There’s been more than a spot of misgivings from Rangers fans over what appears to be Michael Beale’s top summer striker choice in Atalanta’s Sam Lammers.
It’s a surprising choice, which appears to be based on what he did four years ago as opposed to what he has done recently, which has been very, very poor.
A lot of Rangers fans are choosing to trust in the manager, in Michael Beale, that he knows what he is doing – there is no question his successes in Todd Cantwell and Nicolas Raskin have earned him a lot of goodwill, even so much as signing a player who patently appears to be a poor acquisition and yet going with the manager’s judgement on it.
If Michael Beale signs, for example, ‘Wee Rab McGlinchie’ who has one goal in 20 for Arbroath, then ‘trust in the manager’ and ‘he sees something we don’t’.
And that’s absolutely right – Beale’s the man on the chopping block here, his head on a spike for all to see with these signings – the Cantwell and Raskin success is giving a lot of supporters reason to put complete faith in him that Wee Rab McGlinchie or indeed Sam Lammers are genius signings and the manager is the one who susses things the fans can’t.
And we can’t dispute that.
Michael Beale is the transfer fulcrum this summer – there’s no Sporting Director, there’s no nonsense of persuading anyone else or suchlike – Beale either has the scouting team bring prospects to him, or he finds them himself.
He has final call, so if Sam Lammers turns out to be a sensational striker for Rangers then Michael Beale is the one who gets the plaudits and praise, and he’ll deserve it.
But if the Dutch striker is a fail, then it’s Beale’s neck on the board over it – over Rangers wasting £4M give or take on a striker who presently looks patently short of what the club needs.
It’s a risk, and reward – it’s 50/50 over whether Lammers will thrive for Rangers or fail spectacularly – but this is him leaving the Italian side permanently. Not a loan, but permanently. He persuaded them to shell around £10M to PSV for his signature, and it absolutely didn’t work out.
Michael Beale is convinced Lammers can recapture his old Eredivisie form at Ibrox.
For his sake and Rangers’, we pray he’s right.