Rangers boss Philippe Clement believes the signing of Mohamed Diomande should be the start of a new transfer model at the club.
Diomande’s move to Ibrox was announced on Friday, with the player moving from Danish side Nordsjaelland on loan initially, with a permanent move and a contract until 2028 to be completed in the summer.
Clement has previously expressed his surprise at Rangers having players running down their contracts and being free to leave without transfer money incoming, and thinks the focus has to be on players who can improve the team but also increase in value as assets.
Diomande fits the bill at 22 years old and with a potential to develop in Glasgow and Clement is of the opinion that Rangers should be in the business of regularly signing players that fit a similar profile.
“It is clear that almost every club in the world is busy getting players in that have the potential to grow, become better and at one moment, to sell them,” he said.
“We don’t have an investor who puts crazy money into the club every year so you need to build a model to get value out of the players you bring in or come out of your academy and to do intelligent moves at the right time.
“That needs to be the model for the next couple of years and not let players get out of contract, which we talked about in the past.
“It is important that the club earns money from transfers and can grow in the future.”
The Belgian said that Rangers had to deal with a lot of competition for Diomande’s signature and that he is coming from a track record of producing players who go on to achieve at a higher level.
“He was one of the biggest prospects in Scandinavia so there were a lot of teams interested in him,” Clement explained.
“He’s still a young player but he already has a lot of experience and has played more than 100 games for Nordsjaelland.
“That’s a good team and they’ve already brought several good players into the rest of Europe and into the club competitions so it’s a team that everybody follows.
“But it’s not easy to get a player to Rangers from that team because there’s a lot of competition.”
The Rangers boss said that Diomande has been enthusiastic about the move after the pair had “a lot of talk” and detailed the qualities he can bring to the team.
“He’s somebody who is really versatile,” Clement added. “He’s a good technical player with a lot of running capacity. He’s still developing in strength and I think we can make him stronger here.
“He’s really fast, agile, creative and he can play disciplined as well, in the 6/8 role or even at 10.
“So it’s somebody who wants to do everything for the club and young. We heard a lot of good things about him.”
While the manager enthused about one young player, the situation around another developing talent has left him frustrated.
SNS GroupAlex Lowry made an early return from what was meant to be a season-long loan at Hearts and Rangers had plans for the next stage of his development but Clement was unhappy about seeing those plans scuppered by an injury to the player he was unaware of.
“Our idea was to put him on loan because it is important for him to get playing minutes like he got at Hearts but he came back with an injury that we didn’t know,” said Clement.
“So he will be out for the next six to eight weeks and it is going to be really difficult to put him on loan.
“It was a surprising story for myself to get this information now and not before because I didn’t give you guys the right information last week.
“It is not something that will damage his career but he will be out for six to eight weeks.
“It is an important year for him. He made some good steps, he is a talented player and it was an interesting thing to go there, so we are all disappointed for Alex and for ourselves because it was the ideal scenario to let him play for one year then make a good assessment.
“Now that is going to be difficult and with the squad we have at the moment, it is going to be difficult to give him minutes here.”
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