There are several strategies you can employ in the transfer market if your team is like Rangers and has a limited budget. You can put youth and potential first—a tactic known as “sign low, sell high,” which has been refined recently by teams like Ajax, RB Leipzig, and, sadly, Celtic, rivals of the Old Firm. Bringing in players who have fallen on hard times and offering fresh starts to those whose reputations and price tags have fallen to the point where they are suddenly “gettable” for clubs in the Scottish Premiership is another strategy, of which Rangers have seen both the advantages and the disadvantages. Respect to the game played north of the border notwithstanding, it’s difficult to conceive that Sam Lammers would now be at Ibrox had he fulfilled the potential that led to his £9 million transfer from PSV to Atalanta.Abdallah Sima, who was previously linked to both Manchester United and Arsenal, is now on loan at The Gers after finding it difficult to find playing time at Brighton & Hove Albion. Meanwhile, reports from Daily Mail writer Tom Collomosse connecting Rangers to Callum O’Hare of Coventry City bear some similarities to the trade that sent Todd Cantwell to Glasgow in the winter of 2023.

Cantwell, snapped up for just £1.5 million with his Norwich City contract expiring at the end of that campaign, had been linked with £40 million moves to the likes of Liverpool and Manchester City on the back of a fine debut season in England’s Premier League in 2019/20.

O’Hare might not have scaled such heights – Cantwell scored against Man United, Chelsea, Arsenal and in a famous 3-2 win over Man City that season – but, had things worked out differently, Coventry’s snake-hipped number ten would surely have been handed his chance on the top-flight stage by now.

According to The Telegraph, Tottenham Hotspur scouted O’Hare six months before Cantwell joined Rangers. Fulham were also credited with an interest. Ditto Burnley, Vincent Kompany’s side targeting the £10 million-rated former Aston Villa starlet before cruising to the Championship title that very same season.  O’Hare would go on to start only eight games that campaign due to injury. A cruciate ligament tear kept him out for ten months, only making his return last October.

Now, at a time in which his former Coventry team-mate Viktor Gyokeres is emerging as one of the finest strikers in Europe – closing in on 40 goals during a stunning campaign which justifies the £86 million release clause placed in his Sporting Lisbon contract – O’Hare looks destined to leave the Sky Blues on a free transfer when his contract expires in July.

Philippe Clement’s side eye Callum O’Hare

There is, Collomosse writes on X, interest from clubs in La Liga, as well as north of the border. Rangers are keen, as are title-rivals Celtic. Suddenly, a player who was valued at £10 million and on the radar of clubs like Tottenham less than two years ago could conceivably be on his way to Ibrox for nothing.

Now, Rangers have found out first hand that there are both risks and potential rewards involved when targeting players who, for whatever reason – be it a loss of form like Cantwell and Lammers or injuries like with O’Hare – have seen their reputations take a hit.

The risk is that, like with Lammers, years of poor form and bruised confidence prove difficult to recover from. The rewards, however, can be summed up by Cantwell’s role in an enthralling title race. Cantwell has, throughout much of this campaign, looked like a player simply above the level when it comes to Scottish football.

And the good news with regards to O’Hare is that, having scored nine goals while assisting four more following his return to action – hailed by Jack Grealish after rediscovering the twinkle-toed footwork which once created comparisons between the two Villa graduates – the Rangers target appears to be picking up where he left off before that ACL rupture.

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