D-Day minus one and it’s all gone quiet in the Big Brother house, in other words, Philippe Clement will be fearing for his blood pressure with the lack of new signings at Rangers.
The one-in, one-out policy that has hamstrung his summer should see Ben Davies, Todd Cantwell and Scott Wright, at least, all being replaced before the deadline closes at 11pm on Friday night.
What the manager will be hoping for is that his comments after Rangers win over Ross County don’t come back to haunt him.
Fabrizio Romano claims Rangers could still be busy
Clement teased fans that they could be in for an exciting week when he said:
“I expect a busy week but more busy with incoming and a few outgoing.
“Outgoing, not for players who were in the squad today, that’s clear.
“More outgoings for players who weren’t in the squad.”
Fabrizio Romano, speaking to GiveMeSport has some words of encouragement for disenfranchised fans, worried by the apparent lack of activity.
More incomings suggests that four players will need to be signed before the end of the transfer window.
What won’t have helped Clement’s cause is the likes of Davies, Cantwell and Wright all still being at Rangers up until the last week of the window.
The transfer guru doesn’t have any names, as yet, but what he has done is suggest that those of a Light Blue persuasion don’t go to bed too early on deadline day:
“I think it’s going to be busy over there, to be honest, if in terms of names, we have to be bit patient. So I think it will be clear in the next hours.
“So we will see. But for sure, they they will be active, and I expect Rangers also to be absolutely in the market in the final days.”
Will it be too little, too late for Rangers?
Nils Koppen is leaving it very late.
The problem, as it has been all summer though, is moving players out.
This is where having a full-time director of football above the recruitment director might have helped with clearing out the dead wood.
The perfect example is Todd Cantwell and Ianis Hagi.
It looks like Rangers have left it up to the player’s agents to move them on rather than actively speaking to clubs to gauge interest.
They both have shown enough quality in the past to suggest that only one of them leaving for £600,000 should have been avoided.
What this now means is that Rangers might not get the players that they originally targeted for various reasons or that the structure of deals isn’t ideal.
Either way, Rangers have a lot of work to do and an increasingly short time to do it in.
