Rangers seem to be looking to get a lot of their work done early in this transfer window and news of a confirmed deal has emerged.
With Jose Cordoba said to be an imminent arrival in a £3.2m deal, Philippe Clement is already starting to put the pieces together for his new-look squad.
The next name, according to the Central Fluminense podcast, is Jefte, the Brazilian left-back at the centre of a transfer tug of war between Rangers and APOEL.
Rangers move for Jefte “confirmed” in Brazil
The Cypriot’s thought that they held all the cards in the deal having an option to buy clause in the loan deal that they agreed with Fluminense.
Money problems have seen APOEL struggle to scrape together the reported £400,000 needed to seal the deal, however, there is one other issue.
As covered by Rangers News, Jefte doesn’t seem to want to join APOEL and instead, as he did in January, is patiently waiting to land the dream move to Ibrox that he so desperately wanted in the winter.
Having gone AWOL, Jefte apologised to his club, manager and fans, now though, he has no loyalty to a side that he was only at on a temporary basis.
Speaking when the transfer collapsed, Fabrizio Romano, who first broke news of Rangers interest in Jefte, claimed that a return was always going to be on the cards:
“Jefté-Rangers deal has collapsed as Apoel are not willing to break loan for the second half of the season…
“…but I’m told Rangers have verbal pact in place to reactivate the option to sign Jefté in the summer transfer window.
“Deal could really happen in June.”
Clement’s squad begins to take shape with target number two
APOEL kept hold of a player that they needed for the second half of the season having been under a transfer embargo and being unable to sign a replacement.
The story will be different in the summer and Central Fluminense have claimed that everything is sign and waiting to be sealed:
“Despite Apoel’s interest in keeping the player, Jefté will be a player for Rangers, in Scotland, from July onwards.
“Deal confirmed.”
Borna Barisic is leaving, probably to Trabzonspor, and there have been doubts about Ridvan Yilmaz’s future since January.
The Turkey international was impressive after getting a consistent run of games, but Philippe Clement is on record about fixing the injury problem at the club.
Retaining injury prone players won’t help his cause.
It’s going to be a busy summer for Nils Koppen and Philippe Clement with it looking ever more likely that the first team we see in pre-season will be completely different to the one that is struggling across the finish line now.
