Rangers must make Borna Barisic contract decision quickly to avoid another issue next season
There have been question marks about how good Borna Barisic really is for several years now at Rangers, and they are yet to be answered fully.
The Croatian left-back joined the club back in 2018 as a Steven Gerrard signing and quickly established himself as a first-choice player in the side that helped the team topple Celtic and win the Scottish title.
His form dipped after Gerrard’s exit and he even found himself out of the side under Giovanni van Bronckhorst, with Calvin Bassey moving across to left-back from centre-back and earning himself a multi-million pound move to Ajax.
However instead of realising the level of player that we need at that level, Van Bronckhorst went back to using Barisic as his first-choice left-back and ended up getting sacked, with new signing Ridvan Yilmaz barely getting a sniff.
The Turkey international has struggled with injuries which has allowed Barisic the chance to stake his claim back, and Michael Beale seems to be a fan with him having started every game since returning from the World Cup.
But at 31-years-old now and having just one year remaining on his Ibrox contract once the summer transfer window opens, a decision absolutely has to be made now on what the club are going to do.
Too often recently we have gone into a season with key first-team players in the final year of their contract, and there has been noise following them all year about their future which has been distracting.
It happened with Connor Goldson, Leon Balogun and Ryan Jack last season, and this season has been dominated by headlines about the future of Alfredo Morelos and Ryan Kent.
Granted, Barisic isn’t likely to make as much noise as those players have in the press, but there will still be interest from other clubs and there will still be question marks about his commitment to the club.
This is where the club must step in and make a decision this summer. Either extend his contract, sell him now, or make the decision not to extend but keep him until his deal expires.
Either way, a decision needs to be made this summer to avoid that doubt and ensure that we are firmly in place to execute whatever the plan in place is to be.
Distractions are the last thing we need, and this could be the final chance to cash in on him and bring in a player we like to replace him or fully commit to using Yilmaz as our new first-choice left-back.
In other Rangers news, trio to be axed for their cup final horror show in our predicted XI to face Kilmarnock.