Glasgow Rangers do not have the best track record when it comes to bringing in talented young players to develop and then sell on for a profit.
Calvin Bassey is the only player the Light Blues have sold for more than £15m in their history, with a fee of up to £22.7m agreed for him to leave Ibrox in the summer of 2022.
The Gers have struggled to find and develop talent to be sold for huge sums of money on a regular basis and the sale of Todd Cantwell is perhaps the latest evidence of this.
Rangers signed the midfielder for £1.5m at the start of 2023, 18 months after he was valued at £40m by Norwich, but they failed to increase his value at Ibrox.
The former England U21 international left to sign for Blackburn Rovers at the end of the summer transfer window for a fee of £500k, taking a £1m loss on him.
Another player the club failed to extract a profit from was talented wide man Ryan Kent, who enjoyed plenty of success at Ibrox before leaving for nothing last summer.
Rangers fumbled Ryan Kent profit
After a season on loan from Liverpool in Glasgow in the 2018/19 campaign, the Scottish giants swooped to sign the English forward for a reported fee of £7.5m in 2019.
The former Reds flanker produced seven goals and zero assists in 21 appearances in the Scottish Premiership in his first season with the club as a permanent addition in the 2019/20 term.
Kent stepped up his game in the following campaign, though, and caught the eye with his fantastic contributions to the club’s title success under Steven Gerrard.
20/21 Premiership | Ryan Kent |
|---|---|
Appearances | 37 |
Sofascore rating | 7.23 |
Goals | 10 |
Big chances created | 9 |
Assists | 9 |
Key passes per game | 1.8 |
As you can see in the table above, the left winger provided a regular threat as both a scorer and a creator of goals for the Ibrox giants, with 19 direct goal contributions in 37 league outings.
It was then reported that he was a £15m target for Leeds United in the summer of 2021 but a move to Elland Road never materialised for Kent.
The forward then managed just five goals in the next two Premiership campaigns combined before moving on from Ibrox on a free transfer in the summer of 2023, signing for Turkish side Fenerbahce.
This shows that the Light Blues did not make the most of Kent’s talent as they ended up with nothing in return for his exit after previously valuing him at £15m, following an exceptional season in the 2020/21 campaign.
Rangers have a player in their current squad who may have once been deemed to have been a bigger talent than Kent was at the same age after that title-winning season, in Romanian whiz Ianis Hagi.
Ianis Hagi was a bigger talent than Ryan Kent
Like the Englishman, the attacking midfielder initially joined the club on loan from Genk for the second half of the 2019/20 season, in which the youngster produced three goals and two assists in 13 appearances in all competitions.
After his six months on loan with the Gers, Hagi was snapped up on a permanent deal from the Belgian side for a reported fee of £3m in the summer of 2020.
The Romania international’s form in his first full season with the Scottish giants suggested that he was an even bigger talent than Kent, as he outperformed the Englishman’s exploits at the same age.
Season they turned 22 | ||
|---|---|---|
All competitions | ||
Appearances | 46 | 43 |
Minutes played | 2,801 | 3,438 |
Goals | 8 | 6 |
Assists | 15 | 9 |
Stats via Transfermarkt | ||
As you can see in the table above, Hagi produced two more goals and six more assists in all competitions during the season he turned 22, which was the title-winning campaign, than Kent did in 2018/19.
The exciting midfielder, who was once named as one of the 50 best young players in the world by The Guardian in 2015, racked up seven goals and 12 assists in 33 games in the Premiership that term.
This shows that Rangers may have thought that they had a bigger talent than Kent by the summer of 2021, as the 22-year-old had outperformed the winger at a similar age in the same division.
Where Ianis Hagi is now
Unfortunately, a mixture of bad fortune and a decline in form meant that Hagi failed to fulfill his potential at Ibrox, at least to date, and he is now an outcast in the current squad.
He has not played a single game for Rangers this season and it has been claimed that one more appearance would trigger a wage increase of £6k-per-week, that would take him from £25k-per-week to £31k-per-week.
That is reportedly the reason why Philippe Clement has exiled him from the first-team squad and the midfielder rejected the chance to return to Romania before the summer transfer window slammed shut.
This comes after he spent the 2023/24 campaign on loan at Alaves to continue his recovery from a long-term knee injury that kept him out of action from January 2022 to January 2023 – forcing him to miss 69 competitive games for Rangers.
21/22 Premiership | Ianis Hagi |
|---|---|
Appearances | 15 |
Goals | 2 |
Assists | 0 |
Dribbles completed per game | 0.8 |
Key passes per game | 1.5 |
As you can see in the table above, Hagi’s form after his superb exploits in the 2020/21 campaign took a hit, as he produced just two goal contributions in 15 appearances before his knee injury.
The versatile midfielder then managed two goals and two assists in 26 appearances for Alaves in all competitions during his loan spell, following his long-term absence.
Hagi, who won a penalty for Romania against Lithuania on Monday, has not been offered the chance to revive his Rangers career by Clement, due to the issue with his contract.
The 25-year-old dynamo put a statement out last month revealing that he wants to play for the club and is willing to iron out the problem with his contract, but there has not been any update on his situation since then and he remains an outcast to the first-team squad.
