For all the talk of big signings over at Ibrox – and I know they still have a couple of players in mind, like Panzo and the Ecuadorian we didn’t bother to go for – the least surprising news in the world is that they are going to re-sign 35 year old Leon Balogun on a free.
This is what it looks like when you run out of players in the manager’s wee black book.
They now freely admit they signed a striker who first popped up on their radar four years ago; he’s now 28, and they haven’t moved on from him. That shows how big their lists are. They now look set to move for a player who is well past it on a free.
That club is so limited, limited in its finances, limited in its options, limited in its thinking, limited in its ideology, limited by every constraint that is automatically put on you when you think you’re superior to everyone and that things should just fall into place for you by right, that they will make mistakes on top of mistakes as long as they are.
They can kid themselves on all they want that it’s a short-term signing because of what’s happened to Leon King, but if you’ve followed this, the rumours on it go back to the end of last season and the deal has been done at a speed which seems uncannily like one that’s been in motion behind the scenes for a while. This has been planned for.
What exactly do we have to fear from a club with such short-sightedness?
Much of the business they’ve done in this window is nothing but a pale echo of what we did with Postecoglou’s first season, all “players Beale knows” and the striker who the club has known about for four years.
It’s all predicated on The Mooch being able to spot a player; if he can, the question which automatically arises is how come if he’s so good most of these guys were available for sod all?
Whatever way they dress this up, this is a “revolution” done on the cheap and this is the cheapest deal of the lot. Are they really planning to go into critical Champions League qualifiers with that defence? Into a full-scale domestic campaign?
Even if they add the Championship defender Panzo, that’s a joke, that’s pathetic, they will be ripped apart by decent teams and we’ll be one of the ones which does it.
You are looking at a club which is either out of cash or out of ideas, maybe both.
What does it matter? We’re going to crush this lot.