You might have noticed a trend in Rangers’ recent transfer activity. A trend that will be maintained if – as reports suggest – Abdallah Sima becomes the fifth new face to arrive at Ibrox during the summer of 2023.
It’s not all that long since Sima was being labelled the ‘new Thierry Henry’. Slavia Prague president Jaroslav Tvrdik even claimed during a superb breakthrough season in 2020/21 – Sima scoring 20 goals and setting up eight more – that he wanted £50 million for a player who knocked Brendan Rodgers’ Leicester City out of Europe.
Should the Senegal international now arrive at Rangers on loan, the Scottish Sun say that the Glasgow giants are ‘confident’ of agreeing a deal with his current employers Brighton before the week is out, questions will inevitably be asked.
Questions like ‘what happened?’ and ‘what went wrong?’.
Rangers could kick-start Abdallah Sima’s career
Even the most hard-nosed Rangers supporters would have to accept that a loan move to Scotland simply would not be on the cards if Sima – linked with Arsenal and West Ham not so long ago – had kicked on from that outstanding campaign in the Czech capital.
He has not kicked a ball competitively since joining Brighton in 2021. Injuries wrecked his loan spell at Stoke City. Sima also finished bottom of France’s Ligue 1 with Angers in May.
But the more cynical members of the Rangers fanbse should not view Sima as a charity case signing. More an opportunity.
Mick Beale’s side appear to be re-defining themselves as a club capable of breathing fresh life into careers asphyxiated by injury, poor form and ill-fortune, and the exceptional performances of the one-time £40 million Liverpool target Todd Cantwell in the second half of last season is proof of the rewards that can be accrued from such an approach.
Cantwell, as recently as 2020, was one of the brightest young attackers in the English Premier League. He’s now producing his best displays since then after moving north of the border. Beale hope that Sam Lammers – prolific at Heerenveen but seldom-seen at Atalanta – can take a leaf out of Cantwell’s book.
Ditto former Everton youngster Kieran Dowell and one-time England international Jack Butland.
Sima arguably arrives with the biggest potential upside of anyone.
‘There aren’t many like this’
“He’s being talked about,” Czech legend Petr Cech said during Sima’s time in Prague. “When a player succeeds at such a young age, starts scoring goals and produces in Europe, clubs take notice. There aren’t many players like this in Europe.
“At his age, he may have some fluctuations. It isn’t easy to play every match in the same way. (But) he is very good physically, especially in terms of speed.”
Rediscover a fraction of the form that saw him produce 28 goals and assists at Slavia Prague, and Rangers will have a forward capable of tearing through the Scottish Premiership like a forest fire.
If things do not go to plan, Beale will find himself fielding a squad full of wasted potential and ‘what might have beens’. On the contrary, Rangers could have an England international in goal, a former Liverpool target pulling the strings, and a potential 20-goal-a-season forward leading the line.
