Rangers are clearly doing their homework on players before they walk through the door, but there’s still this nagging question: why do so many who look decent down south arrive at Ibrox and just never quite hit the level we need?

The scouting makes sense, so where’s the gap?

When we sign a player, it isn’t done on a whim. We’re watching them at their previous clubs, checking their consistency over a few seasons, trying to work out if their qualities fit how we want to play. On paper, it’s all fairly logical.

That’s why it can be so frustrating when someone like Rothwell arrives with a tidy CV and then looks miles off what we expected. You can understand fans splitting into camps on players like him. Some will give more patience, others will write them off quickly, but almost everyone is left asking the same thing: what changed between there and here?

Because it’s not just one or two. Over the last few years there have been a fair number who’ve come up from down south and, for whatever reason, just haven’t been good enough once they pull on a Rangers shirt. They’ve not all been hopeless players. They’ve just not reached the standard needed at this club.

The weight of the badge and the need to win

So you start wondering about the other stuff you can’t really measure on a scouting report. Is it the pressure of having to win every single week? Some players are used to mid-table games where a bad result is annoying but not a crisis. At Rangers, a draw at home can feel like the sky is falling in.

Then there’s the size of the club itself. The noise, the scrutiny, the demands from the stands. For some, that energy lifts them. For others, you can almost see the confidence getting chipped away. You can imagine a player arriving thinking they know what Rangers is, then realising quite quickly it’s bigger and more intense than they ever understood from the outside.

That might be part of why so many “decent-looking” players from English clubs arrive and suddenly look like shadows of themselves. The talent hasn’t vanished overnight, but the environment is completely different.

Why some thrive where others fade

The flip side is that we’ve seen it absolutely work as well, which proves it’s not a simple England-to-Scotland problem. Aribo and Bassey came in and grew into big players for us. Lundstram, after a ropey start, became a key man for long spells. Tavernier has been the standout example, building a whole Rangers career after coming up the road.

Maybe Cantwell sits somewhere in the middle of that argument. There’s talent there, and at times he has looked like another success story from down south, but you’re left wondering what might have happened if he’d kept the head down more consistently and really pushed on.

So it clearly can work. The question is why it works for a few and not the many. Confidence, mentality, how quickly they adapt to the demands and tempo of Scottish football, how they handle the expectation of 50,000 folk wanting three points every single week. All of that matters just as much as their highlight reel from a previous club.

In the end, that’s the uncomfortable truth: you can scout as well as you like, but until a player is thrown into the reality of Rangers, you never fully know if they’ll sink or swim.

Written by Thestigno1: 14 December 2025

Tags: transfers