It doesn’t take a genius to work out that Allan McGregor’s playing days are well into the final stages of his career.
Last season, I felt that if Rangers had won the title, that we wouldn’t see the Gers number one again and that he would ride off into the sunset knowing that his work was complete, however, last season was far from “normal” and without fans in the ground, the 39-year old feels as if there is unfinished business, as he reveals in the club’s Official Champions 55 magazine :
“You can’t call it a day when there are no fans there. I couldn’t do that.
“I need to play in front of a full Ibrox again and my body feels all right. If I felt that I couldn’t do it any more, I wouldn’t waste my time or the waste the club’s time either.
“I feel like I can still play, although that might change after pre-season! But I feel fine so why not keep going and try to win more?”
This is surely going to be his last campaign, and because of this I’d like to see two things; Jon McLaughlin given more game time, and Jon McLaughlin given a new contract.
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— Rangers Football Club (@RangersFC) June 30, 2021
With 12 clean sheets in 14 games he proved to be a more than able deputy and we have to realise that the task of replacing a keeper of Allan McGregor’s ability isn’t going to be easy, we are talking about a player being considered as the greatest ever in his position for the club – you can’t replace that sort of quality, similar to finding another Ally McCoist.
In McLaughlin we have the next best thing, a keeper we, the manager and the players can trust. at 33-years old he still has plenty of football left in him, that he is in better physical shape than McGregor without the injury history gives him a good chance of being able to play for as long – if he wants to.
Get him signed up, losing McGregor would be bad enough, losing the second best keeper in Scotland would be even harder – we only have to look across the city to see what can happen if you get it wrong between the posts.