Reports are leaking through that Rangers’ imminent Director of Football will not be Paul Mitchell, Sam Jewell or David Weir after all, but will be someone else manager Philippe Clement worked with in the past:

Dimitri De Condé.

Now this isn’t the most household of names, true, but he and Clement go back to their days of Genk, when Rangers’ manager took charge at the modest Belgian side, De Condé was already in place.

Signing players like Leon Bailey, Ruslan Malinovskyi, Sander Berge, Joakim Mæhle Pedersen, and Gift Orban as well as our very own Ianis Hagi, De Condé definitely has a successful track record of bringing in great talent then selling at a profit (he’s made around £300M for Genk in his time there), so there’s no denying he’d be a big step up from Ross Wilson, whose only success was Calvin Bassey.

And the big deal is he is someone Clement knows and trusts – they won the title together of course before Brugge took Clement to a much bigger club, and became even more successful.

De Conde is still coveted – Leeds recently made a move for him, and that didn’t materialise, but he’s definitely not bad at his job and crucially he knows what Clement wants and how to get it to him.

The funny thing about Paul Mitchell of course is Clement didn’t win anything under him, despite the former Monaco DoF being such high stock and well-rated and many folks’ favourite for the Rangers job, but De Conde is a winner, even if Genk bombed after Clement moved on.

Clearly the combination works, and Rangers seem interested in making it work at Ibrox.

We’ll see in 10 days or so who Rangers announce as Sporting Director, but we wouldn’t be shocked if it is De Conde.