The big day may have come and gone already but it’s not too late for the Rangers board to give Michael Beale what he really needs this Christmas.
If they don’t have the cash to bankroll a spending spree in the January sales then the very least they can do is allow him to keep hold of what is already his. Ryan Kent, you see, just might be the gift that keeps on giving where Beale’s prospects of clutching on to Celtic’s coat-tails is concerned between now and May.
And if the men in charge of the till at Ibrox haven’t worked that one out for themselves by now then they will be in danger of short-changing their new manager before he has even settled into the job. Beale is already battling just to keep his side in contact at the top of the table but Friday night’s 1-0 win at Ross County means he has at least managed to rattle off nine points from his first three games in charge.
That may not have put a dent in Celtic’s lead but it has kept Rangers relevant and competitive. For the time being at least. And Kent’s redefined role in Beale’s big tactical reshuffle indicates how much the manager trusts in this particular player.
Beale may still be feeling his way into the position and is carrying out running repairs as he goes along. But what has become crystal clear already is Kent’s importance to everything he is trying to knit together.
By deploying the attacker in a more central position he has effectively asked him to do for Rangers what Lionel Messi was doing for Argentina throughout the World Cup.
OK, calm down. No one is suggesting for a moment here that Kent belongs in the great GOAT debate. But the fact remains, he does for this Rangers team what the little magician has just been doing for his country all over Doha and its surrounding areas.
He operates on another level from his team-mates to such an extent that the boss sees fit to build an entire side around him. That’s exactly what Beale has been doing over the course of the last couple of weeks, having shifted Kent into that more creative position through the middle.
Rangers had become painfully predictable under the previous manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst, who deployed Kent as an out-and-out winger on the left. Kent was still very much the Dutchman’s ‘go-to-man’
But he became overburdened with the scale of this responsibility, while being restricted to operating in an area of the pitch from where his opponents could see him coming. Stopping Kent stopped Rangers. And every manager in the top flight had it sussed even if, more often than not, it was easier said than done.
It is a major tick in Beale’s box that he has identified this problem for himself and done something meaningful about mending it. By allowing Kent to drift into the Messi role, he has given his talisman the freedom to attack teams from all manner of angles and this unpredictability makes him a much harder man to mark than he ever was under van Bronckhorst.
Put it this way, when injury-time double kept Beale’s head above water at Pittodrie last week, it was Kent who started both moves by dropping deep to demand the ball.
In other words, Kent is Beale’s game changer. And that’s precisely why the new boss needs to have his immediate future secured as a matter of urgency.
What he needs now is some festive goodwill from the board and that means putting a financial package together which is generous enough to persuade Kent to hang around for the rest of the fight.
Chairman Douglas Park appeared to suggest at the club’s AGM that the gap between what Kent wants and what Rangers are willing to pay him is too wide to be bridged.
But there is sound economic basis to making an offer that Kent finds too difficult to refuse. Even if he is asking for £10,000 a week more than Rangers believe him to be worth, that’s a small price to pay for a player upon whom Beale is so utterly reliant.
As a matter of fact, if Kent wants £20,000 more than Rangers consider to be the going rate, there’s a strong argument to be made that it’s still worth giving him what he wants.
That might mean upping his wages by somewhere in the region of a million quid a year but if they should fail to stump up the extra cash then they will lose Kent for next to nothing.
And, having spent £7million to buy him from Liverpool in the first place, that’s a giant kick in the teeth. Let’s not forget, Rangers have also laid out fees of £3m for Cedric Itten and Rabbi Matondo. And more than £5m on Ridvan Yilmaz for that matter.
So releasing £1m a year to let Beale keep hold of his main man looks like chicken feed by comparison. And if, deep down, Kent is hankering for a move back across the border then that ambition can be satisfied too with a bespoke and cleverly constructed new contract.
All that would be required of Rangers is to insert a release clause which would be triggered automatically in the event that an offer of a specific amount comes in.
For argument’s sake, let’s just say the club would hope to double their money on a player who, having only celebrated his 26th birthday last month, is about to enter the prime years of his career.
Kent’s agents might attempt to talk that fee down from the £14m mark but if an agreement can be struck somewhere in the middle then it has to make more sense than allowing him to leave, be that for buttons next month or as a free agent in the summer.
One way or another, Rangers have to find the spare cash required to keep Kent on board. Beale simply can’t afford to do without him.
