22/04/2025 07:00
Rangers fans would be forgiven for getting carried away about the latest news regarding their potential new owners.
There are enough shares secured by the San Francisco 49ers to complete the deal with only the legal formalities needed for an announcement to be made.
The timeline of May for the 49ers to take control remains the same and the summer will see new owners sweep to power in Ibrox.
Since losing the league in 2022, the current board has been under pressure to ship up or ship out and it appears as if they are doing the latter.
The 49ers Enterprises group have a £6bn profile to fall back on, but how much will the new owners affect a potential Rangers squad exodus.
No mass exodus predicted for Rangers after takeover
Speaking on the BBC Scottish Football Podcast, Scotland women's goalkeeper Gemma Fay has used a good example to explain how the rebuild might work:
"I think you need to look at, probably Newcastle is a good example of when new owners came in, and everybody expected to complete overhaul of a team, a whole bunch of players out, a whole bunch of players in. It’s been a slow and steady changing of that," said Fay.
"There’s no way you can go in and all of a sudden ditch 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 players and bring in a whole bunch of new ones.
"I don’t think that’s going to happen, but I think what you’ll start to see is, I think off the field you’ll see quickly structural changes. I think that’s the kind of thing that will happen, and they started that already with new CEO coming in, etc.
“Then think on the field, there’ll be, I assume, there’ll be a plan from new owners about what they see and deem success to be, and they’ll start recruiting, and there’ll be a budget aligning to that."
Rangers have five players out of contract, but there are also others who clearly aren't good enough to play for the club.
A player trading model can't work on young and promising talent alone.
What sort of signings do Rangers need to make in the summer?
There is a core of a good squad, this might seem like a poor take, but poor squads don't get to the Europa League quarter finals or have a winning record over Celtic.
What they need though, is a few quality additions who can guide the youngsters and whose performances don't dip below a 7/10.
When Walter Smith returned to Rangers, he signed players like David Weir, Ugu Ehoigu, Christian Daily and Lee McCulloch.
They might not have been exciting players, but they never walked off a football pitch having given anything less than 100%.
As Fay suggests, this summer is about quality, not quantity.
