Director of football Neil Dewsnip insists Plymouth Argyle will green light an exit for Morgan Whittaker if the winger states he wants to leave the club.
The 23-year-old has been the stand-out for Wayne Rooney’s side in the English Championship so far this season, just months after Rangers revived their interest in the forward. Record Sport revealed last summer that the attacker, who Michael Beale wanted when he was in charge at Ibrox during Whittaker’s time at Swansea, was back on the Light Blues’ radar – with the English Championship side holding out for a bumper £7m payday.
Despite interest from the Scottish Premiership side and a late move from Burnley in the window, Whittaker remained on the south coast. But Dewsnip told the Western Morning News that the club isn’t concerned about allowing their top stars to leave the club – branding it a “compliment” to Argyle.
He said: “We shouldn’t be frightened of that. We should take that as a compliment. We don’t want to lose our best players, let me absolutely state strongly, but if we get to a point whereby whoever it may be wants to leave then we have to understand that and we have to plan accordingly, and find others who keep Argyle going in the direction we want it to do, which is onwards and upwards.”
Another big-money incoming that Rangers have been touted with is Jordan Henderson – but pundit Carlton Palmer reckons Ajax will only be “open” to allowing him to leave if it’s for his boyhood club Sunderland.
The 34-year-old joined Ajax in January from Steven Gerrard’s Al Ettifaq but has managed just three league appearances since the arrival of boss Francesco Farioli in the summer – with a switch to Ibrox floated as a likely destination with a host of English Championship and Premier League sides said to be keeping tabs on a deal.
But Palmer reckons that the Champions League winner would only be allowed to leave Amsterdam for a dream return to the Stadium of Light. He told FLW: “Ajax have come out and said that they’re open to letting Jordan Henderson join Sunderland.
“I think he’d be an inspired signing. Listen, I don’t blame Henderson for doing what he did by moving to Saudi, he was offered an awful lot of money and I don’t think there are many people who would’ve turned that opportunity down.”
A move that didn’t materialise was a last-gasp summer arrival of Samuel Edozie from Southampton. Boss Russell Martin put the blame on the collapse of the loan move for the £10m rated man on Rangers – claiming they had pulled out of the deal in the closing stages of the window.
The 21-year-old instead move to Anderlecht and is impressing in Belgium. Former Ibrox hero Derek Ferguson reckons it could be a misstep by the Light Blues, telling The Sun: “I’ve not got a clue what happened, but Russell has come out and he says it was Rangers’ fault and do you know something? He’s probably right. There’s so many things where Rangers let themselves down big time. And that just looks like another one.”