I’m sending a heartfelt plea to Rangers stars to leave as legends and not with regrets – Barry Ferguson

Leaving Rangers is a painful experience. I should know, I went through it twice.

The hardest part of it all is knowing that you might never get another chance to experience the feeling of getting your hands on a trophy ever again. I admit, as a born competitor I really struggled to get my head around that on both occasions. And that’s why I genuinely don’t have any concerns about the mentality of the current players who might be about to say their own goodbyes this summer.

People will look at the big number of changes which seem likely to be on the way and worry that these guys might be distracted or that their heads may already be somewhere else. But I simply don’t believe that will be the case. First and foremost, when you are a professional football player at any club you have a job to do no matter what else might be going on in the background - but when you’re doing it in a Rangers shirt the stakes are always so much higher. And right now, while there’s a league title and a Scottish Cup to be won, everything else gets shoved onto the back burner.

If you are going to leave Rangers - and, listen, it does happen to us all one day - then you want to go out with a bit of style. You want to make sure you give your supporters something to celebrate. You want to do it for the team mates you’ve been working with so long, day in day out on the training ground, going through so many highs and lows together. And most important of all, you have to want to do it for yourself because there’s nothing wrong with being a little bit selfish at defining moments like these.

What better way to go out then to leave with another two trophies and a couple of medals around your neck? If you have any sense of self respect you can’t allow