St Mirren vs Rangers preview: It's all over now, baby blue.

Morning all, it's been a long time since the last blog. Due to the Scottish Cup semi-finals and Rangers' own incompetence essentially. We've had a long time to lick our wounds since limping out of the Europa League quarter-finals in Bilbao.

The dust has settled on Rangers' season, that might be the wrong turn of phrase given we still have a handful of games remaining, including the last Old Firm of the season. However the noise from the club and even the interim management has shifted from what we can do this season, into what can we do in the future. That makes perfect sense, our season is effectively done, every remaining fixture means more to the opposition than it does to us (aside from the aforementioned Old Firm).

There's been two large bits of news regarding the structure of the club. The first, and maybe the bigger announcement of the two, is that the club has commented officially on the proposed takeover for the first time. By the sounds of things, the takeover is well on it's way to official completion. That can only be a positive at this stage, structural change has been needed for many years now, and you can't get higher than the very top of the club!

In terms of actual new faces at the club, we can welcome Kevin Thelwell as the new Sporting Director. He starts officially in the summer as he's currently Director of Football at Everton. Despite the clubs mixed form on the field, he's been at the heart of a number of core decisions that have kept the Toffees' heads above water. 2 seasons ago, he moved swiftly to remove Frank Lampard from management duties at Goodison Park and appoint Sean Dyche as his replacement.

Dyche was an inspired appointment and helped maintain the clubs Premier League status in that season and the following one. In this season, Thelwell moved quickly to remove Dyche when the form started to fall into a downward spiral, David Moyes returned to the club and once again the Toffees have survived relatively comfortably.

Some of his signings have been very shrewd, Iliman Ndiaye was signed for £15m and has contributed 7 goals to the survival effort, while being a bit of a talismanic figure for the blue half of Merseyside. Not long after his appointment, Thelwell managed to negotiate a fee of £60m for the sale of Richarlison. A great fee on paper, and in hindsight it's looked like a masterclass as the Brazilian has laboured during his time at Tottenham Hotspur.

It's not an exaggeration to say that Thelwell has had one hand tied behind his back financially at Everton and has still done very well to keep things ticking over. The hope is that with the takeover he will have a bit more financial freedom and can still deliver the kind of shrewd signing that will help the club turn a profit long term.

I don't have any knowledge of his time at Wolves, but John Walker made a helpful post about it that you can find here.

A potential addition to the playing staff that has been rumoured in recent days is Josh Mulligan of Dundee. He's available on a free in the summer and, at 22, is right in the age bracket of signing we'd hope to make from the rest of the league. From the eye test, Mulligan has always stood out in games against Rangers. He's physical and direct with a very strong work ethic. He's largely been employed as a right sided-midfielder, central midfielder or right back for Dundee. So he's clearly very versatile.

Mulligan represents the same kind of signing as his Dundee compatriot Lyall Cameron. Young, homegrown, a top performer for a lesser club with potential to step up. I think his future at Ibrox could be in the right back position given the age of the captain and the hope we'd lessen the burden on him this season.

I'd be happy with this signing given there will be a lot of movement in the summer amongst the squad. Although I don't look forward to a section of the support that will say we are "trying to become Dundee/Aberdeen" when we inevitably lose a game with Cameron, Mulligan and Barron playing.

For today's game, Barry announced that Ridvan will be missing for the rest of the season. Admittedly that is only about 5 games but it's not like the Turk has had a particularly strong injury record since joining, he may be part of that high squad turnover.

Honestly I am not expecting anything from today's game. So I'll just hope we see a goal for Findlay Curtis or someone similarly young and part of our future as a club. Enjoy the game and safe travels to Paisley if you're making the very short pilgrimage (for most).