Three Rangers rising stars have agreed the terms of new contracts with the club, it has been confirmed.
The Glasgow giants’ official academy account announced on Wednesday that Rhys Breen, Brian Kinnear and Lewis Budinauckas have signed deals that run until the summer of 2020.
? @RFC_Youth are delighted to confirm that Rhys Breen, Brian Kinnear and Lewis Budinauckas have signed new contracts keeping the trio at #RangersFC until summer 2020. pic.twitter.com/eVrUFPdtoY
— Rangers B & Academy (@RFC_Youth) March 20, 2019
OPINION
The pressure is on the Rangers academy to produce players for the first team. As Kris Boyd pointed out in a damning appraisal of the lavishly-funded Ibrox youth set-up last week, the club shouldn’t have to keep prising rising stars from other clubs. Rangers should be producing top-quality youngsters of their own. Ross McCrorie is the only academy product in the last few seasons to establish himself in the first team, and it doesn’t say a lot for the juniors that Rangers signed Glenn Middleton from Norwich last year and are reportedly about to land Jack Hastie from Motherwell. Of course, the Ibrox club have always pilfered the best young talent from elsewhere, but they did so while also nurturing stars of their own. Can defender Breen, 19, and goalkeeper duo Kinnear, 18, and Budinauckas, 17, succeed where so many others have failed and demonstrate the production well of talent hasn’t run dry.