Big Phil makes major Rangers admission on ‘Scottish signings’…. | OneFootball

Rangers manager Philippe Clement has made the curious admission that he really wants to get “Scottish players into Rangers”, despite only signing two in the two windows he’s had as Ibrox chief.

Speaking on Connor Barron, who has very quickly become a huge fan-favourite inside his first few appearances, the manager praised the new recruit amid a well-publicised ‘dig’ at Aberdeen, but it was the comment about Scottish players which raised our interest.

Rangers have signed a fair chunk of players under the Belgian boss now:

Fabio Silva (now gone), Mohamed Diomande, and Oscar Cortes in January, then Jefte, Hamza Igamane, Connor Barron, Clinton Nsiala, Liam Kelly, Vaclav Cerny and Robin Pröpper.

And obviously just the two of those 10 are Scottish, and only one of them plays.

We can’t even use the excuse that the Scottish players just aren’t out there, because there are many strong players in both the Scottish Premiership and even quite a few in the Championship as well as Premier League.

So they’re there.

But for whatever reason, Rangers managers never tend to sign much Scottish, even despite the UEFA homegrown rules quota.

Since January 2020, Scott Wright and John Souttar are the ONLY senior Scottish players to arrive in Govan. Four years and only two Scots. It’s really no surprise that aside the ignominy of Rangers’ relationship with the Scottish National Team, that there are no Rangers players playing for Scotland. Aside, slimly-speaking, Souttar.

And Clement might say he wants to sign Scottish, but the actions speak louder than words and he only added a couple out of 10 possible additions.

Want to go back a little further? Jon McLaughlin (barely even Scottish), Jake Hastie (great signing that was), and Greg Stewart (another stunning success).

The point is you have to go back to 2018 for the last time Rangers signed quality Scots who made a real difference to the club, and they were of course Allan McGregor and Scotty Arfield. Connor Barron cannot be spoken of in this way yet.

But we really would like to see Clement back up his words with actually signing Scots, good Scots we’d like to see at Rangers.

Lawrence Shankland anyone?