Things seemed to have turned sour pretty quickly for Ryan Kent.
After a disappointing end to what had been a fruitful five year spell at Rangers, the former Liverpool youth player made the decision to try his hand at a new venture in Turkey with Fenerbahce.
Having been the first of a crop of new additions to the squad that included high profile names such as Edin Dzeko, Dusan Tadic and Fred, it looked to be a sensible move for Kent to try and reinvigorate a career that looked to be going places at times during his years at Ibrox.
He marked in debut in the yellow and blues strips in some style as well, as it took him just 13 minutes to score on his debut appearance against FC Zimbru in a Conference League qualifying tie.
But that would be his only goalscoring contribution to-date, and has now seemingly found himself out-of-favour at the club. As a result, reports have now come out from Turkish media that Kent may be set for a loan move in January, with ‘one team in England’ monitoring him.
More interestingly, the report also states that there is interest from one club in Scotland, which we can only assume would be Rangers if true.
No one can doubt the level of impact Kent had in Scotland during his time at Rangers. Twice voted into the PFA Team of the Year and a Young Player of the Year winner in 2019, he was at times electric to watch.
Fans will look back on the run to the Europa League final in 2022 where he was terrifying some of the best defences in Europe, with that night in Dortmund to mind.
However, the way in which his time at the club ended will have soured many supporters on Kent, as he almost appeared to down tools at time and looked a shadow of his peak self. Just the six goals in his final two seasons in Glasgow would be evidence of that to some.
Right now, Rangers boss Philippe Clement
has at his disposal two left wingers who have arguably at different points in the campaign been the team’s primary attacking threat in Abdallah Sima and Rabbi Matondo. In the former, you also have some who is doing something Kent never did with any regularly and that’s scoring goals.
Whilst Kent would arguably improve the attacking options and probably be a good fit for Clement’s style if he’s at its best, bringing him in could present a problem Beale suffered from in the attacking midfield position in having too many players for the one role. All three mentioned can play wide right if needed, but all of them do their best work from the left.
There would also be the risk of it being seen as a backwards move needed to resort to bringing in a player from the past to improve the squad, when arguably we should be looking forward and resisting the urge to look at players with too much scar tissue from the Gio seasons.
It has worked in recent weeks for Leon Balogun granted, but you can’t resort to that avenue on too many occasions.
Either way, it will sure to be an interesting story to monitor as we get closer to the 1st January that’s for sure.