Well this will be the fourth and final part where I will look at the non “Elite Academy” club’s players I have noticed. I have already covered Dundee United who are due to joint the Elite group in the coming season. I will also highlight ten players I thought may have made a first team breakthrough at Rangers but didn’t.
There has been talk of St.Mirren moving into the Elite group and they would be a good addition, although its not happening this season. One area where they have capitalised is picking up and developing players Rangers have released. There was a period where our decisions on who we released really surprised me, and in Kenny McLean, Lewis Morgan, Kyle McAllister and Jack Baird St. Mirren benefited. Thomas Reilly and Sean Kelly maybe didn’t stand out at Rangers but were good youth players at St. Mirren.
Outwith these former ‘Gers two standouts for me were Simon Lappin, Stevie Mallon and Andy Stirling. Left sided player Lappin won a move to Norwich City and played over a hundred games, later turning out for Cardiff City, Motherwell, Sheffield United and St.Johnstone and is still player coach at Eastern Counties League wide Wroxham. A move to Barnsley didn’t quite work out for Mallan but got back on track with a return to Scotland with Hibs. Andy Stirling has been a a few clubs including a short spell in America, he most recently played against us for Stranraer.
Marc McAusland, Ally Love, Mark Lamont, and Jason Naismith were all decent youth players and from the current crop Cammy McPherson and Kyle Magennis are making their way in the game.
Under the radar, has to be John McGinn, I remember him as a young player but never seen him being a Premiership player of the future.
Partick Thistle competed in the semi official Youth League in the late 70’s early 80’s, Rangers didn’t so I took in a couple of Thistle’s games and their strike force was Maurice Johnston and Kenny McDowall, I wonder what happened to them.
Generally speaking as a club they have disappointed since, with the players that caught my eye like Neil McLaughlin, Kevin Nisbet and David Wilson not really getting established at Thistle. Only Nisbet’s career has taken an upward curve with an exceptional season at Dunfermline, while Wilson is at Stirling Albion and McLaughlin in the Lowland League at Caledonia Braves (formerly Edusport). The only success I can think of is full back James Penrice who has become an established first team player.
In recent times only Liam Lindsay stood out and is now at Stoke City after initially moving south to Barnsley.
I’ll take Inverness CT and Ross County as a package, as they operate in the same limited catchment area. They have both made great strides since they first entered the youth scene, the biggest score I have witnessed at a youth game was a Rangers side beating Ross County 26-1, with Ross County playing the last half-hour period with fourteen players !! There is still a gap, especially at the younger age groups where Rangers tend to move the teams up a year when playing these clubs.
The one standout at Ross County was Gary Mackay-Steven, moving from the Highlands to Liverpool. Alex Cooper, son of former Rangers Neale was a talented young player but never fulfilled his promise. Inverness have fared slightly better with Ryan Christie being the real standout. I also thought Shane Sutherland, Liam Polworth and Nick Ross were promising.
Queens Park have a great setup but as there is no pathway into full-time football, their better players have usually moved on by the age of 16 and make their break through elsewhere. Nathan Blockley, Owen Ronald, Ryan McGeever and Aiden Connolly impressed as youths but their careers never really took off. After failing to impress Jimmy Sinclair on his extended trial at Rangers, Laurence Shankland caught the attention of Aberdeen playing at Queens Park. That move didn’t work out but he has thrived since.
I don’t remember Andy Robertson as a Celtic youth player but he stood out for Queens in the League 2 games against Rangers in 2012/13 season. I don’t think anyone could have predicted his meteoric rise since.
Of the other youth academies Robbie Crawford and Alan Forrest have been the Ayr United players that caught the eye. The one Morton player that springs to mind is Mark Russell, made is debut at seventeen and well over a hundred appearances. I don’t know what a happened but he is now at Finn Harps in Donegal and still only twenty-four.
Going back a while Danny Griffin was a youth player at St.Johnstone I admired, he maybe suffered being a centre back that was probably deemed small at 5′ 11″. Pretty sure he came over to Rangers as a kid as a former St. Andrew’s Boys Club player. Over three hundred career appearances and twenty-nine caps for Northern Ireland. Keeper Zander Clark who was at Celtic, Rangers and Hamilton Accies before ending up at St.Johnstone and Stevie May were in the same youth team. Chris Kane is still considered promising but is now twenty-five. They have made a real effort in recent years and with Ali McCann and Jason Kerr established first team players it is bearing fruit. Rangers have tried to tempt a couple of players from the Perth club in recent times, succeeding in signing a 2005 in January.
Dundee have really been pretty disappointing and I think have kind of gave up on occasions, especially when their near neighbours seemed to succeed in poaching their best players, Paul Dixon and Scott Robertson for example. Kevin McDonald and Craig Forsyth both moved south in 2008 and 2011 respectively which promised a revival. Pickings have been poor since with Kyle Benedictus, Leigton McIntosh, Cammy Kerr and Craig Wighton not living up to early promise.
That leaves Fife Elite Academy, not sure of the make up these days, but it was dominated by Dunfermline Athletic in the early days. I know that Raith Rovers and Cowdenbeath are part of it, not sure if East Fife are involved. I can’t think of any recent players that have caught my eye, going back a bit there were a few. Lewis Martin and Ryan Williamson were two, but they had been released by Rangers and Celtic respectively. Lewis was a good player at Rangers who I was surprised to see released, He has been a first team regular for a while. A leg break set back Ryan Williamson a bit after receiving rave reviews when he broke through, he is now at Partick Thistle. Nick Phinn and Ryan Thomson were another two that caught the eye as youth players.
The intention of the next part was to look at Rangers players who didn’t quite make the first team. As I started to think back and write down names my list was getting bigger and bigger and was soon eighty plus.
I am often asked which players could play in the first team ? You may be surprised that more than half of my list did. After some thought I looked at the players and split them into five categories. At the top would be the obvious successes like Alan McGregor and Barry Ferguson. The second group I also consider to be successes but I know by reading online posts this group would split the Rangers support, this group would include the likes of Charlie Adam and Chris Burke.
Next would come players who played a decent number of games but most wouldn’t consider them a success at Rangers. Steven Pressley, Scott Wilson, Bob Malcolm, Maurice Ross and Stephen Hughes spring to mind. The fourth group would be those that made up to ten appearances. Some of these I knew straight away had played in the first team, John Morrow, Alan Lowing and Steven McLean for example. Others I had to double check, and Alex Walker, Bob Davidson and Darren Fitzgerald all did.
The last group is what I want to focus on, ones I thought had a chance of playing a first team game but didn’t for what ever reason. I have picked ten players in no particular order, this list could have been a lot bigger but I had to make a choice.
For the first player I have chosen you have to go back to the early eighties when John Greig sanctioned the setting up of an Official Rangers Boys Club under the auspices of Bobby Dinnie. At its peak they had teams in three different age groups. One group were undefeated for two years playing in the Scottish Amateur youth leagues, against the likes of Celtic Boys Club, Fir Park Boys Club and Eastercraigs. The front three of the group was John Spencer, Gary McSwegan and Eion Jess, although Jess coming from the north east only played occasionally. In midfield was a player who won’t be familiar to most Rangers fans, he seemed to dominate games and everything went through him, Scott Murray. Along with Spencer and McSwegan he joined Rangers as a youngster but for what ever reason didn’t progress and was away within a year. I think he was briefly at Hamilton Accies but disappeared from the game.
Joe Robertson was a skilful and typically gallus Glasgow teenager and from memory relished playing against Celtic. He left Rangers under a cloud with rumours of a whacky nature. Still made over two hundred appearances with Clydebank, Dumbarton and East Strling.
Another skilful winger and grandson of former Rangers player Ian McMillan, Iain Russell was a player I thought would make a break through. A Man of the Match performance in the 2000 Youth Cup Final despite being on the losing side. Rangers lost 3-5 to Hearts but those at the game would remember Iain’s performance and how he was targeted by a over physical Hearts side, a few picking up yellow cards for fouls on the Rangers winger. I don’t know what happened and why he never managed one game but he went on to play over 450 senior games with a number of clubs, The most significant spells being at Dumbarton, Livingston and Queen of the South. I saw him play and score most recently for Pollok in August.
Another player who had a significant career in Scotland but injury probably prevented any chance of a first team appearance at Rangers was Peter MacDonald. I remember “Peaso” coming on as a sub in a West Reserve League game at Clydebank as a 14 year old in May 1995. Rangers said they were struggling to field a team and Ally Dawson, Terry Butcher and I think Gordon Smith all came out of retirement to play in the game. Rangers other sub on the night was scout Ewan Chester. He left Rangers for St.Johnstone with the Perth side paying Rangers a fee in excess of £100,000. He averaged around twenty games as season in his time there, which was probably the peak of his career. He is still playing in the Lowland League with East Stirling and is back at Rangers as an academy coach.
Stephen Dobbie’s career seemed to be going nowhere, overweight and just released by St.Johnstone, a continued slide down the leagues seemed inevitable. Something or someone instigated a change at Dumbarton and as a result he is closing in on five hundred senior games. I remember Stephen as a really skilful player and thought he had a chance. While at Rangers he had a short spell on loan at Northern Spirit, scoring a goal a game in his three appearances. His turn around at Dumbarton saw him move to Queen of The South and a scoring rate better than a goal every two games won him a move to Swansea City. This would be the peak making nine Premiership appearances for the Welsh club. Now back in Dumfries he has replicated that scoring rate in his second spell at the club.
Cultured midfielder Paul McHale was another that I thought had a chance, after loan spells at St.Mirren and Cowdenbeath he was released and signed for Clyde. His performances their earned him a move to Dundee, three good seasons were brought to a halt with administration for the club and redundancy for Paul. A season each at Stirling Albion and Stenhousemuir followed before dropping out the senior game. He is still involved in football working as an agent.
As a sixteen year old midfielder Peter Leven was on the first team bench on a few occasions but never quite made it onto the pitch. A serious knee injury a year later saw him pretty much on the sidelines for the next two years. On leaving Rangers he joined Kilmarnock and established himself in the side before moving south and playing over 250 games for three clubs. He returned to Kilmarnock as assistant manager to Lee McCulloch and his latest coaching adventure took him to Dynamo Brest in Belarus, as Assistant Head coach, winning the Belarusian Premier League in 2019. He left the Belarusian club in March this year.
Another who is back at the club as an academy coach but as a player never made the breakthrough is Brian Gilmour. As well as turning out for four Scottish clubs with Ayr United being his best period, Brian played in England with Lincoln City, Finland with FC Haka and Iceland with KA. His career highlight would probably be playing against Brondby in the UEFA Cup for FC Haka.
A favourite of mine at the time was striker Chris Craig, not the biggest and maybe not the quickest but he had a brilliant touch. Chris was from Anderson and I used to park my car in that area for work. I often seen Chris, sometimes in his Rangers training gear, on his own playing keepie uppie in the local swing park. His progress at Rangers was halted by injuries that saw him sidelined for a lengthy periods. After Rangers came brief spells at Dumbarton, Alloa Athletic and Airdrie United. Since then he has alternated between top amateur sides and the Juniors.
The last of the ten really shouldn’t be featuring here but it is a quirk of the goalkeeping position that Liam Kelly never made a first team appearance. I have watched Liam since Under 13’s and as he got older I thought a first team appearance was inevitable. A loan spell at East Fife saw him win a League Two winners medal, another successful loan spell this time at Livingston followed but that first team debut never came. He moved to Livingston permanently in June 2018, a year later he invoked a release clause to join Queens Park Rangers. Showing initial patience he waited for his chance and is now established as first choice keeper. I have a feeling that Liam’s Rangers story isn’t over and he could be back at the club someday.
Once again all this is just my opinion and what I thought of these players as youngsters. Restricting it to the ten I picked was difficult, I could have included three of four times that number.
I feel we have a lot of talent across the age groups in the academy at present. The big question is ten or fifteen years down the line what category will these players find themselves in. In putting together this article I now realise even more how difficult that is to predict.
Rangers Youths 
November 30, 2020 at 10:11 am
This link gives all the deatils
https://www.rangers.co.uk/soccer-academy/1Z4Ik0rPUPnJnS65rbQNDx
November 29, 2020 at 6:10 pm
Can you please advise my as to how my 11 year old grandson can join the u13 coaching courses
June 13, 2020 at 6:59 pm
Superb insight into youth football in Scotland and at Rangers.Some first class information about young players and youth football in Scotland. Brilliant stuff on youth football
Cheers