Graeme Murty has revealed that Robbie McCrorie and Liam Kelly are set to be the the next two Rangers young guns in the first-team squad.
Three Ibrox academy products – Ross McCrorie, Jamie Barjonas and Ryan Hardie – have featured in the two matches overseen by Murty in caretaker charge.
Rangers won both games as the Under-20s boss dipped into the youth team set-up to tweak a team that had been struggling under ex-manager Pedro Caixinha.
Murty has revealed that they are just a few of the several youngsters at the club who are being taught what it takes to be Rangers players.
He explained to Training Ground Guru: “We’ve got Ross, Jamie and Ryan in the squad, which is fantastic to see, and Robbie McCrorie and Liam Kelly coming up behind them as well.
“If I’m looking at the Under-20s, I’d say 95 per cent of them have trained with the first team squad at some stage this season, which is great.
“They get to see the best players doing what they do and what it takes to stay there.
“Jamie Barjonas’ development has come on apace, because he’s training with Ryan Jack, Graham Dorrans, Niko Kranjcar and Kenny Miller. He’s seeing it first hand.
“These players are aspiring to be first-team players, so they need to see it. Pedro was very open. If the 20s had a session, we would often schedule it so we were able to go and watch the first team train – to see what it’s like to be a Rangers player, to look and listen.
“They’d always come back and talk about the noise, the intensity, the demands. That led to their own sessions improving in those regards.”
OPINION
Rangers have ploughed significant resources into improving the production line of players from the academy to the first team. The Ibrox youth set-up has hardly developed any outstanding talent in recent years, the recently sold Barrie McKay (who joined Rangers aged 16) was perhaps an exception, with the current first team made of English lower league acquisitions and players brought in on a wing and prayer from Mexico and Portugal by Caixinha during the summer. It is high time Rangers got back to nurturing their own stars rather than buying average ones.