Top Rangers transfer priority declared as £12million budget verdict issued –

The top priority for the Rangers transfer window “has to be a winger” if they are to continue to play the same way under Philippe Clement, according to Kenny Miller.

The BBC Sport pundit said that a new wide man is more important even than a new striker as January approaches, but admitted that there will not be a repeat of the sizeable summer spend in the winter.

Michael Beale spent around £13million on strikers earlier this year and Miller doesn’t expect there to be anything like the same sort of budget for Clement to rectify the mistakes with.

Miller said, via the Daily Record (1 December): “Has to be a winger. If you are wanting to play this 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3, you need wingers. There needs to be a winger.

“Rangers spent the best part of £12m – £13m on forward players in the summer. It’s not going to be spent in January.

“If you are going to play this way, you need to carry that threat and people who can put defenders on the back foot.”

In the first few weeks of Clement’s reign he might have been able to convince himself that there wasn’t a huge amount of work still to be done to overhaul the squad.

But after a second-consecutive drab 1-1 draw in a game Rangers would be expected to win the same deficiencies that were painfully evident under Beale are starting to come back to the fore.

The question of wide men has been evident since Ryan Kent and Fashion Sakala both departed in the summer, although the emergence of Ross McCausland has provided a timely answer.

It would help if Clement picked a team of the right attacking options in the right places though, having shifted Todd Cantwell out wide and bafflingly shoe-horned Sam Lammers into the line-up against Aris Limassol on Thursday (30 November).

After the Englishman was substituted after just 36 minutes at Ibrox it doesn’t look like the first of those experiments will continue, not least since McCausland scored his first goal for the club as his replacement.

Fans would be a lot happier if the second mistake wasn’t made again soon either, with Cantwell or Tom Lawrence surely a more effective option at number 10 than the struggling Dutchman.

Rabbi Matondo is also available and Abdallah Sima is starting regularly so there might be enough if Clement were to play wide men where they are at their best, and a lot of the fanbase would probably prefer a more effective goalscorer above all.