Rangers have officially completed the signing of forward Zak Lovelace after much speculation he would move to Ibrox from English Championship side Millwall
The sought-after 16-year-old broke into The Den club's first team last season, becoming the second youngest player in their history to make a first team appearance. Following his debut in December, Lovelace went on to make four appearances in the English second tier. He will initially join up with the Ibrox club's 'B' team in the Lowland League with hopes of stepping up to first team level after time in an English academy like Calvin Bassey.
While only John Souttar has arrived at senior level, Rangers have bolstered their youth pool with signings like Cameron Bell, Bailey Rice, Cammy Cooper, Mason Munn and a host of other names ahead of the new term. Club sporting director Ross Wilson has explained the thinking behind such a transfer strategy.
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He said: "We are delighted to welcome Zak to Rangers. He is an exciting young player and one we are sure will progress here.
“He has developed really well with the staff at Millwall and we can see lots of potential in him.
“A key part of our scouting strategy has been to identify and invest in talent to strengthen our pipeline and the strategy is working successfully for us with Calvin Bassey and Charlie McCann being examples of that.
“Our scouts are doing a great job and are working on a number of emerging talents this summer with Lancelot Pollard also recently joining from Aberdeen.”
Head of Academy, Craig Mulholland, added: “Our Academy strategy will see us develop local home grown talent that have been with us from a young age, like Nathan Patterson, Leon King and Alex Lowry however importantly, we will augment these exciting prospects with high-potential recruited players ensuring we a have a strong pipeline of talent to challenge for the first team.
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"Player trading at Academy level, as we have seen this summer, is now becoming a normal part of most major clubs' strategic plans.
"We have been active as a club in this area over the past couple of years as part of our own plan and we see talented players developing well in our ranks and we are sure that Zak will follow that positive path.
“Zak is a very exciting and quick forward player who our recruitment team, headed by David Stevenson, have been tracking for some time.
"We are very much looking forward to working with him and seeing his accelerated development over the coming months and years in the excellent environment we now have at Rangers."
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