You always felt that by letting David Bates go we might live to regret it.
If that was in doubt before, it certainly won’t be now. Bates isn’t just playing well at Hamburg and looking like a real prospect, he’s also attracting Premier League interest. At least according to the Daily Record.
Hype surrounding the Ginger Ramos, it appears, has not been exaggerated. He could soon be strutting his stuff down in London or Liverpool.
It’s not just Arsenal or Everton, but they report he’s also interesting Leicester, Watford and Southampton. That’s a quarter of the English Premier League!
The case of what might’ve been with Bates
A Mark Warburton signing, Bates joined the club from the lowly ranks of Raith Rovers reserves. Warburton was always keen on him and snapped him up after a loan deal.
But after breaking through into the first team, Bates quickly solidified himself as our best option at the back. Yet we let the 22-year-old go for nothing.
Why? Well there’s a lot of controversy surrounding that too. Then manager Graeme Murty said they’d offered Bates a new deal and that he wanted too high a salary.
Bates says he wasn’t offered a new deal at all and Rangers didn’t want him.
One thing is for sure though, the likeable big centre half looked a very good player at Ibrox. He had leadership and defensive qualities of someone several years his senior. He could also play a little with the ball.
Gerrard also described him as the club’s “best” defender when the manager joined and cursed Rangers for letting him go.
If he ends up going down south for megabucks, then Hamburg could well be celebrating their luck in getting David Bates for nothing.
Rangers will be cursing theirs for letting him go too.
