T Junior

There's never too much to be taken from the first competitive game of the summer – especially against part-timers on a plastic pitch at the end of a runway in Gibraltar.
But while I’m not about to get carried away with Rangers for beating St Joseph’s 4-0, I’m happy to get myself worked up about the performance of new boy Sheyi Ojo.
The opposition were no great shakes and Steven Gerrard’s side looked a little bit rusty in the first half before starting to find a bit of rhythm after the break.
But Ojo? This kid stood out like a sore thumb from the very first kick of the ball and it looks like my old club have got a real player on their hands.
It’s not about the standard of the team he was up against, it’s about the tools he’s got in his locker and from this first look it seems as if he might have the lot.
He’s powerful, strong, athletic and a great runner with a good work ethic. Technically he’s really impressive and the way he took his goal on Tuesday night was classy and composed.
Listen, it’s important not to put too much expectation on his young shoulders and to remember that he’s up here for a reason. If he was the finished article he’d be in the Liverpool squad by now.
But none of that changes the fact that this is a young boy with enormous potential.
Put it this way, I could see in 90 minutes exactly why Jurgen Klopp wanted Ojo tied up on a five-year contract before he sanctioned the loan move. You don’t do that with young players unless you’re reasonably certain they’re going to be first-team material in a matter of time.
Ojo has huge potential and I believe he’s gone to the perfect place to help him fulfil it because playing for Rangers is all about coping with demands. That’s why Liverpool will be so pleased to let him play up here for a season as this will be a critical part of his development.
Some players flourish under that kind of pressure. Some players take time to get used to it. Some find that they just can’t handle it.
Just look back to this time last summer when Ryan Kent and Ovie Ejaria were sent up the road from the Anfield academy.
Ejaria looked the part but struggled to handle the demands that come with wearing the shirt and performing in front of 50,000 fans every second week.
Kent? He took to Rangers like a duck to water and as a result of his performance level over the seasion he’s now about to fly out with Klopp’s Champions League winning squad on a summer tour of the USA.
He proved to his manager he is cut out to make the difference in big matches under intense pressure and that’s exactly what Klopp will be looking for when he’s considering promoting youngsters into his dressing room.
So it’s no wonder that he wants to take a close look at Kent this summer before deciding if he’s ready to become part of the plans for the new season.
Klopp will be comparing him to the likes of Xherdan Shaqiri over the next couple of weeks and weighing up if the time is right to give him a chance.
I hope he reaches the conclusion the boy needs one more year of first team football at Ibrox because he’s a special talent who could make a real difference to Gerrard’s hopes of winning silverware.
But Liverpool will have looked at the improvement in Kent when they decided to let Ojo move to Glasgow and they will see this as an another opportunity for a young player to take huge strides.
We’ll just need to wait and see how he handles these demands but the first impression was that he can be a really big player for Rangers this season.
The club has won a watch in 
this new relationship with the Merseysiders and much of that is obviously down to Gerrard’s status at Anfield. But Liverpool will also see the benefits of plucking young promising talent from their own academy and giving them men’s football in Glasgow, at a huge club and a demanding support.
It’s effectively a fast track for these kids to prepare them for first team football in the Premier League so it’s a genuine win-win situation for both sides.
Ojo’s proved to them that he has the ability to go all the way. Now they need to see that he also has the temperament to handle it when he’s on a big stage.
It will help him enormously to have a professional like Steve Davis at the heart of the team and I was delighted to see my old team mate dictating things from the middle of the park at Victoria Stadium.
After a sticky start to his second spell, it looks as if he has convinced Gerrard to build the team around him and that can only be good news as he is such a class act.
Anyone who reads this column knows how highly I rate him and I reckon Davo could be the most important signing of the summer in terms of next season’s top flight campaign.
Gerrard will hope that Filip Helander will be another huge contributor given the amount of money the club are prepared to shell out to sign the big Swede from Bologna. I was reading the other day that the last time Rangers spent £4million on a player was when Walter Smith signed Nikica Jelavic in 2010. There wasn’t much money floating about back then, at a time when the bank was starting to squeeze hard. We all know what happened a few years later.
But when Walter bought Jelavic he knew he had signed a player who could help his team win the title and, as usual, he was right.
Gerrard must feel the same way about Helander. With talent like Ojo and Davis around him – and competition for places all over the pitch – it really does feel like an exciting time to be a Rangers fan again.
 
Good article.

Some really interesting stuff in there. Hope Barasic kicks on this season and shows us what he can really do.

Some really interesting stuff in there. Hope Barasic kicks on this season and shows us what he can really do.

Didn’t know we were in for him.

One I spoke to said he’s rapid, hopefully got the skill go with it.

As someone else has said if the pedos signed him I'd be genuinely worried. Cracking signing.

As someone else has said if the pedos signed him I'd be genuinely worried. Cracking signing.

As someone else has said if the pedos signed him I'd be genuinely worried. Cracking signing.

Seems to have dropped off the radar recently. Good luck to him at Alloa, hopefully he can do well over there and come back a better player.

Seems to have dropped off the radar recently. Good luck to him at Alloa, hopefully he can do well over there and come back a better player.