Well we’re waking up to an absolute nonsense story from the hand of repeat offended Pete O’Rourke who quotes some further gibberish by a Daniel Bowers (who’s a Hibs fan btw) who has just thrown a claim out there that Rangers are ready to spend £13M+ on Abdallah Sima.
We doubt any Rangers fan is going to swallow this piffle, but we wanted to offer some balance regardless.
It is, obviously, from Football Insider, who have history for making massive, unsubstantiated claims like this, citing their ‘sources’ and offering sensational headlines of this nature.
Now, in a rare defence, they did get one exclusive right, about talent scout Phil Cowen swapping Rangers for Arsenal, which we do believe was correct, and we do also remember one time they made a claim about Niko Katic in his Rangers days which did materialise as well.
So we are not one of these groups who make that sweeping generalisation of ‘never seen them get a single thing right’ as so many punters like to say when they’re in a bad mood and just smear some website or source or other.
But Insider do have a history of this, of making many big sensational tabloid claims that do not happen, and to suggest Rangers have ‘no problem’ forking out £13M+ for Sima is among the most ridiculous claims.
Firstly he isn’t worth that on any level – he’s been a long way off being that impressive that we’d break the Scottish transfer record, held by ourselves, to sign him.
Secondly, it’s evident that we don’t have that money to dump on one player.
Philippe Clement will get the usual £15M-£20M this summer, which is what Michael Beale got last campaign and ditto Giovanni van Bronckhorst in the summer of 2022, but we really can’t see him blowing almost three quarters of it on Sima.
He’s also injured, and likely to miss the bulk of the rest of the season.
What about the £4.5M for Diomande which is obligation? And then the option on Cortes of the same number. Plus all the other signings we will require.
No, this really is a very odd story, clearly published for traffic and revenue, and it’s from a site notorious for that kind of behaviour.