Rangers Hero Returns To Auchenhowie To Train With Squad As Free Agent Plea Issued
There is something quietly poignant about Ryan Jack walking back through the doors at Auchenhowie. Two years ago he was captain material in a Rangers midfield that had just come within a whisker of European silverware. Now, at 34 and out of contract following the end of his stint in Turkish football, he is back at the training ground he once called home — not as an employee, but as a free agent trying to convince someone, anyone, that he still has something left to give.
Jack revealed his return to Rangers’ Auchenhowie training centre in an interview on the Go Radio Football Show, explaining that he is using the facilities to work on his fitness while he assesses his options following his release from Esenler Erokspor, the Turkish second-tier side he joined after leaving Ibrox in 2024. It is understood he has been welcomed back by Rangers’ physiotherapy and performance staff, working through gym sessions and rehabilitation work as he looks to shake off the effects of a recent injury and present himself to prospective suitors in the best possible shape.
“It is pretty much out of the way,” Jack said of the injury that has been troubling him. “It is just this time of season when you are out of contract you just want to keep fit. I am just into the Rangers training ground working away with the physio and performance staff and also doing some gym work, so yeah feeling good.”
For anyone who watched Jack’s seven years at Ibrox up close, the injury caveat will feel painfully familiar. Few players in the modern Rangers era have had their careers so persistently interrupted by fitness problems, and few have kept fighting back from them with quite the same stubbornness. A long-running knee issue shadowed much of his time in Glasgow, at one point sparking a genuine club-versus-country row when then-manager Steven Gerrard publicly criticised the Scotland set-up over what he felt was careless management of Jack’s fitness during an international window. Jack himself, ever diplomatic, played the episode down at the time, insisting there was “no issue” and that he simply wanted to give his country and his club “100 per cent” whenever selected.
That episode was just one chapter in a wider story of a player who never quite got the sustained run of fitness his ability deserved, yet somehow kept finding his way back into contention regardless. He missed 13 consecutive games during one particularly bruising spell with a knee complaint that had lingered for close to two years, only to fight his way back into Steven Gerrard’s plans in time for a run at history. Later in his Ibrox career, with sections of the support openly questioning whether his recurring fitness issues meant he should step back from international duty altogether, Jack pushed back on the “injury-prone” tag being attached to him, insisting he still had plenty to offer both club and country — a stance that was rewarded with a fresh contract extension and a recall to the Scotland squad under Steve Clarke.
It’s that same refusal to be written off that appears to be driving his latest chapter. Rather than easing into retirement after two seasons in Turkey, the 34-year-old is putting in the unglamorous hours at a training ground with no guarantee of a contract at the end of it, simply to keep himself sharp enough that the phone might ring.
Jack’s route to Ibrox tells its own story about longevity and loyalty. He joined Aberdeen’s academy at the age of eight and spent the best part of two decades at Pittodrie in various guises, rising through the ranks to make his first-team debut in 2010 before becoming one of the most important figures in the club’s mid-2010s revival. He was part of the Aberdeen side that won the 2013–14 Scottish League Cup, the club’s first trophy in almost two decades, and was rewarded with the captaincy for the 2015–16 season — a role he held for two years before his Pittodrie career came to an end.
His move to Rangers in the summer of 2017, arriving as a free agent after almost 250 appearances for his hometown club, was framed at the time as a boyhood dream fulfilled — Jack himself said growing up a Rangers supporter made the move an “honour and a privilege.” The early years in Glasgow were disrupted by disciplinary trouble and injury alike, with four red cards in his debut season alone before a serious knee problem required surgery. It was only once Steven Gerrard arrived at Ibrox that Jack’s career at the club truly took off, with the manager rewarding his development with back-to-back contract extensions and entrusting him with a central role in the midfield that eventually ended Celtic’s domestic dominance.
That side delivered the club’s 55th league title in the 2020–21 season, ending nine years of Celtic supremacy, and Jack’s importance to that success has rarely been in doubt among Rangers supporters, whatever the fitness setbacks along the way. He went on to add a Scottish Cup winner’s medal and a start in the 2022 UEFA Europa League final to his Ibrox résumé before his contract was allowed to expire in 2024 after seven years and 131 appearances in a Rangers shirt, at which point he made the move to Turkish second-tier side Esenler Erokspor in search of regular football.
His time in Turkey delivered exactly that — 54 appearances and four goals across two seasons, including a stint captaining the side, most recently leading Esenler to a 1-0 win over Ankara Keciorengucu back in April. But with his contract there now expired and no fresh deal forthcoming, Jack finds himself, for the first time in over two decades, genuinely without a club — and back where it all felt most natural to him.
It is important to be clear about what this return to Auchenhowie is not. There is no suggestion whatsoever of a fresh Rangers contract being discussed, and reports around the story have been careful to stress that Jack is not on Derek McInnes’s radar as a potential recruit — this is understood simply as the club allowing a hugely popular former player to use facilities he knows intimately, with the goodwill that comes from a title-winning captain rather than any indication that a sentimental reunion is being planned. McInnes’s midfield is, in any case, in rude health right now, with Nicolas Raskin and Dan Neil forming arguably the best central pairing in the country on current form, so there is no obvious space in the Ibrox squad even if the football romantic in every Rangers supporter might quietly enjoy the idea.
What it does represent is a player using every advantage available to him to stay sharp and visible while he works out his next move. Training at a Premiership-standard facility, with access to physiotherapists and performance staff who know his body and his injury history better than almost anyone else in the game, is about as sensible a way as any for a free agent the wrong side of 34 to present himself in peak condition to any club that comes calling. Jack has previously been linked with a return to Scottish football with Dundee, and it would be no surprise if interest of that kind resurfaces now that he is visibly working towards full fitness in a professional environment rather than simply waiting at home for offers.
There is also a broader sentimental value to the story that shouldn’t be understated. Jack remains a popular figure both inside Ibrox and among the wider Rangers support, not merely for what he won but for the manner in which he fought through repeated setbacks to contribute to it. His experience, professionalism and understanding of exactly what is required to succeed at the top level of Scottish football would be an asset to any club in the lower reaches of the Premiership or the Championship looking for a reliable, know-how-laden addition to their dressing room, even if his frequency of injury in recent years means any suitor will want reassurance over his fitness before committing to anything long-term.
Jack’s reappearance at Auchenhowie has coincided with a notably good spell for his old club, and it was a subject he was more than happy to give his verdict on during the same Go Radio appearance. Having played under Derek McInnes at Pittodrie for several years, Jack has a closer insight than most into what the Rangers manager is capable of building, and he did not hold back in his assessment of how far the mood at Ibrox has shifted since the turn of the season.
“The two results for Derek McInnes and Rangers are massive and have given everyone a huge boost at the club,” Jack said, referencing Rangers’ back-to-back victories over Celtic that have transformed the club’s fortunes since a difficult start to the campaign. “Considering the start of the season, getting knocked out of Europe and not really starting too well domestically, Rangers will feel great about themselves going into the break, I am sure, and look forward to kicking on after the international break.”
Jack was equally blunt about how precarious McInnes’s position had looked only a few weeks earlier, and how completely that narrative has now been rewritten. “I think the narrative changed for sure,” he said. “Everyone would have been calling for Derek’s head, I am sure, if he had lost the last two Old Firm matches, with the way they lost in Europe as I touched on and started in the league.” It’s a candid admission from someone with genuine affection for both men involved — McInnes as a manager he clearly respects from their time together at Pittodrie, and Rangers as the club where he built the finest years of his own career — and it underlines just how fine the margins had become before those Old Firm results turned the mood at Ibrox around entirely.
Jack went further still, observing how completely the pressure has now shifted across the city. With Rangers sitting just two points behind Celtic having taken maximum points from their recent meetings, he noted that “you see all the pressure just flips onto Celtic” as the champions face growing scrutiny of their own during the international break, a reversal few would have predicted a month ago when McInnes’s own position was being openly questioned by pundits and supporters alike.
For now, Jack’s story remains one of patience rather than resolution. There is no timetable attached to his search for a new club, and no suggestion of imminent signings from any of the sides he has previously been linked with. What is clear is that a player who spent much of his Ibrox career fighting his body just to remain available for selection is not ready to let that fight end quietly. Whether the next chapter takes him back into Scottish football, keeps him working through the lower half of the Turkish pyramid, or leads somewhere else entirely, his week-to-week presence at Auchenhowie is a reminder of the esteem in which he is still held by the club he helped bring a first title in a decade — and of a player determined to prove, at 34, that there is still a club out there willing to take a chance on him.
