'Very interesting': Rangers told they already have a wonderkid 'really similar' to £4.5m Lennon Miller

03/19/2025 02:00 AM

Amid all the speculation suggesting that Rangers could look to make Lennon Miller their latest homegrown addition, is Ibrox already home to the next big thing in Scottish football?

Like it or not, there seems to be a sense of inevitability in the fact that Bailey Rice and Lennon Miller will often be pitched against each other throughout the remainder of their careers.

They were team-mates in the Motherwell reserves, after all.

And, in the eyes of some critics, Lennon Miller’s emergence as a first-team regular at Fir Park – he is approaching 70 first-team appearances already while having become their youngest-ever captain – is a reminder of what Bailey Rice turned down when he opted to join Rangers back in 2022.

Rice, in contrast, has played ten times fewer senior games despite being only two months Lennon’s junior.

Yet, as Rangers’ 18-year-old midfielder prepares to make his Scotland Under-21 debut in the coming days, Scot Gemmill is keen to avoid pitching Rice against his fellow teenager. One who could represent the Scotland seniors for the first time in the UEFA Nations League double-header with Greece.

• READ MORE:Rangers Youngest-Ever Players

Scotland Under-21 boss backs Rangers teenager Bailey Rice

Rice is certainly a little bit behind Miller in terms of his career progression thus far. Then again, that is maybe to be expected, given the superior quality ahead of him in the Rangers pecking order.

Sunday’s Old Firm derby win over Celtic – Nico Raskin was ‘head and shoulders the best player on the pitch’ but Connor Barron and goalscorer Mohamed Diomande also excelled – is proof of that.

“I think Bailey is a very good example of a young player trying very hard to establish himself,” Scotland Under-21 boss Gemmill tells The Courier and Advertiser. “It is very difficult to do that. And when you get the opportunities, you have to take them.

“There is no question, when he got his opportunity with the first-team recently, he did well. People took notice of that, and he needs to be congratulated on that.

“But I think he would be the first to admit he’s still got a lot to do, a lot to improve.”

Rice is clearly very highly rated at Ibrox. Interim boss Barry Ferguson insists that opportunities will arise for the club’s next generation, with the final few weeks of the Premiership season perhaps the ideal time to further blood the likes of Rice, Paul Nsio and Findlay Curtis.

Gemmill, meanwhile, is reluctant to say whether Rice made the right or the wrong call leaving Motherwell – and the prospect of more regular football – for the greater track record of Auchenhowie.

Gemmill says Rice and co need support around them

“I think it’s very interesting when you compare Bailey and Lennon because they were together at Motherwell and Bailey decided to change clubs. He will have his reasons for doing that,” adds the former Nottingham Forest, Everton and Leicester City man.

“They are two really good young Scottish talents, full of potentially. Really similar but different, if that makes sense.

“I think there is no wrong and no right. They are having to make very big decisions at young ages. They need good advice. They need good people around them, they need good agents. It’s almost becoming a game of chess.

"The players have to pick the right pathway that's right for them. But it's very interesting to see because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how good you are, if you don't get the opportunity, you're going to struggle to break through.

"It's really important that these young players make the good decisions, that they get good advice, that they get good support.

"They're on such a difficult journey and there are so many hurdles but they have to make good decisions – and that's just off the pitch. It's becoming more and more important for the young players to make the right decisions, pick the right pathway to get the right opportunities."

As for Miller, reports suggest that Motherwell will demand around £4.5 million from the likes of Rangers or Celtic over the summer. There is also interest from clubs in Germany and England, while Union Saint-Gilloise and Udinese allegedly saw winter bids turned down.

Miller and Rice could be reunited soon enough, then. Though, in an ironic twist, what would the addition of the former mean for the latter’s hopes of a regular starting berth at Ibrox?