He was a true Marmite player but, what wasn’t up for debate, was that Fashion Sakala knew how to add numbers to Rangers attack.
Sold to Al-Fayha for a reported £4m in the summer, you have to wonder what current Gers boss Philippe Clement makes of Michael Beale’s decision to sell the Zambian, largely, to finance a move for Sam Lammers.
Before the transfer window opened, Rangers fans knew that we needed more goals and quality for the right-hand side of the attack, instead, in selling Fashion Sakala, we lost the only real threat that we had, as his numbers this season prove.
Fashion Sakala has been missed by Rangers
Beale’s treatment of one of the squad’s most popular players was poor and, alongside Glen Kamara, should have been a red flag about his competence as a manager.
Losing a player who can play on the wing or through the middle and was one off our fastest players to replace him with a meandering number 10 that we didn’t need, is another.
For Al-Faya, Sakala has 13 goals and seven assists in his 32 games this season.
In his last season for Rangers, he scored 12 goals.
The interesting statistic is that he scored eight goals and created eight assists in the league despite only starting 17 games.
He carried a threat that Lammers never looked like providing and, at least, had some fans within the 50,000 at Ibrox.
Sakala’s absence also left us with just Scott Wright and Ross McCausland as recognised right wingers.
A problem that has seen Todd Cantwell and Dujon Sterling both played out of position.
Selling Sakala was never the issue.
We signed him for free and sold him for £4m, that’s how a player trading model should work.
It’s how we replaced him.
And, despite his flaws, we clearly didn’t when, with the money available, we should have been able to land an upgrade.
Clement would have loved a player who worked as hard as Fashion Sakala in his squad and a player who could have provided a genuine threat from Rangers unbalanced right-hand side.
