Thursday’s defeat – which drops Rangers into a Conference League play-off against Czechs Jablonec – comes on the back of the nightmare news Youssef Chermiti was ruled out with a long-term knee injury just after Rangers rejected a big-money bid for the 22-year-old.
It means Rangers have had to set their sights on recruiting a new striker in addition to the wingers and defenders McInnes had already targeted. He says the club are “working so hard to get the necessary type of players”, with PSV Eindhoven winger Couhaib Driouech set to be the latest arrival.
Halliday thinks the squad “shouldn’t be that imbalanced this late into the transfer window” and reckons they need “three centre-halves, one left-back, two, arguably, three wingers”.
“But the current squad that’s available should be enough to beat Dundee United, it should be enough to beat Hibs and, to be honest, it should be enough to beat Jagiellonia Bialystok,” he said.
Rangers were obviously hoping reuniting McInnes with Lawrence Shankland would be a winning formula after they went so close to wrenching the title away from Celtic while at Hearts last season.
However, former Rangers striker Steven Thompson thinks Shankland is already finding out the extra pressure he faces as the club’s new captain.
“It’s the weight of playing for Rangers, the weight of not having the start that he wanted, and the weight of taking a bad touch,” he said.
“At previous clubs, if you take a bad touch and give it away, you might get a few pelters. Here tonight, when Lawrence Shankland’s link-up play wasn’t that good or he should’ve had a shot when he didn’t, they are on you and it is going to take him a bit to get used to that I think. It’s not physical, it’s mental.”
