Striker Jermain Defoe saw the European atmosphere at Ibrox and just had to make the move to Rangers, as reported by The Daily Record.
The veteran forward has been reflecting on his initial few months at the club after signing on loan from Bournemouth in January and has revealed Steven Gerrard’s personal plea and the fans at Ibrox combined to make the move something he couldn’t turn down.
As quoted by The Daily Record, he said:
I remember speaking to the manager on the phone and he seemed so excited.
He said, ‘Jermain trust me, I have known you for years and if I didn’t feel this was right for you I would never tell you to come but you need to come and see. This is a massive football club and it reminds me of Liverpool’.
We have the same agent, Struan who is a Rangers fan, and I remember him phoning me at home in Bournemouth.
He said ‘put the game on’. It was a European game here. I watched the second half. I watched the atmosphere. To be honest I remember phoning back and saying ‘Stru make it happen.’
If nothing else it demonstrates the pull Rangers still have to attract elite players to Glasgow, even though we are operating on an entirely different budgets to decades past.
This is an attractive place to play football and with the potential of becoming iconic club legends by winning a league trophy in the next couple of years, hopefully good players recognise that in the upcoming transfer window.
Defoe appears to be loving life at Ibrox and hopefully his seven goals and seven assists so far at Rangers are just a small sign of things to come in the 2019/20 season.
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