Barry Ferguson has slammed Rangers’ overuse of signing players on loan, and claims that Steven Gerrard would want to be handing out permanent contracts rather than temporary ones.
The Light Blues currently have five players in their first team squad that are on loan, and apart from Ryan Kent, none of them have consistently delivered top-level performances throughout the entire season.
Ferguson believes that the way forward for Rangers is to be signing players on permanent deals.
However the former Gers captain has suggested that a lack of funds at Ibrox would make it hard for Gerrard to do that.
“I’m not a fan of bringing in the loan players,” Ferguson told PLZ Soccer, as shown on YouTube [7:53 onwards]. “I think these loan players will go back. Jermain Defoe won’t, he’s got an 18-month loan and I don’t think they’ll cancel that.
“I think in an ideal world, Steven Gerrard would like to bring in players on two and three year contracts and that’s going to cost money. That’s when you’ve got to go out and pay transfer fees and whatever.
“I don’t know if Rangers have got that to go and do that.
“But in an ideal world, I think they need to go and get three or four players who are going to kickstart that team again.”
OPINION
Ferguson is so riled up about loan players that he has overlooked how many players Rangers have actually signed on permanent deals since the end of last season. Allan McGregor, Scott Arfield, Jamie Murphy, Nikola Katic, Connor Goldson, Borna Barisic, Kyle Lafferty, Eros Grezda, Gareth McAuley and Glenn Kamara are all first team players at Ibrox, and all of them have been signed on a permanent basis in the last two transfer windows. It’s not Rangers’ fault that the loan system is also quite an effective way for teams in the Scottish Premiership to improve. Rangers fans might not like this example, but look at Celtic. Patrick Roberts, Odsonne Edouard, Scott Bain, Oliver Burke, Jeremy Toljan and others have been signed on loan by them in the last few seasons, and all of them have made a difference in Glasgow’s east end. If you sign the right players on loan then it’s a good system to take advantage of. Rangers need more Ryan Kents though and less Umar Sadiqs.