Jonathan Hunter-Barrett’s Rangers Dream Falls Apart Before It Begins
Rangers’ grand plans for a bold new era in youth development have suffered a dramatic and heartbreaking blow, with the club confirming that **Jonathan Hunter-Barrett will no longer take up the role of academy director in the new year.
The news comes as a shock to many inside Auchenhowie and beyond, not least because his appointment had already been publicly confirmed by outgoing director of football Kevin Thelwell.
Hunter-Barrett, highly regarded across English football for his transformative work at Wolves, was due to arrive in Glasgow at the start of 2026. His return to working alongside Thelwell — a partnership credited with shaping one of the Premier League’s most productive academies — had been hailed as a cornerstone of Rangers’ new footballing structure.
For a club striving to re-establish itself as a powerhouse in youth development, his impending arrival had offered a sense of momentum, clarity, and optimism.
That optimism has now dissolved into uncertainty.
Thelwell, in what became his final interview with Rangers TV, spoke warmly and confidently about the Englishman’s impending move north. He painted a picture of a fresh strategic direction, one in which Hunter-Barrett would lead a sweeping transformation of the club’s youth system.
The plan was for the incoming academy chief to be based at Auchenhowie from January onward, setting the tone for what many hoped would be a new generation of talent breaking through into the first team.
Yet somewhere between vision and execution, the appointment has collapsed.
The reasons behind the sudden reversal remain unclear, but the timing leaves a painful void at the heart of Rangers’ long-term football blueprint. For supporters, this stings not just because of the professional loss, but because of what Hunter-Barrett represented: stability, expertise, and a renewed commitment to producing homegrown stars capable of carrying the club forward.
Inside the academy, staff who had been preparing for the arrival of a new leader must now grapple with renewed uncertainty. The Auchenhowie project — one already in need of cohesion after years of structural shifts — faces further delay at a moment when consistency has never been more crucial.
For Thelwell, who had placed his confidence so publicly in Hunter-Barrett, the news adds an unexpectedly sombre footnote to his own departure. His last major act as Rangers’ football chief has effectively unraveled before it even began, leaving the club to pick up the pieces.
As the new year approaches, Rangers find themselves searching once again — for direction, for leadership, and for the figure who can reignite a vision that now feels heartbreakingly out of reach. The promise of what could have been lingers heavily in the air at Auchenhowie, replaced for now by a difficult question: