Rangers appear to have chosen McLaughlin & Sands | OneFootball

Whether Rangers fans like it or not, Jon McLaughlin and James Sands are here to stay.

We polled earlier on our social media channels specifically about McLaughlin, and 85% were not in favour of his being number one.

Even more appeared against the selection of James Sands following Tuesday.

But the fans don’t pick the team, Giovanni van Bronckhorst does.

On Ibrox Noise our opinion of McLaughlin is well-documented, but while he’s in our shirt we’ll support him. We can only hope he proves our scepticism of him wrong.

Sands is the more interesting case.

The USA international, adaptable to midfield or defence, attracted admirers during preseason, admirers delighted to see him v Union.

Admirers who appeared to vanish over the 90 minutes leaving just extreme criticism of his performance, even if we on Ibrox Noise were a lot more positive about him.

Gio seems to like this lad, for better or for worse, and this is the latest fixture in which £4M signing Ben Davies has barely played any notable part, and obviously hasn’t started.

For now, it looks like Goldson and Sands are Gio’s preferred defensive partnership – he spent £4M on the ex-Liverpool man but hasn’t yet been moved to start him.

Instead, Yilmaz, an even more recent signing, started today, which suggests it’s nothing to do with fitness and everything to do with what Gio wants.

The Dutchman is paid to choose the team, and the season overall reads 3 matches, 2W 1L.

Thanks to today’s result, it feels a bit better, even if further improvement is required.

But for fans thinking McLaughlin and Sands are on borrowed time, they don’t appear to be.

We might be wrong, but we think they’re 100% first choices now.