Rangers step up Rrahmani pursuit amid major summit | OneFootball

Rangers Director of Football Recruiment Nils Koppen has just wrapped up his journey to Mexico and Cancún for the latest TransferRoom seminar summit, and the implications here are massive.

While the Belgian has attended these summits before as a Rangers employee, this was his first going into Rangers’ vital summer window as Director of Football Recruitment, and it’s understood hundreds of football agents and other club representatives were present too, meaning it was a treasure trove of liaising and potentially getting some deals started, progressed, or even close to finished.

Ibrox Noise has learned that KT Management were represented at this event, and Koppen was to meet them with regards Kosovo and Rapid Wien striker Albion Rrahmani, who is on their client list, as well as a number of other targets whose representatives were among the hundreds to thousands of attendees at the event in Central America.

In short, Rangers are working extremely hard this summer to try to find a squad worthy of pushing for 56 next season, especially given budget constraints.

As for Rrahmani, Victor Angelescu owns a 20% share in his club Rapid, and the co-owner is quoted as believing there’s a-near 100% the Kosovo hitman will be sold this summer, despite new manager Neil Lennon insisting he wasn’t for sale.

But of course, he is only a minority owner beside Dan Șucu whose influence and reach are obviously greater given he secured 80% of the club.

He will have a bigger say on whether Rrahmani is sold.

But as for Koppen, he will work on the Austrian-based striker as well as many others, given Rangers are immensely low on firepower up front and at this point there is no indication of any moves for either Lawrence Shankland or Bojan Miovski.

The work done by the Belgian so far is as mixed as Rangers’ windows usually are – he was 90% responsible for Fabio Silva, an abysmal fail, while Diomande is an unknown quantity still despite glimpses. Oscar Cortes is of course now effectively a Rangers player, given the (slightly risky) £4.5M obligation next summer, while it’s hard to offer any assessment on Jefte, a £700,000 signing from Fluminese.

So we must simply cross our fingers for what he does this summer, what he and manager Philippe Clement do this summer.

Whether it’s enough to catch Celtic is another matter.