Football clubs will never be totally transparent when it comes to transfers, whether it’s revealing how much has been paid for a player or their weekly salary to potential targets and responding to every rumour in the press.
For Rangers fans, there has been a frustration that players like Andreas Skov Olsen and Joey Veerman were heavily linked with moves to the club but ended up elsewhere only to produce the sort of numbers that might have made the difference this season, however, is it as simple as seeing a player we like and getting the deal done across the negotiating table?
In short – no.
Football recruitment analyst, Andy Watson – not the former Rangers first-team coach – specialises in producing data on players for clubs to narrow down their search and he has produced a thread on Twitter that explains what impact Brexit has had on what boxes individuals need to tick before being eligible for a Governing Body Endorsement (GBE) to move to the country.
Seen that a lot of people are doing, or thinking of doing, recruitment docs for this summer.
That’s brilliant & I look forward to reading them.
But I thought I would give everyone a hand & just do a little thread to help & advise on GBE/work permit rules for England pic.twitter.com/e86JYV8y0x
— Andy Watson (@andywatsonsport) April 24, 2022
It’s long and pretty complicated so I’ll try and explain as best I can using an example.
Zinedine Ferhat. When we were interested in him last summer he was off the back of a hugely successful season in Ligue 1 where his signature was being chased by a few teams only to see moves fall through at the last minute, he had also earned a recall to the Algerian national team.
To qualify for an automatic GBE you need 15 points, Ferhat would get 12 immediately for playing in one of Europe’s best leagues, he would then get 11 points for playing in over 80% of Nimes’s minutes through the season – job done, he can be signed. All this is without considering his international status or performance of club team in the respective league or in European competition.
However.
This season is a totally different story.
With Nimes being relegated he only gets six points for the league he is playing now and he has fallen out of favour after trying to force through a move, featuring in just 40% of their games, earning one point towards his GBE. From automatic qualification to not even having enough points to justify arguing his case, that he hasn’t been selected by Algeria since the summer of 2021 also goes against him.
Recruitment is always going to be difficult in trying to persuade players to come to Scotland, even if we can offer European football and the chance to win trophies, but this example shows just how hard it can really be to get a player who was, only last year, being courted by some of France’s biggest clubs.