Gerrard's transfers - hit or miss?

[bluenoz 30,835]

There are quite a few bad signings on that list. When you see it listed like that, you realize it is worse than you thought.

[The Dude 20,026]

Just noticed I missed Cedric Itten off the initial list.

[BlueAvenger 10,237]

2 minutes ago, The Dude said:

Just noticed I missed Cedric Itten off the initial list.

Another miss then !! 

[STEPPS BOY 73,893]

I said the other day...

The team we beat them on 29th of December 2019 would be the same team, if everyone fit (bar Helander for Katic) that would start if we played them at their place this weekend.

The past few window signings have basically been squad fillers though Lundstram looking like a player.

[RobertN 390]

A lot of the signings are work in progress type players which could bear fruit later on in either cash or a better quality player

Does not help us just now though when we are failing to create and score goals

[graeme_4 34,490]

1 hour ago, psb07158 said:

Hits

Balogun, Roofe, McLaughlin, Helander, Hagi, Aribo, Kent, Davis, Defoe, Kamara, Barisic, Goldson, Katic, McGregor, Arfield

Miss

Simpson, Zungu, King, Kamberi, Ojo, Barker, Stewart, Edmundson, Jones, Hastie, Worrall, Coulibaly, Sadiq, Ejaria, Firth, Polster, Grezda, McAuley, Flanagan, Lafferty, Murphy

Unknown / TBC with more game time

Ofoborh, Sakala, Bacuna, Lundstram, Wright, Bassey

Excluding the unknown/tbc category, I've got 15 hits out of 36 players (42%). Need all 6 of the unknown/tbcs to become hits for the ratio to be 50%.

I think off the miss list there’s folk that have come in, done a job at the level we were at then, and the been replaced with someone better.

I don’t think of the likes of Flanagan or McAuley as misses. They were just short term stop gaps while we focused on other areas. They moved on with no ill will and we moved upwards. 
 

Grezda, Laffery, Barker, Jones, Itten are the real misses. Decent wages and sometimes a few, with the square root of heehaw in return. 

[.Williamson. 82,179]

11 minutes ago, RobertN said:

A lot of the signings are work in progress type players which could bear fruit later on in either cash or a better quality player

Does not help us just now though when we are failing to create and score goals

Who are these signings and how much later are we waiting? We don’t have an overly young squad

[GlasgowRangers1983 461]

Fact is we were on our arse after the last regime. Overhaul of players and standards were needed to get us to where we are now. Fact is we stopped 10 in a row with a team mostly made up of free transfers minus a few marquee signings. Right off the batt we competed and prevailed in Europe and made mediocre fights to challenge the league. People have got short memories of where we were and how little we have actually spent in getting to where we are now. I would of said that 95% of the players bought have helped get Rangers back to the top of Scottish football and for me that means they have been a success. 

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, graeme_4 said:

I think off the miss list there’s folk that have come in, done a job at the level we were at then, and the been replaced with someone better.

I don’t think of the likes of Flanagan or McAuley as misses. They were just short term stop gaps while we focused on other areas. They moved on with no ill will and we moved upwards. 
 

Grezda, Laffery, Barker, Jones, Itten are the real misses. Decent wages and sometimes a few, with the square root of heehaw in return. 

Flanagan is a miss because he should never have been signed due to his off-field bullshit, so that's a personal one. 

McAuley is a miss because he barely kicked a ball for us and when he did, he looked every bit the washed up footballer he was IMO. 

[.Williamson. 82,179]

3 minutes ago, GlasgowRangers1983 said:

Fact is we were on our arse after the last regime. Overhaul of players and standards were needed to get us to where we are now. Fact is we stopped 10 in a row with a team mostly made up of free transfers minus a few marquee signings. Right off the batt we competed and prevailed in Europe and made mediocre fights to challenge the league. People have got short memories of where we were and how little we have actually spent in getting to where we are now. I would of said that 95% of the players bought have helped get Rangers back to the top of Scottish football and for me that means they have been a success. 

Believe me mate, if there’s one thing the support will never be allowed to do it’s forget “where we were”. There’s a section of the fan base throw that reminder up every time anyone mentions anything remotely relating to failure 

[graeme_4 34,490]

4 minutes ago, psb07158 said:

Flanagan is a miss because he should never have been signed due to his off-field bullshit, so that's a personal one. 

McAuley is a miss because he barely kicked a ball for us and when he did, he looked every bit the washed up footballer he was IMO. 

I hated the fact that we signed him, but in a footballing sense he did the job we needed him for until we replaced him with better quality. 

Thought McAuley did ok as a short-term stop gap 4th choice CB.

[plymouthranger 3,872]

1 hour ago, The Dude said:

Hits

McGregor, Goldson, Barisic, Kamara, Kent, Davis, Defoe Hagi, Balogun, Roofe, Helander, Aribo, Arfield

Misses

Flanagan, Lafferty, Grezda, McAuley, Polster, Firth, Sadiq, coulibaly, Worrall, Ejaria, Hastie, Sadiq, Jones, Stewart, Barker, Ojo, Kamberi, Ofoborh*, Simpson, King, Edmundson,

Probably missed one or two but think that's the jist of it.

Whilst I agree with this largely, I think some of the misses are probably a bit harsh.

McAuley, Flanagan were frees and very much stop gap signings. Flanagan in particular was solid in the Europa qualifiers which ultimately allowed us to buy Barisic. 
 

Sadiq, Coulibaly, Worrall, Ejaria, Ojo, Kamberi and King we’re all loans who will have cost us minimal amounts (barring Sadiq who I know we paid a £500k loan fee for). 

[hammer93 15,057]

1 hour ago, BlueAvenger said:

Another miss then !! 

Itten is a strange one, in truth when we were rumoured to be signing him I thought it was pointless as I didn't see in his you tube clips that he offered anything different than Kamberi, the fact we could have signed Kamberi for buttons made it all the stranger, tbf we most likely signed him & Roofe on belief that Morelos would be moving on....the fact he didn't limited his game time even further.....not many go out on loan at Rangers and come back to be a success so it doesn't bode well for big Itten 

[mitre_mouldmaster 21,509]

Success for me.

If we sold our players we have brought in, we would make a massive profit, so it is basically impossible to say that financially it has not been a success.

On the field, they have delivered 55, the single most important title in our lifetimes.

Even players that did not participate fully in last year's squad helped contribute to impressive results in Europe and helped build the club up to a title winning standard.

It is also not really fair to consider the 50% hit rate to us as though we are just any other club. Rangers are a special case, coming from obscurity of the lower leagues and having to build a team on a relatively shoe string budget with mostly bargain basement signings who would deliver a title and compete in Europe.

As they say, buy cheap, buy twice. When the cheap signings are costing us £50k Vs the expensive prices of £5m we were throwing about under Advocaat regularly, then the equation changes somewhat.

[The Specky Forum Organiser 64,584]

18 minutes ago, GlasgowRangers1983 said:

Fact is we were on our arse after the last regime. Overhaul of players and standards were needed to get us to where we are now. Fact is we stopped 10 in a row with a team mostly made up of free transfers minus a few marquee signings. Right off the batt we competed and prevailed in Europe and made mediocre fights to challenge the league. People have got short memories of where we were and how little we have actually spent in getting to where we are now. I would of said that 95% of the players bought have helped get Rangers back to the top of Scottish football and for me that means they have been a success. 

Away ye go man  

[The Dude 20,026]

3 minutes ago, mitre_mouldmaster said:

Success for me.

If we sold our players we have brought in, we would make a massive profit, so it is basically impossible to say that financially it has not been a success.

On the field, they have delivered 55, the single most important title in our lifetimes.

Even players that did not participate fully in last year's squad helped contribute to impressive results in Europe and helped build the club up to a title winning standard.

It is also not really fair to consider the 50% hit rate to us as though we are just any other club. Rangers are a special case, coming from obscurity of the lower leagues and having to build a team on a relatively shoe string budget with mostly bargain basement signings who would deliver a title and compete in Europe.

As they say, buy cheap, buy twice. When the cheap signings are costing us £50k Vs the expensive prices of £5m we were throwing about under Advocaat regularly, then the equation changes somewhat.

We'd been in the Premiership a few years before Gerrard took charge. Our "relatively shoe-string budget" was still the second-biggest in the coutnry.

[Big Al 55 9,248]

Really the question should be is which of those players improved the squad at the time they were signed. It was bargain basement stuff.

I know it’s was as Pedro signing but look at Cardosa now, look at Worrall, Sadiq. I actually think Kamberi was a decent signing at the time. Indeed I don’t see Itten as an upgrade at all.

Often it’s how players settle in Scotland as much as their ability.

 

[slimjim1690 4,534]

It's interesting when you see that list and initially you think, fuck me that's awful, but as others have said it was a total rebuild with no money to do it with, personally I think it's incredible that it only took a couple of years to get to the stage we are at now, even when you look at the misses you can see what Gerrard was trying to do with his hands tied behind his back, so if we look at it realistically there was bound to be a high rate of failure to get us where we wanted to be.

What will be interesting is where we go from here, we're still nowhere near out of the woods yet and unless we win the league this year and Gerrard finally has some decent money to spend, [even then it won't be a lot ], that's when we'll see if Ross Wilson can weave some magic, so I'll hold off right now before criticizing.

[The Dude 20,026]

1 minute ago, slimjim1690 said:

It's interesting when you see that list and initially you think, fuck me that's awful, but as others have said it was a total rebuild with no money to do it with, personally I think it's incredible that it only took a couple of years to get to the stage we are at now, even when you look at the misses you can see what Gerrard was trying to do with his hands tied behind his back, so if we look at it realistically there was bound to be a high rate of failure to get us where we wanted to be.

What will be interesting is where we go from here, we're still nowhere near out of the woods yet and unless we win the league this year and Gerrard finally has some decent money to spend, [even then it won't be a lot ], that's when we'll see if Ross Wilson can weave some magic, so I'll hold off right now before criticizing.

We spunked 3m on Eroz Grezda. There was money to spend, it was just not spent particularly well. Barisic, Katic, Goldson, Helander, Roofe, Itten were all signed on fairly decent fees, Kent is the second most-expensive signing we've ever made.

 

[esquire8 42,534]

2 hours ago, The Dude said:

Other than the 9m for Kent.

Ssshhhh

[slimjim1690 4,534]

2 minutes ago, The Dude said:

We spunked 3m on Eroz Grezda. There was money to spend, it was just not spent particularly well. Barisic, Katic, Goldson, Helander, Roofe, Itten were all signed on fairly decent fees, Kent is the second most-expensive signing we've ever made.

 

I get what you're saying but out of that lot I would say only Grezda and Itten were a waste of money some will say Katic as well but not for me I just think it's a personality thing with Gerrard re Katic, and yes I know we have the 2nd biggest transfer kitty in Scotland but in order to challenge for the league here in Scotland even those fees we paid [apart from Kent] IMO were a gamble.

[BlueKnight87 17,284]

8 minutes ago, slimjim1690 said:

It's interesting when you see that list and initially you think, fuck me that's awful, but as others have said it was a total rebuild with no money to do it with, personally I think it's incredible that it only took a couple of years to get to the stage we are at now, even when you look at the misses you can see what Gerrard was trying to do with his hands tied behind his back, so if we look at it realistically there was bound to be a high rate of failure to get us where we wanted to be.

What will be interesting is where we go from here, we're still nowhere near out of the woods yet and unless we win the league this year and Gerrard finally has some decent money to spend, [even then it won't be a lot ], that's when we'll see if Ross Wilson can weave some magic, so I'll hold off right now before criticizing.

Moving forward is the number of players needing replaced that are coming up for contract end.

Next summer Mcgregor, Goldson, Balogun, Davis and Arfield will need replacing if no new deals. 

Then we've got Kent, Morelos, Aribo, Helander entering their final year. 

Big overhaul on the horizon for sure. 

[Moody Blue 9,349]

It’s a general miss for me, overall and for the outlays (wages taken into account if no significant transfer fee), there’s a massive chunk of utter gash. Even allowing for finding his feet, the last two windows seem to have replicated the trend of accepting lower quality pish when, arguably, bringing in youngsters like Kelly would make more sense. 

To be 3 years down the line and still buying in crap is below acceptable to me. 

[mitre_mouldmaster 21,509]

43 minutes ago, The Dude said:

We'd been in the Premiership a few years before Gerrard took charge. Our "relatively shoe-string budget" was still the second-biggest in the coutnry.

Did we ever finish below second in the country after Gerard took over? If so, then you have a point.

We went from having the second highest spend in the country to being the champions of the country.

Success.

[docspiderman 1,225]

4 hours ago, Big Al 55 said:

Are they Gerard’s signings? List is abysmal tbf, but it’s part of building a squad. We’re in a very different place now with Wilson IMO. Although we need Sakala and Bacuna to produce now. We also need Kent back, Wright, Aribo, Arfield, Roofe and Morelos to hit some form. All have been way below the standards required so far.

Some of those signings went on to be successful [not as horrific] elsewhere.

Never saw the game on Sat, we had around 27 shots and SG said we were looking like our old selves in the 1st half, no idea if that’s true or not.

On what do you base this on?