Rangers search for a repalcement for a new academy director might see them return to Southampton and for Matt Hale.
Craig Mulholland, who has been tipped to follow Ross Wilson, was announced as departing his role at Auchenhowie yesterday by the club but his successor might already have been identified.
Southampton are going through a similar rebuild behind the scenes and Matt Hale informed the Saints new owners that he would be moving on at the end of the season to “seek a new challenge“.
Hale, who has held the academy director post for a decade at the Premier League strugglers would have worked closely with Wilson in his time on the south coast.
With Wilson recently leaving, there is every chance that he had already helped to draw up a potential shortlist for Mulholland’s exit. It wouldn’t have been an overnight decision.
Hale is leaving Southampton’s academy in a good place with the B team having just won Premier League Division 2, there have also been several graduates appear for the first team in recent years.
What shape is Rangers academy should Matt Hale head north
Mulholland was given a blank canvas when he arrived at Rangers in 2015 and it was never a project that was going to pay immediate dividends.
In Nathan Patterson, Leon King and Alex Lowry though, we are starting to see the benefits.
Speaking when he first took up the post, Mulholland’s plan was to produce a conveyor belt of talent so that the Rangers manager didn’t have to look across the border for promising youngsters to augment his squad:
“We need to get better because the gaffer can go south and get Gideon Zelalem or Nathan Oduwa.
“Our challenge in the Academy is to produce players better than that, so that he doesn’t have to look elsewhere.”
There haven’t been quite as many graduates as we would have liked in recent years, veterans being given new contracts has seen the likes of Robby McCrorie and Stephen Kelly not get the game time that they otherwise might have.
Ironically, Mulholland was offered the Southampton academy director job before Hale but decided that his future was at Rangers and he has, by and large, done a good job in laying the foundations for his successor to build on.
It is the sort of role that Rangers need to get right and need to hire an individual with a proven track record.
Matt Hale certainly has that.
