Rangers finally pressed the reset button and are heading into the summer of 2025 with, for once, a bit of hope.
There is a unified sense that the club is heading in the right direction and Patrick Stewart will be happy to see how well received the appointment of Kevin Thelwell as sporting director has been.
Thelwell isn’t an individual who is untested or inexperienced in the role, far from it, he also has proven success at both Wolves and Everton both in terms of promoting academy players and transfers – there is a reason why fans of Everton aren’t happy about his departure.
No sporting director will ever get everything right, however, Thelwell will be able to walk into Ibrox and start work straight away, rather than second guessing what he needs to do.
Stewart has made inroads into a lengthy to do list, but the Rangers squad and implementation of a fully functioning player trading model is one aspect of the club that the former Everton transfer supremo will need to get right.
How big a job does Kevin Thelwell have on his hands for Rangers
Speaking on the BBC’s Scottish Football Podcast, Craig Telfer has suggested that Thelwell could bring the sort of stability that Rangers have needed since the departure of Ross Wilson two years ago:
“It’s a position that Rangers have needed to address for a while now.
“They’ve got into a bad habit of hiring a manager, sacking him 18 months, and then with that comes with just a churn of players. One manager wants to sign a particular profile of player, the new manager comes in and then some of these players are surplus to requirements.
“On top of that, Rangers have got into a bad habit of spending a lot of money on pretty mediocre players.
“You think of guys like Sam Lammers and like Danilo, a lot of money spent on these guys for very little return. On top of that, their player trading has been quite bad, and it’s like guys like Alfredo Morelos and Ryan Kent go for nothing, guys who could have potentially made like 25, £30 million, given how well they’ve done at Rangers. So that’s something that needs to be addressed.
“On top of that as well, just for a club of Rangers size, they’ve just been a bit directionless and a bit shiftless for a while.”
Telfer is right. It is the one area that has lurched from problem to problem.
Yes, the academy needs work, but the priority – in the eyes of fans – will always be on the XI players that they see every Saturday wearing the famous Light Blue strip.
What improvements does Thelwell have to make at Rangers?
For the last three seasons, Rangers will have lost over 15 players, senior players, with no money coming in the opposite direction – most of them being internationals too.
Losing players like Hamza Igamane and Nicolas Raskin would be a blow, but with the right infrastructure, these players have to be sold and replaced.
Bizarrely, one of the few times Rangers got it right was with Fashion Sakala.
Signed on a Bosman, two years service, lots of goals and assists and then sold at a £4m profit.
Not every player has to be sold for a club record fee, it is at this end of the market that Celtic get right.
Very rarely do they sell a player that they bought for £3-4m for less than they paid for them, even if they haven’t done well or settled in Scotland.
This will be Thelwell’s remit, and Thelwell’s biggest task.
