John Lundstram’s perfect Rangers transfer has ‘wrong movie’ vibe and looks doomed by circumstance

You didn’t have to be a Champions League winner to pinpoint the engine room as an area where Rangers were technically up to scratch but missing physical presence. Slavia, as repugnant as they turned out to be in other ways, had both. Rangers did not. Sometimes football is simple.

Consistent rumours that Premier League midfielder John Lundstram might be the answer to this quandry seemed fanciful at the time. Lundstram had exploded onto the scene as a traditional British box-to-box Energiser bunny during Chris Wilder’s magnificent rejuvenation of Sheffield United as a top-level force. A late bloomer, he developed with the team as they bounced up the levels and looked more than comfortable in the Premier League when the chance of a lifetime came.

Suitors were not in short supply down south, which is why a transfer to Ibrox seemed unlikely. Surely this power house - and his play does do that overused term justice -would end up in another Premiership roster, tempted away buy a bountiful salary to a Norwich, a Newcastle, a Brighton?

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When he ended up in Govan on freedom of contract, there can be no doubting that Ross Wilson and Gerrard had achieved a coup.

Internally, the club felt they had secured a player for nothing they could realistically value at £10 million. Here was an instant starter who would add steel, fire and energy to the undoubted quality already in place.

To fit in alongside Glen Kamara, the press-resistant baller, and Steven Davis, still able to dictate tempo despite his advancing years, here was a wrecking ball in the traditional British mould - as capable of creative destruction in the final third as sticking his foot in where it hurts and turning the midfield into a bloody battleground.

It was perfect. It made total sense. But what’s delicious and painful about football is the way it coalesces with obvious narrative structure like oil and water.

Quickly, Lundstram looked to struggle with the complexity of Gerrard’s midfield system. Initially expected to take up the right side of a three, he simply didn’t look comfortable.

The only goal in Dundee United’s 1-0 win at Tannadice came from him switching off and the scrutiny that followed was intense. It will have been unlike anything he’d ever witnessed in his career as his every movement and pass was picked apart. Such is life in Glasgow, but for a newcomer, it’s always a culture shock.

A sending off against Alashkert in the Europa League seemed to ossify the growing sense that the Englishman might simply have stumbled into the wrong movie.

It was an inarguable malaise that sent Gerrard and tactical lieutenant Michael Beale back to the drawing board. After a spell out of the team to refocus, he reappeared looking far more relaxed in the centre of the midfield three. He had some solid games in there, often highlighting his eye-catching ability to play high velocity, low-backlift passes to switch play quickly, a skill that had the potential to speed up attacks devastatingly.

Built like a middleweight boxer, he looked at home in the thick of the battle and appeared capable of domination.

But a slack performance against Aberdeen in the 2-2 draw at Ibrox saw him left out of the next game. It was to prove timing as poor as the performance. Gerrard was to remain for only one more game and Lundstram was to start the Giovanni van Bronckhorst era on the outside looking in.

His only proper chance in domestic competition under the new manager saw him struggle against Dundee United at Ibrox and substituted at half-time.

While rated as a hard-worker with a great attitude by sources within the club, there have to be questions about his suitability for the manager’s system.

Rather than the flat three that characterised Gerrard’s reign, van Bronckhorst prefers to use either one sitter with two runners, or, and much less frequently, two sitters with a number 10 in front.

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Given the style of play utilised, the fleet-footed and nimble Kamara will always be the number one choice when fit to take up that role, with Davis an able deputy.

That doesn’t leave a lot of room for Lundstram who looks unlikely to add significantly to his 23 appearances so far this term.

And that’s especially problematic given the sizeable wages it took to entice him up the road in the first place.

There may be a reluctance to write off a player of obvious talent, who clearly has the skillset to be a success in this league. But football is a complex business and sometimes things can go wrong even when they go right. Few would have looked closely at the player and not recommended the transfer. It was logical, it was sensible, it was smart. And yet, it’s not working.

At 27-years-old, he’s in his prime years and will be desperate to play. A loan move back to England might suit all parties and allow for reassessment in the summer. Perhaps then, there can be a more obvious path to making a deal that ticked all the boxes fit the new structure of the team.