Rangers head of academy of Craig Mulholland has claimed that the club’s ambition is to be in the top 15 academies in the world.
Mark Warburton’s men, who finished top of the Scottish Championship and gained promotion in to the Scottish Premiership, lost 3-2 to Hibernian in the Scottish Cup final last weekend, which prevented them from winning the cup for the 34th time in their history.
The Gers recently snapped up former Manchester City, Newcastle United and QPR midfielder Joey Barton on a two-year deal from Burnley on a free transfer. However, despite signing the 33-year-old, they remain keen to keep their focus on youth.
And Mulholland wants the club's academy to aim to be amongst the 15 best in the world, something which if achieved would surely see a steady stream of youngsters breaking into the first team at Ibrox.
He told the official Rangers website: “It’s about improving on a daily basis and as long as we’re continually measuring what we do then we still have this ambition to become one of the Top 15 academies – I don’t know when we’ll get there but we’ll continually try and achieve that.
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“We had an end of season review with all our staff and looked at the targets we had set ourselves, some of which we met and are delighted about and other targets which we have not met.
“We need to say that’s fine and we expected that but why have we not met it and what can we do moving forward to improve upon it.
“The support of the board has been fantastic and I think it shows that the club are really behind the youth development from top to bottom.”
Rangers sent out several youngsters on loan spells last term to boost their first team experience and all eyes will be on whether the Gers choose to do likewise next season.
