Rangers urged to replace Ibrox flop with 18-year-old as Philippe Clement given £12m reminder

Rangers, and the Scottish Premiership as a whole, appears to have a rather odd relationship right now when it comes to young, homegrown players.

This is arguably one of the most prosperous periods in the league’s history when it comes to selling young, local talent for big-money to major European leagues. In the last few seasons, Josh Doig, Aaron Hickey, Kieran Tierney, Calvin Ramsay, Lewis Ferguson and more have all departed for Serie A or the English Premier League respectively.

Rangers sold Nathan Patterson to Everton, meanwhile, for an initial fee of around £12 million when the full-back was barely out of his teens.

Yet, while this does paint the picture of a positive situation, Andy Halliday sees things differently. The experienced Motherwell midfielder is concerned that, despite the successes of Patterson, Hickey and co, opportunities have been few and far between of late for Scotland’s next generation on home soil.

He highlights the situation facing Bailey Rice at Rangers.

Philippe Clement urged to drop Kieran Dowell for Bailey Rice at Rangers

While Philippe Clement claims to be a fan of the Ibrox starlet, 18-year-old Rice has not played even a minute of Premiership football across 2024/25. The midfielder has only been on the bench twice, and was left out of the matchday squad yet again when Rangers beat St Johnstone 3-1 on Sunday.

A situation which leaves Halliday, who spent five years in Glasgow between 2015 and 2020, more than a little confused.

He cannot fathom why Clement would rather hand 27-year-old Kieran Dowell the briefest of cameos off the bench – he featured for only three minutes against The Saints – when he has a player over a decade his junior begging for some first-team exposure.

“When you see the stats for the minutes of Under-21 players in the league, how low it is is crazy for me,” Halliday sighs. “[Clubs can pick] nine subs now,