Philippe Clement hopes Rangers will not be left looking at Vaclav Cerny as their latest loan star who got away.
The Czech ace has been in impressive form for the Ibrox outfit since joining on a season-long stint from parent club Wolfsburg. The winger fired his ninth goal of the campaign in Wednesday’s 6-0 hammering of Kilmarnock and sits top of the Premiership scoring charts alongside team-mate Cyriel Dessers and Celtic skipper Callum McGregor.
But as things stand, £6.5million-rated Cerny will be heading back to Germany next summer after Gers chiefs failed to negotiate an option to buy the 27-year-old when his loan spell ends. And Clement worries that will leave him in a similar position to last summer, when he was forced to wave goodbye to 16-goal frontman Abdallah Sima after the Light Blues were unable to meet Brighton’s pricey valuation of the Senegalese flyer. Sima is now ripping it up on loan in France, where his goals have helped put Champions League debutants Brest in contention for the knockout stages.
Clement said: “Yeah, I had discussions with the board in June about the wages, which had to be lowered a lot. One of the points that we talked about is having players on loan, it’s something we need for the moment.
“We don’t have the money to buy Vaclav for the moment now and we didn’t have the money to buy Abdallah at that moment. But we need to to try every year to have one player less on loan and one player more that’s an asset for the club because we’re going to have a similar situation at the end of the season in that way.
“Abdallah wanted to stay here, loved to stay here. But of course other teams are also interested and in one moment he chooses also for his career, for his wages, for everything. So of course all the club wants to lower the amount of players on loan and that’s a strategy for the next couple of years, but you cannot solve all these problems in one transfer window.
“Vaclav loves it here clearly, he told me also last week that he never felt better in his career than now physically, mentally, in the team, in the dressing room, with the staff, in the club, with the fans, everything. But of course he has a contract with another club at the end of the season, so that’s negotiations again.”
Clement was at the top table at the club’s AGM on Thursday as shareholders were left gasping in shock after it was confirmed the club had banked a measly £800,000 for the summer sales of Todd Cantwell, Scott Wright, Sam Lammers, Connor Goldson and Robby McCrorie.
The figure appeared in this year’s annual accounts – but most supporters were hoping it was an unfortunate typo. But it was no mistake, with finance chief James Taylor hinting the club was still paying for the mistakes made two years ago when Michael Beale was in charge.
The fans might not have been too impressed with the feeble return on their costly purchases but Clement conceded that was simply the going rate for five players who had seen performance levels drop. He said: “There’s maybe something to do with the wages that players were earning here and every player now is the same.
“You always want to earn more and more and not to reduce your wages. So maybe because of that some players were maybe earning a lot of money that other teams don’t want to pay that.
“Vecause of that it’s clear that the players were not really big in the market so that creates also that you have less leverage in those negotiations.”
Gers’ midweek confidence was a rare show of clinical finishing from the Ibrox line-up – and Clement wants a repeat in Dingwall on Sunday. The Ibrox boss – who has welcomed Oscar Cortes and Rabbi Matondo back to full training – said: “We were lethal, we came a lot in the offensive third like last couple of weeks and we were clinical in that way.
“We need to continue in that way, those are our principles, that’s what we want to get but it’s week after week, month after month. We want more evenings like that because that’s the football I want to see.’