Rangers have had a problem with strikers this season and Philippe Clement will clearly want to rectify the situation in the summer.
The Gers boss inherited a bit of a mess, due partly to Michael Beale’s attempts to rebuild the squad and his failure to properly upgrade the forward line.
One of the problems has been Rangers not being able to promote from within and a report from Fabrizio Romano shows exactly what Philippe Clement has missed out on.
Rangers could have eased striker problem under Philippe Clement
The gaffer has been unlucky with Danilo but we should never have been in the position where we needed to rely on Kemar Roofe to be fit.
On too many occasions, Cyriel Dessers has been the only striker available to the manager.
Normally, someone from the academy would get promoted but, Zak Lovelace has missed most of the season with two hamstring injuries in what has been a real set-back to his progress.
Robbie Ure might also regret not extending his contract at Ibrox knowing that he too would probably have been given a chance in the first team.
The one that really hurts though, is Rory Wilson.
Rory Wilson gets offered new Aston Villa contract
After turning down the offer of a contract from Rangers, he moved to Aston Villa in a deal that was said to be worth seven figures.
The 18-year old has 16 goals in 13 starts at Under-18 level for Villa this season and has also been selected in the Premier League 2 side, he’s not stopped scoring goals since heading south.
Capped at Under-21 level for Scotland already, he is the player that fans are looking to as the long-term solution to a striker problem that goes as far back as the 1990’s.
With a contract that expires in 2025, it is little surrpise to see Romano claim that Villa are keen to get him tied down to a new deal.
As the Italian journalist confirms, should Wilson decide to run his contract down, it would cost just £230,000 to sign him for a club outside of England.
Clement knows he has to start shopping local for Rangers
For Rangers, and a problem Philippe Clement has touched on before, Wilson is young enough to still be classed as club trained and is the sort of player that we should be targeting.
Given his profile and how highly he is thought of at Villa Park though, any chance of a cut-price deal seem pretty slim, even if the player himself always spoke highly of his time at Auchenhowie and certainly didn’t leave under a cloud.
Imagine if he had stayed though.
As we’ve seen with Ross McCausland and Cole McKinnon, Clement will play academy players if they show the right attitude, and that was never an issue with Wilson.
Not since Robert Fleck in the mid to late ‘80s have Rangers produced a genuinely top class striker and it would have been incredible seeing one our own scoring goals at Ibrox.
What might have been…
