For Barry Ferguson, speaking to a host of players who may be entering their final few weeks as Rangers players, the message is simple.
Do not leave Ibrox with any ‘regrets’. Any painful musings of what might have been. Fight for every ball, fight for every point. Fight for every trophy, two more still on the line for a Rangers side who could yet end the season as domestic treble-winners.
What a way to sign off that would be for Borna Barisic, Ryan Jack, John Lundstram, James Tavernier and Connor Goldson, should the long-serving quartet following their title-winning team-mates Alfredo Morelos, Ryan Kent and Steven Davis out the door this summer.
Jack, Lundstram and Barisic will be free-agents in July, the latter reportedly on his way to Turkey with Trabzonspor. The futures of Tavernier and Goldson are uncertain too, Steven Gerrard allegedly looking to reunite with a pair of modern-day Ibrox icons in Saudi Arabia.
Rangers legend sends advice to departing stars
“Don’t leave a place like this with regrets, leave it with memories,” Ferguson, who has a few happy ‘memories’ of his own after winning the Scottish Premiership five times during two spells in Glasgow, tells the Daily Record.
“That has to be the mindset for the next three weeks or so. So I look at the speculation around mainstays like Borna Barisic, John Lundstram, James Tavernier, Connor Goldson and even big Jack Butland, and I honestly don’t think for a single second that these guys will be focussed on anything else.
“Obviously there are a few others who are probably going to be on the way out too. But, if anything, that should bind them all even more tightly together for what’s left of the current campaign.”
Barisic’s wild celebrations, following Cyriel Dessers’ thumping winner late on at St Mirren last week, did not pass Ferguson by. The Croatian left-back may be a fading force at 31, he may have lost his place in the XI and may have a deal in the Turkish Super Lig sewn up, but there is no sense that Barisic wants to bow out as anything other than a champion.
Borna Barisic on his way to Turkey
“Did you see the way Barisic celebrated the winner from Cyriel Dessers at St Mirren at the weekend? He was very nearly half way up the stairs of the stand with the ultras in the away end!,” Ferguson smiles. “Did that look like a man whose heart is no longer in it?
“He’s already got his next deal all but tied up with Trabsonspor, but the joy was written all over his face when that ball hit the back of the net. So don’t tell me that it doesn’t matter any more to these guys. Of course it matters!
“And, if this is the end for some of them, then it will never have mattered more.”
Rangers, three points adrift of Old Firm rivals Celtic at the top of the table with four games remaining, host Derek McInnes’ Kilmarnock on Sunday. Brendan Rodgers’ side will welcome Hearts to Parkhead, with that make-or-break Glasgow derby only a week away now.