It looks, as expected, that Rangers will hold onto their key players – at least until the January transfer window.
The Athletic’s Rangers correspondent, Jordan Campbell, has indicated that the likes of Glen Kamara, Ryan Kent and Alfredo Morelos will all be at Ibrox to lead Steven Gerrard’s side towards retaining their Scottish Premiership title.
A couple of loans out the way will happen at Ibrox today but it’s looking like Rangers will hold on to their top players.
Morelos & Barisic both staying. Dan James to Leeds has killed prospect of Kent, while Kamara is expected to extend & Patterson to Everton won’t happen now.
— Jordan Campbell (@JordanC1107) August 31, 2021
The news is hardly surprising given how long we would have left to sign replacements but the interesting part of Campbell’s tweet was about possible departures.
Ideally, Rangers would have wanted to offload Brandon Barker permanently but, despite his positive loan spell at Oxford United last season, there has been a shortage of takers, however, there is likely to be more interest from teams wanting to take him on loan – staying in Scotland could be a useful option if he doesn’t return to England.
The other first-team member likely to head out is Niko Katic, Steven Gerrard has already spoken about what he sees as th best approach for the big Croat’s future and he needs to be playing regular games – Dynamo Zagreb have been credited with an interest but, again, there are clubs in the Premiership that could do with a centre-half with Katic’s physicality.
Unfortunately it doesn’t look like it’s going to be an interesting deadline day for Rangers fans, but if you had told me that we would be retaining key players at a time when our biggest rivals are losing theirs, I’d have bitten your hand off.