BBC journalist Tom English has heavily criticised Steven Gerrard for his recruitment at Rangers this season, speaking on an edition of Sportsound this week.
Fans, pundits and journalists are certainly casting a critical eye on Ibrox right now after Gerrard’s team were dumped out of the Scottish Cup and fell ten points behind Celtic in the Scottish Premiership.
Some of the criticism has been fair while some of it has been over the top.
English certainly didn’t hold back with his comments on Rangers’ dealings in the transfer market though, taking aim at eight players in particular he thinks have flopped at the club.
As quoted by The Scottish Sun, he said:
You look at Ejaria, fail. Grezda, fail. Davis, fail. Coulibaly, fail. Lafferty, fail. Sadiq, fail. McAuley, fail. Flanagan, fail. There are a number of others where the jury’s still out.
There’s very, very few absolute success stories in all of those players. He’s signed I think 20, if you take Jamie Murphy, [Matt] Polster and the goalie Andy Firth out of it, that’s 17 players who have got game time.
How many of those has been successes? Very, very few. To sign Goldson and Katic, fine. Then you bring in Gareth McAuley at 39.
What is that about? What does that say about what’s coming through the ranks at Rangers if you feel you need to sign three centre halves in Steven Gerrard’s brief time at the club.
And McCrorie, who was terrific when they beat Celtic, he seems to have gone off the radar.
Clearly the recruitment at Ibrox has been hit or miss and it’s something that Steven Gerrard and Mark Allen need to address this summer, but let’s not forget the state of the squad prior to Gerrard’s arrival.
We needed numbers and quantity over quality, which the club delivered. Of course plenty of those will not go on to have long careers at the club.
Singling out others like Eros Grezda feels very harsh. He’s barely had a run of games in a Rangers shirt and while that throws up its own questions, he still has life in him yet.
Rangers fans may agree with some aspects of English’s comments, but for me he’s gone slightly towards to extreme end of criticism.