Former Rangers youngster Matthew Shiels has questioned the pathway to the first team for Academy players at Ibrox and says he believes he’s made a ‘step up’ by joining Hamilton.
Shiels spent over a decade in the Rangers academy setup and has been capped at youth international level by Scotland.
He showed promise at Auchenhowie before heading out on loan to Edinburgh City, Dumbarton and Clyde, but with no route through to the first team materialising and his contract running down, he opted to cut ties, signing a pre-contract agreement with Hamilton in May.
The 20-year-old has now spoken out, expressing excitement at the challenge ahead of him and revealing some frustration with the nature of the Academy system.
“When I was at Rangers it was with their academy, so it is a step up for me because it’s into first-team football now,” he said [Daily Record]. “That’s what I’m looking forward to, so hopefully I can impress and go straight into the team.”
“I had been at Rangers for 12 years, I think it was time to move on and do the right thing for my career. I had trained with the first team a few times and I went away to Marbella with them, but I just felt like sometimes you weren’t getting through to the first team, and I think a lot of the boys feel the same.”
There’s been plenty of debate about Rangers’ Academy system in recent years, with some fans unhappy that despite hundreds of thousands of pounds of investment each season, few homegrown players have made any kind of impact at first-team level.
Nathan Patterson is bucking that trend right now, though, and there are high hopes for the likes of Leon King, Kai Kennedy and Robby McCrorie going forward.
Shiels’ chances of breaking through weren’t helped by the rapid development of fellow homegrown talent James Maxwell but he now has a good chance to prove he has what it takes to succeed at senior level, albeit in the Championship.
Another talented youngster who didn’t quite make the grade at Rangers could reportedly land a ‘dream move’ just weeks after his Ibrox exit was confirmed.
