A Closer Look at Wilson

 

Rangers had been rumoured to be after Ross Wilson for the Sporting Director post for some time before he was officially appointed in Oct 2019. The former Falkirk man had built a respected reputation in his 4 and a half years at Southampton, and when Rangers found themselves with a vacancy following the resignation of Mark Allen for personal reasons it appeared there was only one man the club wanted.

While Mark Allen hadn't always been the most popular of figures at Ibrox, it is worth noting that he came in when there was basically no scouting structure at Rangers and he was able to rebuild this department to a semi-respectable situation. Though he brought in a lot of questionable signings like Brandon Barker and Aaron Nemane, he was also able to bring in a Scott Arfield or Connor Goldson.

Ultimately though, I doubt there were many tears when he left, and there was a lot of excitement about his replacement. Ross Wilson was of course responsible for signing Van Dijk from our rivals for Southampton at £14m and flipping him to Liverpool for £76m. 

A monumental profit, and exactly the business model we were after. However, did he do much more than that? This question wasn't really asked at the time, we were too busy being excited by the idea of someone coming in and changing the landscape of our transfers to really look at the business he'd done.

To say his time so far at Rangers is saturated with failures and disappointments is an understatement, none more evident than the fact we finished the recent embarrassment to celtic without a single one of our 7 summer arrivals on the pitch. Add to that the fact that of the 22 players to start the 2019 League Cup Final only 2 of celtics remain, while 10 of Rangers 11 are still there shows how little his signings have had an impact.

Looking more closely at his time at Southampton Wilson spent £277.48m on 27 players, contrast that with his ability to move those players on where he made £167.25m back, and £76.19m of that was the aforementioned VVD. That means he made a net transfer spend on £110m in total on those 27 players. 

That wouldn't be too bad if it meant he had improved the Southampton team. There's nothing wrong with spending that money (in the EPL) if you're slowly getting better. The thing is they didn't. He took over at Southampton when they had finished 7th in the EPL. Over the course of his tenure they then went on to finish 6th, 8th, 17th and 16th. 

So in effect they stood still for the first 2 years, before going from European challengers to Relegation battlers. Not exactly the ringing endorsement that the VVD transfer first gives you.

Moving on from there though lets look at his time at Rangers.

When Wilson took over the DoF post at Rangers we were coming off a 2nd place finish in the league the season before and were crying out for success. The hope was he would be able to identify the players to help take Steven Gerrard's team to the next level.

His first window was the notoriously difficult winter transfer window, which saw Rangers bring in Ianis Hagi and Florian Kamberi on loan before they ultimately collapsed in the league and the Scottish Cup, and covid saw the season cut short.

The next summer saw Hagi sign on permanently, alongside Calvin Bassey, Kemar Roofe, Cedric Itten, Leon Balogun, Jon McLaughlin and Bongani Zungu. What followed was an unbelievable season, Rangers won their 55th title, and while they failed miserably in the cups it was expected they would kick on from here and dominate Scottish football again.

That quite clearly hasn't happened, but is it Wilson's fault? Well since he joined the club he's signed 25 first team players. That's 2 whole new first teamers and subs. This makes the stat on the 2019 League Cup Final stat all the more frightening.

Yes he has managed to move Bassey on for big money, that is a big success for him, mirroring the VVD deal at Southampton, but outside of that? Nathan Patterson was moved for big money, but he was a product of the youth system and Joe Aribo was moved on for ok money, but much much lower than his worth and I would personally view that as a poor bit of business.

Of the 25 players, for me, only 5 I would count as hits so far. That's Hagi, Colak, Bassey, Balogun and Lundstram. Even then I may be being generous with Hagi and potentially too early with Colak. I'd also add Roofe if he could stay fit.

I'll withhold judgement on this summers signings at the moment, apart from Colak, and I think Lawrence had started well until his injury, but the rest are taking their time. That's normally not an issue, but with our rivals seemingly able to find players who hit the ground running every single time we do not have the luxury of time any more.

Add to all this I, personally, would consider 12 of the 25 as definite misses, then it isn't pretty reading.

It's always been speculated the reason Gerrard left due to the fact he couldn't bring in the players he wanted last season, but I was willing to side with the board/Wilson on that at the time due to the fact Gerrard also didn't want to sell any of his players to fund transfers. However, it was clear Gio wanted to add some players after PSV, despite what he said when the window shut, and we are seeing that clearly the squad that needed refreshed after 55 is still very much in the position of needing refreshed.

We've gone backwards with our goalkeeping, backwards with CB, backwards with CM and backwards with RW, I'd even argue LW with Kent's current run of form.

With all the money Gio brought in, and even with the FFP regulations, I would have expected a bit more of a layout in the summer to try to compete with our rivals. Unfortunately that wasn't the case and last weeks Old Firm was the result we deserved.

It's now clear the players don't care at the moment, they were outrun in a game where they were dominated in possession by Ajax, and we have a manager who appears to have accepted his lot. His comments following the embarrassment in Amsterdam were very telling.

I'm certainly not giving Gio a free ride in all this, his tactics need a shake up. This horse-shoe passing tactic is particularly baffling when it consistently puts us under pressure, and all credit for making the Europa League Final and winning the Scottish Cup last season is fast running out now. If we don't see a vast improvement in the next few games, whenever they are, then the pressure may reach critical.

It's not a fun time to be a Rangers fan just now, but it can't last forever. Hopefully Wilson is able to change things dramatically in the next window, or the summer signings make a much bigger impact, or the more likely he is moved on.

The Rambling Ger

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