THE transfer window, that big metaphorical aperture that’s always getting slammed shut at a spectacularly inconvenient time of the night, tends to resemble an odd game of the Hokey Cokey. There are players coming in and players going out as everybody frantically shakes their money about during a fevered spell of purchasing, speculating and accumulating that would make a day in the City resemble a Tupperware sale at the Govan Floral Society.
As a former trader, Mark Warburton knows all about buying and selling. The Rangers manager had been pressed on this, that and the other during the aforementioned window of transfer opportunity and it’s probably a relief to him that it has been closed. His main bit of wheeling and dealing, of course, centred around Michael O’Halloran who finally put pen to paper on a move from St Johnstone after a prolonged will he, won’t he palaver. For Warburton, it is very much a case of quality over quantity.
“The biggest danger for me is bringing in too many as opposed to too few,” said the Englishman. “It’s important they are all on board and going in the same direction. There can’t be any factions in the camp. If you bring four, five or six players in during January, you risk diluting that harmony.”
With the January sales over, Warburton is already looking to the summer, that pivotal period of the year which can shape an entire campaign.
“That’s the most important time for me,” he said. “Nothing comes near to it in terms of embedding ideas, playing styles, ethos and getting the guys to gel. Ideally, we get our business done before pre-season. If you go scouting down south, you’re looking to the end of July to bring in young players. So it’s a case of getting the permanent business done early and then looking at the loan market.”
Given that the time between the end of one season and the start of the next one these days is about as short as Ronnie Corbett’s semmit, Warburton knows he will have to act quickly. With the new all- singing, all-dancing Scottish League Cup starting in July, there will be plenty of re-jigging to be done. “Our return date for pre-season is June 18,” he said. “We’ll get our training camp or trip finalised but then you have this League Cup starting on July 16. According to that you have a period of games between July 16 and 30 which impacts on our pre-season plans quite significantly. You want to give yourself the best chance for a strong league campaign. The quality of your pre-season and your games programme is significant.
“If you were managing a club down south you’d maybe look to start by playing a match against a non-league club, then a League Two club, perhaps a League One team and then maybe a Premier League one or a Bundesliga team. You want two really strong tests before you go into the first league game of the season. I’m not sure we’ll have that luxury this year.”
One player who hopes to be involved in the build up to a new season is Dean Shiels. Along with the likes of Nicky Clark and Nicky Law, the 31-year-old Northern Irishman is out of contract in the summer but he is eager to be part of Warburton’s future plans.
When financial disaster consumed Rangers a few years ago, and the club pressed the footballing equivalent of the Ctrl, Alt, Delete keys to reboot the system before starting up again in the Third Division, Shiels made the switch from the top tier to the bottom rung by swapping Kilmarnock for Ibrox.
Despite an injury-plagued stay, Shiels is one of the few remaining players who have been there for the entire period of the so-called “journey” back to the upper echelons. Whether Rangers get there this season remains to be seen but Shiels is enjoying the direction of travel. “When I signed, I had it in my mind that I could claim a winner’s medal from each of the three lower divisions,” he said. “It’s something I would take great pride in but we have to do it first.
“Steps forward have definitely been made and I think this club is only going in one direction now. It’s just a matter of time I think – whether that be one, two or three years – before Rangers start winning top-flight titles again.”
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