Ally McCoist has accused Rangers of going backwards since reaching the Europa League final and haven’t adequately replaced the big guns they lost in the summer.
Wednesday night’s humiliation at the hands of Liverpool came just months after Gio van Bronckhorst’ s side took on all comers in Europe and dispatched some big names on their glorious run to the final. That naturally brought interest in their stars with Calvin Bassey heading to Ajax in a club record £19million move while Joe Aribo left for Southampton.
Along with Nathan Patterson, who departed for Everton last January and brought £16milion into the club coffers, Leon Balogun was allowed to leave on a free transfer. That call has come back to bite them now, with a defensive crisis developing at Ibrox. Record Sport revealed that Connor Goldson is set to miss a significant chunk of playing time after coming off injured against Liverpool.
John Souttar and Filip Helander are both out until after the World Cup break, while Ben Davies is an injury doubt for Sunday’s trip to Motherwell. And McCoist has taken aim at the summer recruitment. With the exception of top scorer Antonio Colask, he believes his former club haven’t got close to replacing what they lost during the transfer window.
“Rangers are missing the quality and physicality of Bassey, Aribo, Balogun by the way, and Patterson,” he told BT Sport’s Scottish Football Extra.
“They’ve brought in Colak, who’s done extremely well and they’re missing Lawrence. But they haven’t replaced the ability and physicality of those players I mentioned.”
Asked if this Rangers team was “a million miles away” from last season’s that saw off the likes of Dortmund and RB Leipzig en route to Seville, McCoist replied: “It is. I think Rangers have gone back the way since last year and that’s one of the reasons for it.
“I understand and share the fans’ frustration. What we saw in midweek wasn’t acceptable. It was not acceptable.”
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