Rangers should plan for a future without Jack Butland... it makes little sense for him to hang around at Ibrox

IF there’s any justice in the world, Jack Butland will be named in Gareth Southgate’s England squad on Tuesday and secure himself a place on the plane to Germany for the Euros.

The Rangers goalkeeper ought to have been involved in the Three Lions’ double-header with Brazil and Belgium in March. It was a hammer blow when he was left out in favour of Crystal Palace’s Sam Johnstone and the lesser-spotted Aaron Ramsdale of Arsenal — and a full-on thumb in the eye when Burnley’s James Trafford, just dropped by club boss Vincent Kompany, was drafted in ahead of him after Johnstone had gone down with an elbow injury.

Johnstone’s still on the sidelines after surgery. Trafford hasn’t played for Burnley since. Nick Pope is hardly a valid option as chief support to Everton’s Jordan Pickford considering he hasn’t appeared in the league for Newcastle since December.

Considering Southgate travelled north to take in the Ibrox outfit’s 3-3 home draw with Celtic last month, blanking Butland again would represent the most jaw-dropping example of a custard pie in the chops since Laurel and Hardy threw a whopping 3,000 of them in ‘Battle Of The Century’.

Of course, Butland’s inclusion might be seen in some quarters as good reason for the 31-year-old to nail his colours to the mast and stay at Rangers for the longer-term.

If he’s picked, there’s no need for him to return south in search of international recognition, right? No need for anyone inside Ibrox to challenge manager Philippe Clement’s assertion at the start of the week that his in-form No 1 cannot be allowed to leave — no matter the value of any offers that might come in over the summer.

Unfortunately, it’s not as straightforward as that. If anything, the former Stoke City and Palace man being given the chance to add to his nine caps for his country might force the issue even more.

If Belgian Phil is serious about the root-and-branch reboot needed at Rangers this summer, he’d better have a plan in place for Butland not being around.

Whatever happens when Southgate names his panel for the June friendlies against Bosnia and Herzegovina and Iceland, Butland’s appalling exclusion last time round, given his exceptional form, showed that those around the England national team don’t take the Scottish Premiership seriously. Or, at least, not seriously enough.

Butland wants to play for his country again. If he does get his foot back in the door over the next 48 hours, the best way of keeping it there is to head back across the border. If he doesn’t, it will be crystal-clear that the only way of being chosen lies in returning to where his performances will be more visible to those who matter.

Nottingham Forest gave him the option of going back to the Premier League in January, eventually signing Mats Selz for £5million from Strasbourg when they got no encouragement, and there is more interest brewing.

What is worth noting, though, is that things are considerably different now than they were four months ago. Rangers blew the league. The potential for a transformative £40m being brought in by qualifying for the Champions League has gone up in smoke. What’s worse, those monies from UEFA are now heading for Celtic, who already have £70m in the bank and an asset in Matt O’Riley who can be sold for over £20m.

Clement’s admission that Rangers are at the end of a cycle and need torn apart is a statement of the obvious. His admission that he, at least, had a solid core of players when he did the same at Club Brugge, and doesn’t have that here, just reiterates the massive amount of work that needs to be done in the market — with no evident sign of where the money to perform that degree of surgery will come from.

Is this really the kind of platform Butland needs to try and become a regular member of the England squad?

It is easy for fans of the Ibrox outfit to ask why he would wish to move to a mid-table English side and lessen his chances of winning medals. It is less comfortable asking what guarantee there is of lifting trophies should he stay where he is, though. Rangers are in a state and Celtic cannot possibly get their transfer dealings so badly wrong this summer as they did last. The Parkhead club were there for the taking this season and are unlikely to be as weak again.

Rangers would have been nowhere near winning a title this term were it not for Butland’s displays. How often must he have looked at the selection of flops and bottle merchants in front of him and questioned what has been going on at a club running a higher overall wage bill than their Old Firm rivals?

What must he think of a club that, by Clement’s admission, has been unable to get its players fit enough to deal with a full campaign? Can he have confidence in a business which routinely lets its bigger assets walk out the door for buckshee?

Alfredo Morelos and Ryan Kent left for nothing after £30m in offers were spurned. Borna Barisic has 35 caps for Croatia, a team that finished third at the last World Cup with him as part of the squad, and is leaving for nothing. Same as John Lundstram, by the looks of things.

And that’s part of the whole Butland conundrum as well. Rangers jabber on about creating an efficient ‘player trading model’, but, shamefully, they are still nowhere it.

In Scotland, that involves selling when players are hot and using that money to recruit new assets that will deliver profit in future.

It is some indictment of the set-up that Butland is the only asset they currently have who could possibly bring in an eight-figure sum. And if someone puts that on the table in the next couple of months, given the scale of reconstruction facing Clement, how could the board realistically turn that down?

Being picked for England on Tuesday would only make him a stronger property. Make it possible to further ramp up his transfer value in negotiations.

It would also bring an uncomfortable truth closer to the surface — that Butland staying at Rangers, lovely as it has been to watch him here, doesn’t really make sense for anyone.

Congratulations, Brendan... now for that European run

TURNS out Brendan Rodgers is still the Messiah, after all. How can we come to any other conclusion when the pilgrims took to The Celtic Way to sing his praises into the night after securing the title at Kilmarnock in midweek?

The Brodge no longer looks the desperate figure trying to drum up some kind of siege mentality weeks ago when it all looked like falling apart. That was just part of the masterplan, you see. Part of the chessmatch. Played exquisitely by the Grandmaster.

The critics have been put back in their box. Apologies must be made for asking why David Turnbull started the season ahead of Reo Hatate. Forgiveness must be sought for questioning the worth of signing 12 players over the course of the campaign and playing absolutely none of them in the biggest game of the season at home to Rangers.

No questions at the back over why James Forrest spent most of his time kicking his heels on the sidelines while the likes of Luis Palma and the ludicrous Yang Hyun-jun played out on the wings. Rodgers was just keeping him fresh to come in at the tail-end of things and get the season over the line. Obvs.

It’s now time to look forward at Celtic rather than look back. So, here’s to a long, sustained run in Europe next season after two decades of serving as a punchbag for the likes of Malmo, Cluj, Maribor and Sparta Prague reserves. To moving closer to the target of having the Hoops back in a European final before you know it. Because that’s really why Rodgers, the highest-paid manager in the club’s history, is here. Isn’t it?

Ange looks like a guy trying to work his ticket

THE kerfuffle around Spurs fans being happy to lose to Manchester City and avoid facing a situation in which they handed the English Premier League title to Arsenal didn’t half serve up some amount of sanctimonious rubbish.

Dearie me. Of course they don’t want to gift their biggest rivals their first championship in 20 years. That’s the way football works. The punter’s life is not one of logic, goodwill to all men, the Corinthian spirit. And that is a big part of the appeal of being one.

If your own outfit can’t win a trophy, the next best thing is seeing the team you despise most falling flat on their face.

Of all people, Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou must understand this. He spent two years working within the batty bubble of the Old Firm. Didn’t he notice the lack of wailing and gnashing of teeth around Parkhead when Rangers lost to Eintracht in the Europa League final — even though it clearly had a negative effect on the national coefficient?

Big Ange’s post-match presser after the City loss was a strange affair, though. All those dark mutterings about fragile foundations, while refusing to elaborate on what exactly he meant, certainly cast a cloud over the summer at Spurs.

Maybe the Aussie, the great defender of swashbuckling purity over actual results, really is mortally offended by Spurs fans not wanting Arsenal to win the league. Maybe, though, he is a guy trying to work his ticket. Listening to him on Tuesday night, it was easy to feel that way.

Collum’s new gig says it all about self-serving SFA

IT’S not hard to figure out why the general populace have little faith in the Scottish FA changing things for the better or coming up with anything terribly revolutionary to raise the levels of the game in this country.

Just look at the folk filling the top positions and the circumstances of their appointments.

Chief executive Ian Maxwell, who had previously been steering Partick Thistle towards eventual relegation while sitting on the SFA board, spent his first day in his handsomely-remunerated position having to deny allegations he had only been given it as some kind of behind-doors stitch-up.

The president, Mike Mulraney, moved into power with no opposition, no alternative candidates with competing ideas, after hanging around long enough as vice-president. Just like Rod Petrie and Campbell Ogilvie and Alan McRae and all sorts of other denizens of the Hampden Bowling Club before him.

And now, at a time when both VAR and Scottish officiating is in crisis, when trust in the refereeing department is at a desperate low both inside and outside the game, they turn to Willie Collum to deliver the answers. Just another guy from inside the tent — same as John Fleming and Crawford Allan and Hugh Dallas — at an organisation that simply doesn’t appear willing to open itself up to outside scrutiny. Or even outside people.

Maxwell’s appointment supposedly came after a wide-ranging search of every corner of God’s green earth. Same with Collum. Critics of the fact that becoming president of the national association seems to revolve around little more than loitering in the queue for a sufficient amount of time are told that there is a process in place to let others stand if they want to.

The problem is that it clearly doesn’t work or isn’t allowed to.

The SFA like to paint themselves as modern and outward-looking. Maxwell, in one of his highly unconvincing outings at the Scottish Parliament, even started cracking jokes about wearing a suit jacket instead of being one of the ‘blazers’, part of the ‘Jobs for the Boys’ club.

Actions, though, speak louder than words. And at Hampden, they’ve long become an insult to the intelligence.