The phrase that keeps getting thrown about is that Rangers didn’t have a balanced squad, not that every summer signing was a dud. That’s an important difference. If the issue is balance, then the fix isn’t necessarily ripping up what you’ve just built. It’s identifying the gaps and sorting them properly.
Because here’s the obvious question: are we actually going to sell players we brought in and start again, or are we going to add the missing pieces around them? If you’re looking at areas like left-back, left wing and left midfield, you can see how a squad can look decent on paper but still feel lopsided when the matches start coming thick and fast.
Squad balance is a plan, not a panic
Too often, “unbalanced” becomes a catch-all complaint that ends up blaming whoever is easiest to blame. But balance isn’t just about names on a team sheet. It’s about profiles. Who stretches the pitch? Who gives you proper cover? Who can play in a couple of roles without the whole shape collapsing?
When Rangers look disjointed, it’s rarely because one guy is simply hopeless. It’s because the team is doing jobs in isolation. You’ve got a back four asked to defend big spaces, midfielders pulled all over the place, and wide players either too high to help or too deep to hurt anybody. That’s not a recruitment-only issue. That’s how the side functions as a unit.
Djiga: the easy target, but not the full story
Take Djiga. Some folk talk about him like he’s single-handedly costing Rangers points every week, and I just don’t buy it. Since Danny Röhl arrived, he was part of a defence across eight games that conceded three goals. Did he make mistakes? Probably. Show me a defender who doesn’t. The point is those errors didn’t turn into goals.
And even if you want to go down the simple route, we’ve conceded three goals in five games he hasn’t played. You could argue the defence has been worse without him. But the bigger point is this: the improved defensive feel isn’t about one player being out. It’s about the team being more solid, with everyone doing their share instead of leaving it all to the back line.
Chermiti and the “goals only” argument
Chermiti is another one where expectations have run ahead of reality. It was said at the time he signed that the idea was potential, and that he’d cost a lot more later if he developed the way the club hoped. Yet plenty still expected a ready-made starter purely because of the fee.
To be fair, you can see improvement in his overall game. And I’m not having the argument that a striker should be judged only on goals, as if that’s the whole story. Hold that standard up to Cyriel Dessers and it quickly gets messy. Link play, movement, presence, decision-making, all of it matters in how a forward helps a team function.
You can disagree on plenty, but let’s not paint over the facts just because a narrative is convenient.
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