With the Scottish Premiership a distant dream at this stage, Rangers feel more like a club putting the foundations in place for a big swing at the 2025/26 campaign.
Nils Koppen was delighted to secure Lyall Cameron’s services – the Dundee midfielder will arrive once his contract expires in the summer – with Rangers landing another rising star to go with Hamza Igamane, Jefte, Connor Barron, Clinton Nsiala and co.
And as Philippe Clement handed opportunities to the likes of Bailey Rice, Findlay Curtis, Paul Nsio and Zak Lovelace – the quartet all having made first-team appearances since the turn of the year – the Rangers boss earned credit from large sections of the Ibrox fanbase for seemingly embracing the club’s next generation of homegrown talent.
That, however, is an argument Gers legend Kris Boyd is reluctant to buy into.
Scratch away at the surface, Boyd claims, and Clement’s supposed faith in the club’s Auchenhowie graduates does not stand up to much scrutiny.
The five-time Premiership Golden Boot winner has a sneaking suspicion that Clement only introduced 18-year-old duo Rice and Curtis against Manchester United in the Europa League to highlight the weakness of his squad.
A not-so-subtle hint towards the board, perhaps, of the need for new signings.
Boyd also points out that Bailey Rice was the first to be hooked during Rangers’ stunning Scottish Cup defeat at home to Queen’s Park on Sunday.
A game in which Curtis spent the entirety watching from the bench. A bench Nsio wasn’t even granted a place upon.
Kris Boyd questions Philippe Clement’s Bailey Rice handling in Rangers loss
“The narrative Philippe Clement is trying to create here, in terms of young players being given a chance, absolute nonsense,” Boyd protests.
“At Old Trafford, they were put on the pitch because, at the time, it was possibly going to be used as an excuse had Rangers lost that game. They then performed well. And, all of the sudden, [the narrative is that Clement] is giving an opportunity to youth players.
“The first sign of trouble [against Queen’s Park], Bailey Rice is whipped off, replaced by an experienced player in Nico Raskin.”
Pundit Michael Stewart described Clement’s removal of Rice as ‘deplorable’.
Boyd does not go that far. But he could not help but notice that the young up-and-comer was the first to be sacrificed against a team sitting fifth in Scotland’s second-tier, on an afternoon where so many of the club’s senior players – Nedim Bajrami was ‘really poor’ in particular – let themselves down.
Rice was far from the worst player on the pitch either.
“Bailey Rice, a youngster, his first start at Ibrox, doing absolutely fine by the way,” former Hibernian and Hearts midfielder Stewart argues. “The more experienced players in and around him are the ones that you are looking for that urgency and that intensity from.
“Bailey Rice has got great technique and ability. If you are looking to make a sub, you do not sub the youngster because you’re damaging him psychologically, and even more so now that the result has gone the way it has gone because he’ll be feeling like he was the problem.
“He absolutely was not the problem.”
Philippe Clement defends Bailey Rice removal
In Clement’s view, the ‘problem’, particularly during an insipid opening 45 minutes, was a lack of purpose and punch in possession. In the manager’s defence, Rice didn’t exactly dominate on the ball, though nor did anyone else in a blue shirt.
And that includes his half-time replacement Raskin.
“Not enough tempo. On the ball, we were still creating enough to go in front or to score two goals or three goals even without conceding anything but I was not happy with the tempo,” Clement says.
“So that’s why I made the changes in half-time. Tempo was better second half but we lost composure, coolness. We went into the emotions to rush things and because of that, yeah, we lost our cool.
“And then you get this very bad result. So it’s very frustrating to go out of the cup in this way.”
