Rangers fans got arguably the biggest boost this summer so far with the return of Calvin Bassey as the red hot Nigerian flew out to Portugal to join the squad in the Algarve.
Bassey (along with one or two others) was a conspicuous absence till today, with the former Leicester man getting a little extra time off after international duty, plus using a little R&R to pop into his old school on Tuesday.
But he’s back with the camp, and the most striking thing about his return is how genuinely happy he looked to be back among his team mates – in fact we can rarely remember a bigger grin at Ibrox for a long time.
This wasn’t put on, this was sincere joy at returning to his team mates and being back in his natural habitat.
A sign of him staying?
The noise around Bassey and links from dozens of clubs has gone drastically quiet the past fortnight, with attention turning elsewhere, and of course Joe Aribo’s imminent departure has dominated headlines.
And we hope that’s here to stay.
Rangers are in a very strong position with the Nigerian – he’s got two years left on his deal, and he’s only 22. His stock is sky high and now that we’re getting an extra £10M from Aribo’s exit, selling Bassey is a lot lower on the agenda.
And he looks like he’s thrilled with life.
It is looking increasingly unlikely Calvin Bassey is going anywhere, and long may that continue.
Let’s get him on a longer contract.
Robrob is right. Rangers have been criticised, I think unfairly, for letting players get to the last 12 months of their contract. This puts us under pressure to resign them giving their agents the upper hand or face losing them for nothing next year. The third option is to sell for less than their worth – Aribo with 2 or 3 years left on his contract is £15-20M .
The answer to this is we negotiate with 24 months left, particularly if the player is “hot” as Bassey is now. Offer him a 4yr contract on improved terms. Include a very high Buy out, but tell him we can be realistic – there is a Barcelona player with a buy out of One Billion Euros, this doesn’t mean they wouldn’t sell him for as lot less than that – and that gives us the security of knowing we don’t have to revisit it for 2 years and we get a shed load of money if someone wants to call us on it.
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