Rangers did not just outclass Raith Rovers on the pitch during Saturday’s 5-1 friendly demolition; they completely outgrew them off it.
When news broke that Ibrox chiefs had elected not to renew their formal co-operation loan agreement with the Championship outfit just hours after their friendly win in Auchenhowie, it may have raised some eyebrows.
Was it a premature reaction to a mixed development cycle? Was it overly harsh?
A fresh update from The Courier has shed light on the inner workings of last season’s arrangement, and it provides absolute vindication of Rangers’ ruthless boardroom stance.
According to the report, Raith Rovers made multiple enquiries across last season to bring Ibrox prodigy Findlay Curtis to Kirkcaldy under the co-op guidelines.
While ambition should never be mocked in football, Raith’s pursuit of Curtis exposes a fundamental, staggering misalignment between the two clubs’ expectations.
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Raith Rovers’ Findlay Curtis delusion revealed
Raith Rovers believed the Championship was an appropriate breeding ground for a player of Curtis’ skyrocketing trajectory. The reality was vastly different.
Curtis did not need to learn the ‘rigours’ of the second tier – Josh Gentles was deemed not ready for it.
He spent the first half of last season scoring in UEFA Champions League qualifiers at Ibrox before a blockbuster winter loan to Kilmarnock saw him hit five goals in 14 top-flight games.
To cap it all off, the boy wizard spent his summer rewriting history as Scotland’s youngest ever player on the pitch at a FIFA World Cup.
For Raith Rovers to genuinely believe they were operating in the same stratosphere as a player of Curtis’ calibre proves that the co-operation agreement was entirely flawed from inception.
Rangers were looking to place elite, high-value assets; Raith were hunting for top-flight generational talents on a second-tier budget.
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If the delusion over Curtis was not enough to justify a clean break, the handling of Gentles provided all the empirical evidence the Ibrox chiefs required.
The 18-year-old striker was the lone guinea pig sent to Stark’s Park under the formal rules. He was afforded exactly one start – in the relatively low-stakes environment of the KDM Evolution Trophy – across eight sparse appearances.
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He was ultimately deemed ‘not ready’ for the Championship by then-boss Barry Robson and was swiftly recalled in January to be redirected to Alloa Athletic.
When a club enter a formal cooperation partnership, they expect their parent club status to guarantee a baseline of nurturing, developmental minutes.
If Raith could not carve out a consistent pathway for Gentles, they certainly had no business enquiring about Curtis.
While Kirkcaldy officials have spun the end of the agreement as a mere “change in mechanism, not relationship”, Rangers’ eyes have clearly wandered elsewhere.
With Queen’s Park now heavily in pole position to secure the next lucrative tie-in, the message from Govan is clear: if you want access to the finest young talent in the country, you have to be on the exact same page. Raith Rovers simply were not.
