Many Rangers fans will know that as we approached December, we began getting pretty heavily linked with former Motherwell attacker Kevin van Veen – but that was squarely on the back of an interview he had done talking about how his spell at Gronigen had not gone to plan and how he was again looking to move on.
Fans may remember that along with him saying that he would not rule out a return to his former club, or any club in the division, he also teased that during the last window there was some interest from Ibrox, although he did quickly caveat that by saying his age meant he probably did not fit our profile for new signings.
For those fans who like a small flutter during transfer windows this Bet365 bonus page would be one place to start if you want to see current bonuses and offers on the review page. All of this affects the odds on this high profile potential signing and the hopes the board are now meeting our new bosses ideas for the second half of the 2023/24 campaign.
With January now with us, the 32 year old has reappeared on the rumour mill once again but there will not be many fans who will think a deal will be struck, namely because gaffer Philippe Clement has just secured the loan signing over Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Fabio Silva.
With Gronigen’s Sporting Director, Wouter Gudde, admitting they were open to offers for him this window, and in more recent days also revealing that our speculated interest in the player had not appeared and that so far there had been no contact whatsoever, and if he was on Clement’s shortlist an educated guess would say some kind of enquiry would have already been made, simply as we assessed our options.
Pouring further doubt on any deal actually potentially being done is former striker, and fellow Dutchman, Arthur Numan who was with us between 1998 and 2003. He now works as a scout for AZ Alkmaar, but is still a regular visitor to Ibrox and has featured for Rangers TV on occasions, so he has obvious connections in the press and journalist Piet Van Dijken recently posited in a piece for Sikkom.
“I recently read that Van Veen is still unable to do his shopping in Scotland. Apparently he’s still a hero there. According to reports, there is even interest in him from the great Glasgow Rangers.”
He went on to say that he had had a bit of a chat to Hugo Hovenkamp – who had been in touch with Numan where the topic came up, and:
“According to him, Glasgow Rangers are not interested in Van Veen. Wouter Gudde also recently said that there had been no contact with the Scots.”
It was very much a ‘come and get me plea’ from van Veen and he may still get his wish of a Scottish Premiership return, but it looks increasingly more like it will not involve us, and we will probably never know the full truth of our supposed interest in him last summer and the phrase ‘he rejected us’ will remain hanging in the air.
Despite what is a very impressive SPL goal scoring record from his time at Fir Park, given the impact that Clement has had on the players since his arrival in mid October and the domestic league form that we are showing, very few would think that this would be a make or break deal for our chances of success in the second half of the season.
With Silva added to the pack given his long held high potential, we can certainly expect better returns from our existing strikers, so Van Veen would likely only be back up at best anyway.
Factoring in that Gronigen would want to most likely make their money back on the believed and rumoured £500,000 they have only just really paid for him, there are probably more financially savvy deals out there to be made even if the gaffer does want another striker in.
In any event, we will 100% know one way or the other in the next couple of weeks, and there are guaranteed to be further strong rumours that come to absolutely nothing – there is always is at this time of year.
One such rumour also being the recent story of Number 2 Stephan van der Heyden who caused a small social media storm when he posted up a picture of a departure board at an unnamed airport and was then later Tweeting from Copenhagen in Denmark.
With fans wondering about a potential departure, or even a mini scouting trip for a potential new arrival, it was all for nothing as he was simply on a stop over before continuing to travel on to the Faroe Islands to meet up with his son for a short break.
Image Source: unsplash.com
