You’ll often see questions from fans of all clubs on social media about the point of an academy if none of the players ever make the step up into senior football.
The first thing is that fans have to be realistic, look at Manchester United’s famous class of 1992, that sort of crop of youngsters all breaking through at the same time is unheard of in the modern game and unlikely to ever be repeated.
The closest that Rangers ever came was in the mid-2000s when Alex McLeish, Paul le Guen and Walter Smith were able to fill their squad and rely on players like Allan McGregor, Maurice Ross, Alan Hutton, Steven Smith, Chris Burke, Charlie Adam and Barry Ferguson, all of whom were regular starters in the first XI and it is a level that, hopefully, we can return to.
Most of that group came through the newly built Murray Park, as it was called at the time, a facility and resource that was sadly neglected when financial hardship hit until Dave King and his team swept into power and set about making changes that would benefit the club in both the short and long term.
Things have change since Fergie et al were in their pomp though and one of the main reasons for having a successful academy is income, look at Nathan Patterson, a player barely in double figures for Rangers appearances and yet we could have sold him for £8million in the summer – had we been more stable when he had a decision to make, we could have been naming our price for Billy Gilmour too.
Why do football clubs recruit academy players, 99.8% of whom won’t make the grade? Could it linked to sales of academy players generated £270,000,000 in the 2021 summer transfer window? There will be more on this in BBC Panorama tonight.
— PriceOfFootball (@KieranMaguire) September 20, 2021
These players won’t be at Rangers for long anymore, clubs in England will look to get in first and save themselves a fortune but it is the other players that – combined – help to add to the bank balance.
Players like Kai Kennedy and Josh McPake, if they are deemed not good enough by Steven Gerrard, they have done enough during loan spells to suggest that they could make the grade elsewhere, a small transfer fee with a sell on clause and every little helps – so to speak.
It’s unrealistic to expect a class of ’92 scenario or that Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor are the standard to which every youth player wearing a Rangers top is held to, they are generational players and don’t come around very often – if we can get to the stage when we have two or three in the match day squad on a regular basis then it is an achievement, and one that we should be proud of.