Rangers’ Transfer Mistakes: Selling These Two Players Was A Blunder In Recent Times

It Was A Big Mistake From Rangers To Have Let These Players Go

Rangers have been busy climbing their way back up to the Premiership and as such have had to gradually improve their squad over the last four years or so.

The days of Lovenkrands, Mols and the De Boer brothers are things of distant past and any sort of true quality has been rather thin on the ground for the Ibrox side. Nevertheless, there are a couple of players whom Rangers were perhaps hasty in letting go of.

Fraser Aird

There will be those who say Aird had his chance to impress at Rangers and didn’t take it. The fact that his eventual transfer out of Rangers last summer was to Falkirk FC, would appear to back that up. However, Falkirk are a strong Championship side and it must be remembered that Aird is still 22-years old and capable of tons in terms of improvement.

One of the many players thrown into the Rangers first team in recent years before they were truly ready, Aird was impressive in cup competitions against Premiership teams. He obviously has natural talent and that does not simply go away.

It can be said that a more tailored and careful introduction to first team duties may have been a better way to go.  The careers of Jamie Ness, Gregg Wylde and a certain player mentioned below are further testament to the dangers of blooding players too soon.

Aird leaving Rangers last summer may have been a good thing, but perhaps a loan would have been better with a view to a settled management team at Rangers, giving him the help and support needed to become the player we know he can be. Having scored for Canada against Scotland recently, it’s clear that he retains a fair chunk of his ability and can still improve.

Lewis MacLeod

Opting for the English Championship over the Scottish Championship may seem like an obvious move so when MacLeod went down that route in January 2015, no one really blamed him. The money they earned from the sale was handy for the Rangers board. However, even at that level, it is not earth-shattering money and they would have been better off keeping the player.

MacLeod has made a grand total of 14 appearances in 2 years at Championship level in England, so he would have been much better staying with Rangers. Imagine MacLeod and Jason Holt in a ‘home grown’ Rangers midfield. Rangers would have got much more out of him and on balance, they’d have done well to rather have a fully-performing Lewis MacLeod right now, than a bag of pound notes.