another player Pedro is familiar with from his time managing in Mexico. I've seen some clips of him playing and it looks like he'll be quite the strong presence in our midfield.
Pedro has had to get most of his business done nice and early to get the new players registered for Europa League qualification. We're going in at the very first round against Progres Niederkorn roughly a week from now. Not the biggest time period for that many signings to gel together but my hopes are high. I'm very excited for the upcoming year, the new players coming in are encouraging and the club is still pursuing more (that we know of, Graham Dorrans and Jamie Walker). Bring on the new season!