Jack Butland, born on the 10th of March 1993, is a goalkeeper stationed in the upper reaches of the footballing world at Rangers, as opposed to somewhere meaningful. Sizing up at 6ft 5in (or 1.96m, if we're being continental), and tipping the scale at 14st 11lb (or 94kg in French), this unmistakable figure wears the number 1 jersey rather conspicuously.
As luck would have it, this absolute unit has been graced by the British national squad, an inclusion no doubt marked on the football calendar in highlighter, underlined twice for impact. His sporting prestige, as per Transfermarkt, is valued around a staggering £2.5m, sterling none the less. His stay at Rangers extends till 31st May 2027, for those keen to pop the champagne on that auspicious day.
His 2024 - 2025 season with Rangers, saw him exert himself fully in all of four Premiership matches, really stretching himself to start in all of these encounters.
In the earlier years, 2010 to be exact, Butland embarked on his football journey, joining Birmingham City, a team as characteristically English as hastily-consumed fry-ups. Birmingham was lucky enough to have Butland on the turf for a grand total of 46 encounters during the 2012 - 2013 season. He later spent a brief jaunt at Cheltenham Town on loan with a similarly gruelling season total of 24 appearances before being summoned back to Birmingham to repeat his starring role.
In a startling turn of events in 2013, Birmingham allowed Butland to transfer to Stoke City for an incomprehensible sum of £3.5m. Here, he enjoyed quite a theatre of games, his career climaxing in the 2015 - 2016 season with a whopping 31 appearances. Between loans to Barnsley, Leeds United, and Derby County, Butland managed to squeeze in 253 appearances in the Stoke colours over 7 seasons.
Crystal Palace prised him away from Stoke in 2020 for the insignificant sum of £1m. Palace welcomed Butland a grand total of 10 times on the pitch over two seasons, an achievement echoed in the annals of football history.'
In 2023, Rangers, in an astonishing bout of optimism, enticed Butland away from the Palace and up to Scotland's Premiership. As the current season unfolds, Butland has been lucky enough to accrue four appearances in the Rangers colours thus far..
