Vital Rangers is a founding member of the Jon McLaughlin fan club, he has never let us down since he has been at the club and played a key role in our title success last season, filling in when Allan McGregor was injured, breaking a clean sheet record in the process.
Earlier this year it had looked like the Gers legend’s considerable powers were on the wane, however, a return to form under Giovanni van Bronckhorst has seen McLaughlin’s game time limited.
The issue still remains that McGregor will soon be turning 40-years old and any decision on his future will probably be mad in the summer, Rangers though can’t afford to wait that long and appear to be doing the right thing by offering his duty a new deal, according to The Daily Record.
Finding a replacement for McGregor is near on impossible when you consider that his name is up there in the debate about the greatest ever Rangers keeper, it’s like trying to replace Brian Laudrup, Paul Gascoigne or Ally McCoist, it’s just not that easy.
What you can do though is find someone you can trust, and in McLaughlin, we have a safe pair of hands that knows the defence inside out and suits our style of play, the last thing you would want is to replicate what Celtic did with Vasilas Barkas and spend £5million on a dud.
Robby McCrorie still has plenty of time on his hands too, remember, McGregor didn’t establish himself as number one until his mid-twenties and as we saw earlier this season, the former Scotland Under-21 stopper looks more than capable – we need to see him in the first-team more often before making a long-term decision though.
This is an easy decision to make, as I said, we can rely on McLaughlin and we have a decent backup in McCrorie, it’s just not worth the risk looking elsewhere, players like Chris Woods, Andy Goram, Stefan Klos and Allan McGregor don’t grow on trees.