Rangers recruitment plans outlined by Mohamed Diomande deal – Celtic Matt O’Riley blueprint is utopia for many clubs.
Philippe Clement emphasized the significance of Mohamed Diomande’s signing for Rangers. According to the Belgian, the Ivorian’s success is crucial for the club’s survival in European competition.
Clement would never dare to draw the comparison directly, but with the loan-to-buy £4.5million purchase of the 22-year-old from Nordsjælland the club require the midfielder to become a Rangers version of Celtic’s Matt O’Riley. Their rivals this week threw out a bid from Atletico Madrid for the 23-year-old who, barring unforeseen circumstances, will be sold for £25m-plus in the summer.
In that event, O’Riley will become the latest poster boy for the trading model all clubs within smaller markets pursue as a nirvana through having only been recruited two years ago from MK Dons for the snip of £1.5m. For a fee three times that, Rangers need to nurture Diomande to grow into an asset valued similarly to O’Riley – Clement making no bones about how setting such prospects on this path is a prerequisite for Rangers’ future prosperity.
“It’s crucial because you cannot survive as a club in Europe, where things are evolving, if you don’t have that model,” he said. “You need to lure players in and then sell them for a profit. You either do that or have an investor that puts in a lot of money each year. We are not a club like that, thus we need a transfer model to grow. If you don’t grow, you’ll fall behind other teams in Europe. And in the league, too. So you need this model; it’s really apparent.
“An assessment is made by the whole club, what he [Diomande] is worth now and what he can be worth in the future. So it’s a longer term investment in that way. We had a lot of good talks together and I think he’s convinced because of the club, the fans, the project and the way of working and growing as a player.
“We agree on that, and it is now up to him to demonstrate that in the short term, as well as in the long term. In Scandinavia, the winter break is longer, so he hasn’t played competitive football in a while. We need to assess his physical condition and get him back to his best as soon as possible. That’s also why one of our performance coaches is currently with him. He doesn’t have his visa right now, but we don’t want to waste time.”
Clement revealed that Diomande was on his possibles list when he was in charge at Monaco, and sees the “versatile” player – who can “play in defensive midfield offensive, no.10, six and eight” and has “even played left full-back or left winger” as illustrating the strength of his selling Danish club’s academy and African scouting network. Any fully trading model must be two-pronged and involve polishing up gems that both have been bought in and reared from within. Clement believes his impress record on that second front was a major factor in Rangers’ decision to appoint him three months ago.
“That’s one of the parts I have been talking about also with the club,” he added. “They were aware of this from the moment I went into the building, and it was one of the reasons they eventually chose me. I have always been involved in the development of young players. Consider Genk, where we had Leandro Trossard [now at Arsenal] as a young player who broke through.Sander Berge was another promising player who moved to Sheffield. Jhon Lucumi, a talented Colombian player, joined us at the age of 18. Joakim Maehle is presently at Atalanta, and he was a very young player.
“There was a lot in Bruges as well. Aurelien Tchouameni and Axel Disasi were among the young players who emerged and developed in Monaco. So it’s vital because a club can’t survive if it only spends. If you do not produce a profit, the club will not survive. So we need to design a model that makes a profit on transfers.”
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