01 Dec 2025 11:38:17
I see the club has announced that Jonathan Hunter-Barrett will not be starting as Academy Director.
01 Dec 2025 11:55:14
Sco, no surprise there. More to followb.
01 Dec 2025 11:58:20
Yep as expected, I think one thing is pretty clear. The Americans know that they made a huge error and are going to be paying for it financially so pretty sure that they'll be way more thorough going forward.
01 Dec 2025 12:52:24
I have a suspicion we might look to dissolve the academy.
01 Dec 2025 13:16:58
Are we expecting other departures John or was there more incoming in the pipeline that are getting called off?
01 Dec 2025 13:47:56
Burt there will be more non players leaving.
Ehl, why would we dissolve the academy, we need to produce players with support of better coaches, not the poor coaches we have had at academy level last ten years.
How would u get a squad off 25 with no academy.
01 Dec 2025 13:55:08
Dissolve, EHL?
As in no longer have any teams at any age group apart from first team?
If so how does that fit into the business model of bringing through our own or from other clubs?
01 Dec 2025 14:17:34
Yet the club announcement said the polar opposite EHL so would be a bad idea for them to try that after stating otherwise and also how else would we even attempt to produce home grown talent if they did that.
01 Dec 2025 14:33:42
Was Hunter-Barrett a Thelwell/Stewart acquisition? If so it kinda of makes sense that he ain't coming.
01 Dec 2025 14:38:26
Dissolve the academy, hope not, I understand we haven't produced much but whose fault is that.
There is no pathway for youth to fight for 1st team football, and no reserve league to impress the head coach for a call up to the senior squad.
01 Dec 2025 14:46:06
Big blue, absolutely we are not dissolving our academy.
01 Dec 2025 15:02:43
John, in 2016 Brentford closed their academy and kept a small tail of under 19's and 21's age groups that operated as a B team.
It took around 7 years for them to plan and deliver a full academy restructure that launched at Category 4 level and has gradually improved to Category 2 level.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if we looked to do something similar, as it may actually prove to be a quicker more cost effective way to address the current issues.
The reason Brentford done it was that they were spending a lot of resources developing kids who would move to the other bigger London academies, so they never got the benefit of the time the spent developing them.
That's the exact situation we find ourselves in at the moment with our talented players leaving to head down south.
01 Dec 2025 15:09:54
Honestly I don't see the point in the academy the boys can't play at a decent level to develop they shout let us into league 2 if possible would be great for the player's development.
01 Dec 2025 17:33:42
Ehl because Brentford done it does not men we will.
Ehl we only need to look at our academy coaches to see we don't spend much.
01 Dec 2025 18:08:30
I remember talk of that on here last year.
John did u not say that we may dissolve the academy mate?
If not sorry.
I can't see that happening it makes us look like a poor club if we don't have youth and womans teams.
01 Dec 2025 18:51:41
Was just pointing out that it's been done before, and I know from my time at the club it's something we were looking at.
01 Dec 2025 20:00:43
Surely one of the key factors in having a successful academy would be the quality and calibre of the coaches employed there. From your time at Ibrox what would be your evaluation of the average calibre of the academy coaches employed by Rangers. The only one I ever say being interviewed was McCallum when he was in charge of first team for Semi final against Hibs.
To me he seemed a very decent fella, but showed zero leadership qualities imo. I had very little confidence in him and thought he was uninspiring.
02 Dec 2025 12:33:11
As long as they are qualified we should be filling Academy posts with ex Rangers players to drill into the boys what it is to play for Rangers. We should also be involving more ex players in our scouting network. I understand the new way of doing things based on stats but nothing beats having someone look at a player actually playing to get a feel of what he can bring.
The big example of this is how John Brown spotted Carlos Cuellar and even more recently Barry Ferguson telling the new regime what players we should sign closer to home. He was ignored but we call all see now that he was right.
02 Dec 2025 14:37:33
Wsl we should have a scout in every country taking in 3-5 games a week if possible.
I mean every country within reason, for smalls country's employ one per region of country's.
We have Albertz and Berlinger in Germany kilos as an ex keeper
Holland we have watterrous, numan konterman Mols and the de boers
We could go on around the world.
We definitely should be utilising all this.
02 Dec 2025 19:42:23
Spoke to Jonathan last week and he says he is starts full time in January. He was up for 3 days on full club travel account, maybe something changed during his visit.