Academy Continues To Be Innovative And Reactive

Despite still being a bit away from normal, all age groups are now back on the football pitch as they continue their development at Rangers Training Centre.

This week, Head of Academy Craig Mulholland sat down exclusively with RangersTV to discuss a range of topics.

He said: “The good news is we are back and it is great to see all the kids back across the various age groups.

“What was really important for us was that we stuck to all the Government guidelines because we are one site and we therefore had to protect the first team bubble and make sure that all our protocols were spot on.

“What we made was a commitment that the minute we could get the players back we would do so, there was never any delay whether it be the under-18's or the B-team. The minute the Government allowed us to bring them back we did so but in a really safe way.

“We are far from normal because we still can't get into dining rooms, we can't use dressing rooms and we are still doing a lot of work by zoom in terms of analysis.

“It is still a challenge because that interaction with players isn't quite there the way we would like it to be but most importantly young players are back on the pitch.

“I think all the players and parents would say that they have been supported by Rangers over this period as best as possible.”

With the under-18’s league returning and most of the B-team currently on loan, Mulholland provided an update on the process for the loan players.

He continued: “One of the challenges we had was that we knew under-18 football would return, first-team football could return at League One and League Two level but there's no structure as we have talked often about between under-18 and first-team in this country.

“It was further complicated by the pandemic because you were allowed to return as a consequence of the league you were in and the fact that the B-team weren't in a league meant we had to find other options.

“Credit to all the management staff around the club that we managed to get all the boys in the B-team out on loan, some of the loans have been more successful than others but I think the loan opportunity has really changed for us.

“When we started the project five or six years ago most of our boys that were on loan were in League One or League Two, we have now got about 10 players over the top two leagues in Scotland and they are not just out there for their development they are contributing.”

As well as the loan pathway Mulholland says for some, such as Nathan Patterson, the route may be to go straight to the first-team.

He says it is important each player sees their own journey as individual, he explained: “Nathan has been fantastic this year, when we started our project we had to get a level of player that we always hoped could go and compete in the Europa League and Old Firm games and if you look at Nathan it is a great example for all the young players here of what we are trying to achieve.

“The ‘best v best games’ programme has set Nathan up for that but not every player will go on the same journey.

“They will all go on different paths and I think for young players you tend to look at what the player next to you is doing but Michael Beale speaks about it a lot as ‘you v you’.

“Some will go straight from the Academy to the first-team and that needs to be one path, some will go on different loans and gradually build-up, some might even leave the club and might come back in different ways.

“There's a whole range of different models there and people shouldn't get fixated on one.”

With the Women’s and Girls’ Department now fully-integrated at Rangers Training Centre, Mulholland feels it has added to the environment as one-club comes together at the facility.

He said: “If I am honest I probably wasn't that aware about girls and women's football in terms of the structures and what we are trying to achieve but we have set a really ambitious plan.

“Amy and her staff have come in and they have been phenomenal, Malky Thomson has done a great job and what you notice is all the guys in the men's side are now fully bought into women's football.

“The humility that has come from the girls and the gratefulness for the programme that Rangers have put in place has actually spread across the male side of the Academy as well.

“There are no egos in the women's game and I think from that point of view we have learned a lot from the women coming into the building and I think going back to the one-club affect it's a really integrated approach.”

At a time when players may move on from clubs, Mulholland explained how Rangers support players leaving the Academy.

He said: “It is really important to us and it is quite a topical issue in the UK at the moment, unfortunately a lot of clubs have seen boys leave and then as a consequence they have suffered mental health issues on the back of it.

“We have a player care team and we have spent a lot of time looking at our exit policies and how we support the young players when they leave Rangers.

“One of the things we say is we want them to feel as supported when they leave as they did when they came. We know we will never achieve that because if you say to someone their journey is better somewhere else and they are leaving a club like this it is always going to be disappointing however, what we need to do is make sure we help place them at the right clubs.

“We have got a number of checkpoints and after a week, a month, three months, even a year down the line can we actually go and still support you because you have been part of this club and enjoyed a wonderful journey but we want to support you on the next bit of that.

“That might be a football pathway, an educational pathway but we want to support them in that.

“It's a difficult time, because it is never nice telling young people their journey might be better served somewhere but it is important we look after them in the correct way.”