“Unhappy” Patterson tipped for potential move from Gers

It’s been a week of good news for Rangers fans after both Leon Balogun and James Tavernier were announced as extending their current contracts.

With the skipper confirming that he will be around for at least another few years there is now a debate around the future of Nathan Patterson with former international team-mate of Steven Gerrard, Kevin Phillips, believing that the 19-year old could be heading out the door, albeit only temporary.

When asked by Football Insider if he thought a loan move was on the cards for the youngster, he said:

“Yeah, you’d say a loan move would help him out at this stage.

“If a player isn’t getting game time, can you go out? You always need a backup but when you’ve got a player in front of you that will play week in week out, can you go elsewhere?

“He’ll [Tavernier] play well too, he’s been fantastic this season for Rangers. From a club point of view, do you loan him [Patterson] out so he can get experience or do you keep an unhappy player?

“From the player’s point of view, you want to go and play football so it’ll be interesting to see what happens with that one.”

The issue, as Patterson has shown, is that he is too good to go out on loan, in almost any other position he wold be getting more regular game time, it is just that he has our most consistent player and captain in front of him.

This doesn’t mean he should automatically leave to develop though and when you consider the performances he has had in the Europa League, against Celtic and now Hibs, there has been nothing to suggest that he desperately needs to get 30-40 games to progress.

There is no hard and fast rule to developing players and for all that it is a problem, it’s a problem that Steven Gerrard will be delighted to have.