Not just Ure: Rangers offloaded a striker who’s scored 17 goals in 2026

There have been a flurry of strikers to arrive at Glasgow Rangers over the past 12 months or so, with the Ibrox side still waiting to find a real standout solution in that number nine berth.

The hope will be that new man Kevin Kelsy can prove up to the task, following his £9m arrival, while Lawrence Shankland had looked to have found his groove again prior to being struck down by injury.

The Gers skipper has since missed out on a first taste of life under new Scotland boss Sebastien Pocognoli, the Belgian overseeing a 0-0 draw away in Slovenia in his first game in charge.

That goalless may have had little in the way of Rangers involvement, although it did provide a chance to take a closer a look at one of the players to have slipped through the net in Glasgow – Robbie Ure.

Why Rangers will regret losing Robbie Ure

It is an intriguing squad in terms of ‘what might have been’ for the Gers, with Scotland’s midfield pairing having been two men previously on the books at the club, in the form of Billy Gilmour and Lewis Ferguson.

REUTERS/Borut Zivulovic

Josh McPake, now at Hearts, was also on the bench, while the biggest intrigue from an Ibrox point of view was centred around Ure, the 22-year-old given the nod alongside the recalled Oli McBurnie up front.

Currently on the books at LaLiga side, Sevilla, Ure is no doubt aiming to be Scotland’s leading striker for the long-term, having earned his move to Spain off the back of his blistering form in Sweden.

In the first-half of 2026 alone, the young marksman scored 20 times in all competitions for former club Sirius, his total record standing at 31 goals in just 50 games in Scandinavia.

Now an £8m man operating in one of Europe’s top five leagues, it does beg the question as to how he failed to make the grade at Ibrox, restricted to three mere cameo appearances at first-team level, scoring just once.

By his own admission, Ure felt he “wasn’t good enough” to play for the club at the time, deciding to move on at the end of his contract in 2023, heading instead to Anderlecht in Belgium.

It’s a decision that has certainly paid off, with the Light Blues likely to have to watch one of their own flourish elsewhere for both club and country. He’s not the only one, either.

Why Ure isn’t the only prolific striker to have left Rangers

As Ure’s case has shown, sometimes it perhaps takes a change of scenery for a player to find their groove, with it only really when he ended up in Sweden that the towering striker really began to start firing.

After an initial slow start to his senior career, the goals seemed to flood out at Sirius, with 2026 proving a real breakout year for the promising Scot.

It’s also been a similar story for another former Rangers man, Mateusz Zukowski, the Polish forward having been in red-hot form out in Germany.

Now, it wouldn’t be a surprise if there are those of a Gers persuasion who don’t even remember the 24-year-old’s time at the club, considering he only ever made one first-team appearance.

Zukowski had signed for the Old Firm side from Lechia Gdansk in January 2022, yet was shipped back out on loan to Poland later that year to join Lech Poznan.

By the summer of 2023, he was back in his homeland permanently after signing for Slask Wroclaw, his only Gers outing coming in the Scottish Cup against Annan Athletic in February 2022.

He played the full 90 minutes in that 3-0 win, doing so in what was then his typical position at right-back, with having it been some transformation since.

The loss of Ure perhaps looks like an oversight, although those at Ibrox can be forgiven for not expectating a forgettable full-back to emerge as something of a goal machine in the present day.

Indeed, having signed for German second division side Magdeburg last year, the shift to a number nine role has seen Zukowski prove prolific since then, even after an injury-hit start to life at the club.

His first goal didn’t come until late November, yet he subsequently embarked on a stunning run of form thereafter, his four goals in late 2025 kickstarting what has been a fine 2026 so far.

REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

Between January and May, the two-cap Poland international scored 13 times in league action, while he’s since netted a further four times already so far this season, netting 17 times this calendar year in total.

That’s not far off Ure’s own return of 20, not bad for a player who has only recently been converted to a central striker.

Why couldn’t someone have spotted this diamond in the rough back at Ibrox?