One of the first questions that Giovanni van Bronckhorst was asked after being announced as Rangers manager was whether or not he was going to be given funds to bring his own players in, standard fare for any new boss.
The player trading and transfer model that we now have should mean that we will never see a repeat of the Pedro Caixinha fiasco in which millions were spent with very little return being seen on the park and huge losses being made off it, but this doesn’t mean that Gio won’t get a say in who he can bring in.
Vital Rangers has already highlighted Gustavo Hamer as a possible target, a player known both to our scouting and recruitment team and to the new manager having worked with him previously at Feyenoord.
There has to be joined up thinking in our approach but, as Alan Hutton told Football Insider, it is encouraging that he hasn’t been told to sell before he can make additions:
“You heard the press conference. The remit wasn’t you have to sell players at any kind of moment in time.
“But if the right fee comes in for a player, that will then be reinvested into the squad. I think that’s probably the best thing for the fans to hear.
“The worry is you take X amount of millions for a Ryan Kent or whoever but the money doesn’t come back into the playing squad. That’s when it’s a problem. If you can reinvest, then that’s fine.
“So we’ll have to wait and see what happens. We speak about Morelos and the interest that was all over him. It’s nowhere to be seen now.
“His performances don’t warrant that high fee. We’ll have to wait and see what happens. So long as they reinvest any money, that can be a good thing.”
Centre-half is where we have the most pressing concern, however, it may be that GVB wants to modify his squad in terms of personnel, if he feels that he doesn’t have the right player for a specific job then it may be that he asks our sporting director to find a way of making it work or we allow a player to leave who is already on the fringes.
The system we have in place means that potential replacements will already be identified for the likes of Ryan Kent and Alfredo Morelos should we receive acceptable offers, however, with Van Bronckhorst and now Dave Vos having their own contacts, it may be that they will also be able to add names to the list, after all, there will be plenty of good players kicking about the respective academies of Feyenoord and Ajax.