Keith Jackson’s transfer u-turn as he warns Gio that it is time to walk away

Keith Jackson has turned on Giovanni van Bronckhorst and the Ibrox power brokers over their horrendous transfer activities during the summer.

Now that the goals of Antonio Colak have dried up, scoring once in the last month, absolutely nothing has been added to last season’s ragged squad that fell apart at the first sighting of Angeball in the rear-view mirror.

Not even Aaron Ramsey, James Sands and Amad Diallo could halt the charge of Celtic towards lifting the title.

Apparently Celtic failed to strengthen in the summer, Cameron Carter-Vickers and Jota were retained with a reserve left-back from Argentina failing to strengthen the weakest position in the side.

This season Greg Taylor has outscored former Liverpool starlet Ryan Kent which kind of sums up the gulf between the sides even if the former Kilmarnock defender is sadly lacking in step-overs.

No new faces were at Murray Park for the first day of pre-season training but at the first sighting of a job-lot of signings, on July 11 the excited Record reporter announced:

The imaginative, cut price captures of Antonio Colak and Tom Lawrence have lit a fire under the Dutchman’s summer and now it seems likely that van Bronckhorst and director of football Ross Wilson are only just getting started. If French playmaker Angelo Fulgini and Welsh wing man Rabbi Matondo also arrive at Auchenhowie over the course of the next few days then the Dutchman – and his head of hiring and firing – will have significantly strengthened the club’s attacking armoury ahead of the new campaign.

Alas, just after the clocks went back, and after reporting on the Champions League record breakers, Jackson is facing up to reporting on an 11^th Celtic title success in 12 years.

That success has taken its toll on the Record’s Army of Readers with daily sales comfortably under 70,000.

Admitting that the summer signings have gone disastrously wrong, Jackson informs Record readers:

They could argue that it was the club’s lack of strategic, forward planning that really left them exposed and humiliated on the biggest stage of all. All dressed up as ‘a player trading model’ which amounts to grabbing whatever cash is on offer from the first bidder without giving any serious consideration to what happens next.

And that’s Rangers in a nutshell right now – a club and a manager who appear to be winging it and making it up as they go along. It’s left to the likes of 18-year-old Leon King to step up and put his own career development at risk by being on the end of one damaging battering after the next.

It’s one thing to say King’s education will be accelerated by testing himself against the likes of Roberto Firmino and Mo Salah. But it’s quite another when his self belief is being taken apart by Stevie May and Nicky Clark.

At one point yesterday, during a flurry of hail Mary substitutions, King was left to man the fort all on his own, with £4m recruit Ben Davies sacrificed for Arfield. Less than 60 seconds later May was spinning away from King on St Johnstone’s left wing and setting up Clark to make it 2-0.

And that’s probably around the time that penny should have been dropping inside van Bronckhorst’s own head. He’s now reached the point when he’s in danger of doing more harm than good. It seldom ends well from here.

The week leading up to the World Cup break looks like being a very difficult time for Record readers as the latest Ibrox business model falls apart, putting further strain on contrived, comforting O** F*** stories in their favourite publication.