THE performance that Rangers put in against Hibs on Sunday summed up their season, and highlighted the reasons why they finished third in the table.

They have the best attack in the league in terms of goals scored, but only the sixth-best defence, and that is the area that Steven Gerrard will surely be looking to strengthen as a matter of urgency.

To score five goals away from home and not win the game is staggering. The way they defended at times in the match was simply not good enough. Credit to Hibs, some of the goals were of a high standard, but the majority of them were very preventable.

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Two new centre-halfs have to come in during the summer as a bare minimum, and perhaps even more. I’d like to see aggressive defenders brought into that area. They don’t necessarily need to be ball-playing defenders, although it would be preferable if they could do both sides of the game, but they have to be strong defenders first and foremost.

It’s such a shame that all the good work that the Rangers attackers do going forward has been undermined by a real inability to keep the ball out at the other end. If they were stronger at the back, then who knows where they might have ended up this season.

Right throughout the Rangers squad you have players who have to be shifted on, and defence is no different. David Bates will obviously leave for Hamburg. Russell Martin’s loan spell from Norwich has come to an end, and I can’t see him returning to the club.

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Bruno Alves might be expected to leave, and that is something of a shame for me, because I don’t think that Rangers ever really got to see the best of him because of his injuries. Any time I have watched him he has contributed to the game, albeit that was sometimes for the opposition, but there is no doubt that he has been a top-level player and some of that ability is still in the tank.

I thought he did really well on Sunday and steadied the ship when he came on. He obviously has another year on his contract, but I just wonder if his heart has really been in it. Moving him on may be difficult, and ripping up his contract would be pricey. Hopefully the club and the player can reach some sort of agreement that is best for both parties, but I don’t think it would necessarily be the worst thing if he did stay around.

It was interesting to hear Steven Gerrard note after the signing of Scott Arfield yesterday that it was good to start his rebuild early, and that tells you that there will be plenty more on the way.

I think that Arfield is a good signing, and his willingness to leave the English Premier League to come to Rangers is a sign for me already that Gerrard is a draw. He isn’t a flashy player with flicks and tricks, he’s a hard-worker who can nick a goal, but he does have good ability. This is the level of player required to give the club a chance of mounting a challenge to Celtic, and you have to hope that a host of others are on the way, because they are needed.

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Rangers could do with some more seasoned professionals with proven quality, but the problem is, these players usually come at a high price. Hopefully those who need to be moved on can be, and the resources are freed up to bring similar players in.

At Rangers, the playing squad is always judged upon success, and I’m sorry to say it, but the current players haven’t delivered anything in the past two seasons. That’s not good enough at Ibrox, plain and simple, and the players would be kidding themselves on if they thought they were in a stable position. It doesn’t matter who they are.

Yes, there have been some good performers. James Tavernier has had a solid season and has probably been the player of the year. But standouts have been few and far between on a consistent basis, and the players are in a weak position.

On Sunday night, Josh Windass took some stick for tweeting about his stats and stating that he and Daniel Candeias had a good season, and I can see why it might have got some supporters’ backs up.

You can’t be sending out messages like that about your own individual performance when the club have just finished another campaign without even being second in the table and with no trophies. I will put it down to naivety, but when you are playing for Rangers and have been part of a collective that hasn’t won anything, then you haven’t had a good season. It doesn’t matter if you score 150 goals in a season, it is about what you achieve together.

On the positive side though, Arfield sets the precedent as Gerrard’s first signing of the summer, and hopefully many more of his ilk will follow.