"Cracking deal" - Sheffield Wednesday's Barry Bannan breaks silence on Rangers poaching Djeidi Gassama | OneFootball

Barry Bannan believes Rangers signed his former Sheffield Wednesday team-mate Djeidi Gassama for a bargain fee.

Sheffield Wednesday midfielder Barry Bannan believes Rangers would have had to pay a lot more for his former team-mate Djeidi Gassama had it not been for the club's current financial problems.

Gassama joined Wednesday from French giants Paris Saint-Germain in the summer of 2023, and he was one of their star players last season as they recorded a 12th-placed finish in the Championship.

However, amid the ongoing off-field crisis at Hillsborough, Owls owner Dejphon Chansiri has been forced to sell some of the club's key men in order to raise funds, and after Anthony Musaba joined Turkish side Samsunspor last weekend for a fee of £800,000, fellow winger Gassama became the latest player to head out the exit door this week.

Gassama's move to Rangers was briefly paused last week amid talk that the club's prospective new owners were keen to keep hold of him, but it was later revealed that the takeover bid in question had collapsed, and the 21-year-old completed his switch to Ibrox on Tuesday for a fee of £2.2 million.

The income from Gassama's sale helped Chansiri to finally settle May and June's overdue wages this week, which saw two of the three transfer embargoes that had been imposed on Wednesday lifted, but with no sign of an imminent takeover, that is only likely to be short-term relief for the troubled South Yorkshire outfit.

Barry Bannan breaks silence as Djeidi Gassama departs Sheffield Wednesday for Rangers

After Gassama's departure was confirmed, Bannan, who is currently training with Wednesday despite the fact he is yet to sign a new contract, admitted that Rangers had landed Gassama for a bargain fee, and he claimed that his price tag would have been significantly higher if not for the club's current plight.

"Only time will tell but I think if Sheffield Wednesday were not in the circumstances that they are currently in, the fee demanded would have been a lot, lot higher than one Rangers paid - and they would probably have got it as well," Bannan told Record Sport.

"Obviously the people at Rangers have sensed what was happening down here and realised that they can get it at a good price. Fair play to them, they got a cracking deal done."

While Bannan may be disappointed that the Owls were unable to secure a bigger fee for Gassama, he backed his former team-mate to be a success at Ibrox, and he insisted that he will thrive working under new Gers manager Russell Martin.

"Djeidi obviously came through at the PSG academy and was out training with their first team players when they had the big three of Messi, Mbappe, Neymar," Bannan said.

"So he's obviously learned from the best that there's ever been in football.

"You can tell he always wants to learn as well and when you give him information, you can see that he's listening and taking it on.

"I have no doubt he's probably done that with those three superstars as well when he was at PSG.

"He’s had good coaches obviously as well, which he's been really lucky with because at a young age it is important that you get the right mentors.

"Obviously he had Mauricio Pochettino as his PSG manager at that time and then he came to Wednesday, where he has worked under Danny Rohl who's got a good pedigree in the game too.

"Now he's obviously going to work with Russell Martin, who has a style of football that everybody probably wants to play so I'm sure he'll really enjoy that."

Sheffield Wednesday supporters will share Barry Bannan's Djeidi Gassama frustration

Many Wednesday supporters are furious that one of their prized assets has been sold for such a cut-price fee, and it is difficult to disagree with Bannan that Gassama's valuation would have been much higher in normal circumstances.

While Gassama does still have plenty of room for improvement, he has developed significantly during the past two seasons at Hillsborough, and the Owls could potentially have sold him for an eight-figure fee at some stage in the next few years.

However, given the Owls' desperate financial situation, Chansiri was left with no other option but to sell Gassama in order to raise the funds needed to meet his obligations, and after the collapse of the proposed takeover, further high-profile exits could be on the cards in the coming weeks.