Every club has them. The transfers that got away. The kind of ones you think back to and ask: How did we not get the deal over the line?
In this series I have picked out a few transfers, some of them we will be happy to have missed out on while others, for the most part, will leave you wishing and thinking ‘what if.’
PLAYER IN QUESTION: Dennis Bergkamp
DATE OF INTEREST: June 1995
Bergkamp. The very mention of his name makes you think of outrageous goals and sublime skill, whether it be in the Premier League or World Cups. Just think of him in a Rangers side that already included Gascoigne and Laudrup.
It’s hard to imagine now, but Bergkamp was surplus to requirements by Inter Milan in the summer of ’95. His form in his second season had been something that we had come to expect of a player of his calibre with his shy persona leading the Italian press to label him as moody.
Inter were inviting bids and Rangers were always looking for an upgrade on talent. It seemed like a perfect fit. Bergkamps famed fear of flying would be no issue in Scotland either with the furthest destination on the calendar being Aberdeen.
Quite how close Rangers came to completing a deal is heart-breaking. The player even stayed at a Loch Lomond retreat after having been shown around Ibrox and Glasgow.
Rangers then left, thinking the deal was done, all the while not realising that Arsenal had been made aware of the player’s ability and were planning a move of their own.
The rest, they say, is history.
Steven Harrigan
@steven_harrigan
@rangersnewsuk