Should Ridvan Yilmaz complete a January loan move to Verona, it’s the latest damning indictment of Rangers’ underperforming recruitment department.
In fact, should reports surrounding the 22-year-old Turkish international left-back be correct, Rangers could be set to have over £10m in transfer fees out on temporary deals this season.
The Ibrox side already have two first-teamers in Ianis Hagi (Alaves) and Sam Lammers (Utrecht) who are out on loan deals despite costing the club a pretty penny.
Should Ridvan Yilmaz make it three in the coming weeks, it’s the latest slap in the face for Rangers’ recruitment team who’ve made some big money mistakes in recent seasons.
Ridvan Yilmaz to join Ianis Hagi and Sam Lammers out on loan
Rangers paid an initial £3.4m to sign Ridvan Yilmaz from Besiktas last summer but his 18 months in Glasgow have by-and-large been a bitter disappointment.
Injuries, struggling to settle, and a lack of both individual and collective form has badly hampered the left-back who is considered one of Turkish football’s brightest talents.
Whilst we don’t suspect Rangers have triggered the additional £1.6m in add-ons which are attached to the deal in full, let’s say the left-back is touching £4m in transfer fees.
Add to that Ianis Hagi who – whilst recovering from a devastating cruciate ligament injury sustained in January 2022 – was deemed not good enough for the first-team squad this season.
Public grumbles about a lack of playing time meant the playmaker joined Alaves on loan and the Romanian is a £3m player who is currently not contributing to the club.
There also appears scant chance Hagi, who is only 25-years-old, will be back in Glasgow this season.
Throw Sam Lammers into the mix – the Dutchman’s £3.5m switch from Atalanta in the summer a genuine disaster – and suddenly the expenses start to rise.
Whilst Lammers, 26, has taken responsibility for much of his awful form in Glasgow, that’s over £10m of playing talent consigned to patchwork loan deals with Rangers unlikely to recoup the same amount back.
Rangers loan business under transfer scrutiny
For a club in Rangers’ financial situation, this is incompetence at best and negligence at worst. Our transfer record over the last four or five windows is a bad joke.
Not only that, but the club have been forced into shopping in the bargain basement this January after an astonishing £21m summer of investment.
There have been far too many transfer fails as of late in Glasgow – a ratio of three or four failures to every one success is genuinely being kind – and it’s costing us big on and off the park.
The suggestion that expensive signing Ridvan Yilmaz could join Ianis Hagi and Sam Lammers in leaving Ibrox on a temporary loan deal shines terribly on our recruitment department.
There’s been a reshuffle in the club’s recruitment of course but there is much to prove as things stand and this January isn’t exactly shaping up to be a hit with supporters either.
All eyes are now on Nils Koppen to see how the club’s new Director of Recruitment sorts out the royal mess he’s just inherited at Rangers.
Philippe Clement has also been talking about Ridvan Yilmaz amid those links to a Rangers loan exit.
