When Rangers’ £3 million man looks back on his career, will he find himself mulling over his CV with a pang of regret in the pit of his stomach?
How differently might things have worked out for a player who, in the space of the last five years, has probably only enjoyed a few months of good form?
Will he end up rueing those multi-million moves? Rangers, for instance, paid £3 million for a forward who has averaged more than a million pound a goal for the Scottish Premiership giants.
And, despite an outstanding loan spell at FC Utrecht during which Sam Lammers rediscovered his golden touch after so long, the mercurial Dutchman went into another summer window with his future once again in a state of limbo.
Rangers are still expected to sell.
But with Dutch reporter Hans Kraay Junior revealing to ESPN that his eye-watering £20,000-a-week wages are simply too much for clubs outside of the Eredivisie’s ‘big three’ of PSV, Ajax and Feyenoord, proposed moves to AZ Alkmaar, Twente and back to Utrecht appear increasingly unlikely to materialise.
Sam Lammers is still a Rangers player
Utrecht coach Ron Jans said in June that he would not give up hope until the proverbial fat lady started singing.
The arrival of fellow forward Noah Ohio at the Stadion Galgenwaard this week, however, appears to be the greatest sign yet that Utrecht have finally accepted defeat.
And Leon ten Voorde, the Dutch reporter speaking to De Ballen Verstand, feels that it is about time the penny dropped for a now-27-year-old Lammers, insisting that he simply must consider taking a substantial pay cut if he is to avoid his career becoming a classic case of wasted potential.
“Sam Lammers has not put football first his entire career,” Ten Voorde argues. “He always chose clubs where you think; ‘you’re not going to get to play there’.”
After that prolific spell at Heerenveen back in 2019, Lammers embarked on ill-fated and ill-advised spells at Atalanta, Eintracht Frankfurt, Empoli and Sampdoria.
He then moved on to Rangers, scoring just twice in 31 games before being shipped out by Philippe Clement at the earliest opportunity.
“You get the feeling that he chooses the money. Go play football. He is unaffordable (for Eredivisie teams) in terms of salary,” Ten Voorde adds.
“FC Twente, AZ or FC Utrecht would be good clubs for him. Then, he will have a very nice life after (ehe turns) 35. But, until 35, it is wonderful if you can do nice things.”
“He is in the prime of his life now, so you want to play football, don’t you?”
Eredivisie return now looks unlikely
It is hard to imagine that Lammers will be playing too much football if he sticks around at Rangers this summer.
While a return of 10 goals in 18 Utrecht appearances will not have gone unnoticed by Clement, the Ibrox boss already has Todd Cantwell, Tom Lawrence and Kieran Dowell battling it out for the number ten spot in his starting XI.
Lammers, an elegant, swaggering forward at his best but ineffective and sluggish at his worst, is also capable of leading the line as a number nine.
The potentially Alfredo Morelos-esque £1.7 million signing of Hamza Igamane puts another obstacle in his way, however, even if there is a chance that Cyriel Dessers is moved on before the summer ends.
