Rangers boss Philippe Clement has claimed that the club need to sell before they can buy this summer.
The Belgian manager has been clear that Rangers’ stuttering player trading model is costing the club amid what Clement himself describes as a ‘massive rebuild’.
Whilst suggestions the Rangers gaffer had the wool pulled over his eyes by the Board have been short-lived, the situation remains the same.
Rangers need to sell before they can raise enough funds – and shift enough deadweight off the wage bill – to fund their summer transfer business.
But there is one £3.5m headache lingering in the background of the club which already has everyone at Rangers reaching for the paracetamol this summer.
Dutch club prices out of Lammers move
It’s been clear since January that Sam Lammers was not going to continue as a Rangers player.
Joining the club on a bumper £3.5m deal from Serie A side Atalanta, Michael Beale believed he was the man to unlock the clear technical ability the Dutchman possesses.
But the now ex-Rangers manager underestimated just how fragile Lammers would be under the intensity of the Ibrox lights and the striker quickly clammed up.
A loan move to Utrecht in January – sanctioned by the new-look Rangers recruitment board – was supposed to dangle a golden carrot in front of Eredivisie sides.
But despite Lammers’ homecoming resurgence – the striker netted 11 times in the Dutch top flight last season – a return to the Netherlands has not been forthcoming.
First Utrecht pulled out of the race to land Lammers before AZ Alkmaar followed suit, signing Spurs striker Troy Parrot instead.
With FC Twente the latest Dutch club to pull the plug, it’s being widely reported that Rangers’ £2.7m asking price is not the problem.
Indeed, it’s Lammers’ quite astonishing €1.5m (£1.3m) per year pay packet – meaning the forward gets paid a ridiculous £25k per week – which is blocking a move.
The Daily Record claim that Lammers would need to drop this down to around €500k per year to move to Holland, or around £10k per week.
Rangers a hostage to Lammers fortune
This situation doesn’t exactly shine brightly on anyone involved.
Rangers – who gave Michael Beale carte blanche to spend £21m last summer – are paying well over the odds for a stuttering forward who has the hair of a lion but the heart of a mouse.
It is a monumental failure of wage budget management to splurge such a ridiculous amount on a player who, leading up to his move to Rangers, had a disastrous stint in Italy.
Lammers scored the sum total of six goals across four clubs (three on loan) and two countries (Italy and Germany) in the three years leading up to the Rangers switch.
The 27-year-old striker too, clearly struggling for confidence, has chosen to pick up hefty wages over actually playing football at what is a crucial time of his career.
Perhaps knowing that Rangers will eventually agree to cover part of his contract later in the window, Sam Lammers is looking out for number one but it’s to his undoubted detriment.
Rangers have 6ft3 frontman Lammers training with the B Team in an effort to force him out the door.
It’s not like we’re going to see a fully committed, ambitious and dedicated forward with the main squad, is it?
Suggestions that Sam Lammers will join up with the Rangers first team are futile because the striker has made it clear he doesn’t want to be here.
We highly doubt Philippe Clement wants the boosin’ striker hanging around Auchenhowie like a bad smell either.
Rangers – in a deal which could ultimately cost the club the best part of £7.5m between transfer fees and wages over the length of Lammers’ three year contract – are essentially over a barrel of Genever.
Whatever happens this window, Rangers fans might’ve thought the days of hefty pay offs and overpriced nonsense transfers a la Carlos Pena were over.
In a damning indictment of this latest iteration of the Rangers board, the situation with Sam Lammers suggests the most drastic, and most expensive, could still be to come.
