First summer Rangers exit to Feyenoord ‘confirmed’ amid Ibrox overhaul | OneFootball

Most of us will have seen the breaking news that Zeb Jacobs is leaving Rangers for Feyenoord, with the De Kuip giants giving him Head of Academy, and we have to say this is an interesting move because he’s currently Rangers’ Academy Director, which is underneath Zurab Amirian who was appointed Rangers’ own Head of Academy in January.

In short, Jacobs was overlooked for such a promotion, with Rangers instead looking to Belgium and Leuven for their new Academy Head, and now the Dutch side wanting Jacobs is an absolute no brainer for him.

Jacobs was very much a product of the Giovanni van Bronckhorst era, coming in in the January of 2022, and we couldn’t really judge how well he’s done, but we will say there’s been a real lack of quality youth breaking through in the past two years+, with the best of a bad bunch being Ross McCausland, who wasn’t even a proper Academy product.

So we’re not sure Jacobs’ exit is going to weaken us much – his academy work is obviously not terrible, Feyenoord are promoting him to their literal boss in that department, so evidently they see something, and they’re Eredivisie champions with their manager about to become Liverpool’s counterpart.

But purely-speaking we’re not sure Jacobs really shone at Rangers if we look at the youth record of the past two years.

Not a single young player has really broken into the first team aside the deeply underwhelming McCausland, who after that initial two-week burst upon his arrival, never progressed an inch and after injury never regained his playing slot.

Beyond him, there’s no one really breaking into the seniors, and that’s over 26 months since Jacobs took up his post, albeit not as boss.

We’re not deliberately slaughtering him, we’re just not that aware of the obvious successes under him or Amirian’s predecessor Craig Mulholland. There is a bit of confusion because Mulholland was actually credited as Academy Director same as Jacobs, but that’s clearly not accurate because Mulholland left last summer and Jacobs was already there.

Anyway, this is splitting hairs.

Clearly Feyenoord see something, and he’ll go there now.

We guess we wish him luck!