Rangers lumbered with £22,000pw Hagi problem...

Rangers lumbered with £22,000pw Hagi problem

The competition between Tom Lawrence and Nedim Bajrami for the Rangers’ number ten spot still

presents a minor challenge for Philippe Clement in the shape of Ianis Hagi of Romania.

Based on the wage rise Rangers would suffer by picking the former Genk player for the hundredth time,

the scenario with the player isn’t ideal—a £22,000 per year player languishing among the reserves.

With the addition of the £3.5 million Sassuolo Albanian, along with Lawrence of Wales,

who strengthened his case with a strong goal against Dundee, Rangers do now have options behind the striker.

Where does it leave Hagi, though?

Hagi received an oblique signal that he is undesired from Bajrami’s meek signature—as if another one was truly necessary.

Clement finds himself in a difficult situation; as we have noted, this is entirely the fault of former

Sporting Director Ross Wilson, who gave Hagi a ridiculous two-year contract extension while he

was injured and included an outrageous appearance-based pay provision.

This was almost as bonkers as giving your manager himself an extension for no good reason…

that was definitely a John Bennett error, out of his depth and doing three men’s jobs. We wish him well.

But getting back to the point Rangers have a £22,000pw problem on their hands, and reports he

might leave by mutual consent haven’t come to fruition, because that means paying him the rest of his contract.

Or at least, a hefty chunk of it.

Hagi, his agent, and Clement all agreed that he could leave in the summer, but he received no good offers

(apart from offers from his home country that would have reduced his salary by 50%).

As a result, the man who had previously made noise about wanting to stay in Spain is now

making the same declaration about wanting to stay at Rangers.

Recall that Beale, not Clement, was the one who sent Hagi to Spain, and if Hagi wanted to make an impression on the then-

new manager Clement upon his return, he was failing miserably at Alaves during a terrible loan spell.

It made Clement uninterested and exacerbated the look of the salary clause; all in all, a pretty problematic scenario.

Everyone would benefit more if Hagi took a little payoff and moved on. He obviously isn’t interested in that, though.