Ibrox View: Rangers must not sell Ryan Kent to Leeds as PL club reportedly makes move
Leeds United have been linked with a move to sign Ryan Kent from Rangers this summer with The Sun reporting that the newly-promoted Premier League club has made a £10million move for the winger.
The newspaper claims that Marcelo Bielsa is making a third attempt to sign the 23-year-old but he is said to be “settled” in Glasgow – which is, thankfully, good news for Rangers.
Rangers have taken a hard-line stance on their most prized assets this summer and it seems that is going to be the case with Kent too.
Steven Gerrard has made it clear that it will take a big offer for the club to sell Alfredo Morelos to Lille amid increasing speculation linking the Colombian striker to the Ligue 1 club [BBC Sport].
After four matches, Rangers are top of the Scottish Premiership table with 10 points won out of the 12 available.
Morelos has been key in those matches and so has Kent, who has scored two goals in his four starts on the left-wing with one of those goals proving to be the winner against Aberdeen on the opening day.
Brian Laudrup wrote on the Daily Mail website that it was a “strong, intelligent performance” by Kent in that 1-0 win at Pittodrie, adding that “Gerrard will rely on him a lot” this season.
And we agree with what Laudrup said, which is why Rangers cannot let Kent join Leeds – or anyone else, for that matter – before the transfer window closes.
Of course, if a massive bid comes in that would change our mind but Leeds’ £10million offer is only £2.5million more than what Rangers paid for Kent in 2019.
Sky Sports reported last summer that the deal which took Kent from Liverpool to Rangers permanently also included a 20 per cent sell-on clause, so the Gers will only receive £8milion of what Leeds are currently stumping up.
And if they paid £7.5million for him a year ago, it would be fair to say that Kent is worth more than £8million to the Glasgow giants now.
Stats by WyScout suggest that there’s been some improvement by Kent already in comparison to his Scottish Premiership displays last season.
In the last three matches, his overall pass accuracy has been 88 per cent, he’s completed 100 per cent of passes into the attacking third, 50 per cent of his dribbles have been successful and so have 33.3 per cent of his crosses.
Compared to last season, Kent’s pass accuracy was 87.7 per cent, 80.6 per cent into the attacking third were accurate while 61.1 per cent of dribbles were completed and only 29.8 per cent of crosses found their target.
Laudrup has tipped Kent to do better this season than he did last term as he continues to get used to life in Scotland.
Selling him to Leeds – or anyone – this summer would be a huge mistake.
In other Rangers news, Leon Balogun has started life in Glasgow brilliantly.