The Rangers Winter 2025 Transfer Rumours and Deals - Thread

[compo 7,520]

Around nine and a half hours to go 

[Uilleam 6,090]

15 minutes ago, alexscottislegend said:

Scotland 0 England 5. Clark and Shilton the keepers. Pittodrie in the snow. Clark made 5 howlers.

Thanks, if thanks is appropriate, for this info. The tale of woe wot I heard was that he lost 5 in each of two matches against ENG. One was an SFA Centenary Challenge match, the other a Home International. Don't on any account, go to the bookies on this unverified story, mind. 

[Sutton_blows_goats 5,812]

Just had a dreaded WhatsApp.. Lyall Cameron to be announced by us at 3. That'll be him joining Aberdeen then  

[Uilleam 6,090]

59 minutes ago, Scott7 said:

Five. Fewer than each of his Pittodrie predecessor Fred Martin and Ha Ha Haffey and the same as another ‘keeper whose name escapes me. All of the goals conceded by the last mentioned were from offside positions.

 

It has been put to me that Bobby Clark was known to play outfield for Aberdeen, and, indeed, did so at Ibrox, as he had lost his place between the sticks to a fellow called Ernie McGarr. 

 

 

Edited Monday at 15:09 by Uilleam

[Uilleam 6,090]

10 minutes ago, Sutton_blows_goats said:

Just had a dreaded WhatsApp.. Lyall Cameron to be announced by us at 3. That'll be him joining Aberdeen then  

RANGERS Football Club are today delighted to announce the signing of Lyall Cameron on a pre-contract agreement from Dundee.

The 22-year-old midfielder has made over 100 appearances for the Dens Park side, impressing with his performances in the Scottish Premiership.
Coming through the academy at Dundee, he made his debut for the club at just 16-years-old against Raith Rovers in 2019/20. Cameron has also been capped for Scotland at under-21 level.
Technical Director, Nils Koppen said: “I am delighted that we have agreed a deal for Lyall to join the club and to continue his career at Rangers come the summer.
He is a talented young player, who has already gained great experience in the Scottish Premiership, and adding young, Scottish talent to our first-team squad is hugely important to all of us at the club.
“Lyall has a lot of potential and I look forward to seeing him continue to grow at Rangers in the coming years.”
Cameron will join the club upon the expiry of his contract in the Summer.

 

 

 

Edited Monday at 15:07 by Uilleam

[Rousseau 11,170]

Lyall Cameron Signs Pre-Contract Agreement

 

https://www.rangers.co.uk/article/lyall-cameron-signs-pre-contract-agreement/73Bo9R9ALRyLkGuYBrVsK2

[Devil's advocaat 1,684]

Very good young signing, delighted with that. 

[compo 7,520]

48 minutes ago, Uilleam said:

It has been put to me that Bobby Clark was known to play outfield for Aberdeen, and, indeed, did so at Ibrox, as he had lost his place between the sticks to a fellow called Ernie McGarr. 

 

 

Yep i remember Clark playing at centre forward a fellow Aberdeen player started out as a goalkeeper one Willie miller 

[DMAA 3,688]

Intriguing signing. Only have limited stats available because he plays in Scotland but here’s what they say:

- Great numbers for goals and shots

- Great numbers for assists and xA and chances created

- Involved a lot in the game, lots of touches, loses the ball quite often and not a dribbler

- Defensive stats a mixed bag. Great numbers for interceptions, blocks, recoveries and possession won in final third. But very poor for ground and aerial duels, tackles and fouling. 
 

All in all it looks a risk well worth taking. The only thing I'd say it's yet another signing who is well below average physically and defensively so we do need to start counter-balancing that with physical players who can help us out defending set pieces. Fernandes hopefully fits into that category to be fair. 

Edited Monday at 16:02 by DMAA

[Uilleam 6,090]

Transfers, then.

 

And here are some thoughts from Mr Hamzah Khalique-Loonat, Football Data Journalist from The Times (or @Rousseau as he is known in this parish).

 

Make of them what you will (and you will), but if only 50% of transfers are successful, perhaps we should not be too disappointed at lack of activity in the current window, or, indeed, in any window, for that matter. 

 

The seven reasons why half of all transfers end in failure

With hundreds of millions now spent on risky signings, clubs have turned to AI and number analysis to predict who is likely to flop or thrive — and why

Hamzah Khalique-Loonat, Football Data Journalist

Monday February 03 2025, 9.00am, The Times

 

https://www.thetimes.com/sport/football/article/why-transfers-fail-football-premier-league-deadline-day-j706qfxjt

 

The transfer window shuts on Monday night and while Premier League clubs are not expected to break the £815million record spend from January 2023, Manchester City alone have already shelled out £125million as they seek to rebuild their squad and prepare for the remainder of an intense season.

But the curious thing about transfers is that despite the enormous amount of money spent on them, many simply just don’t work out. In fact, the success rate is roughly 50 per cent which means new recruits are as likely to flop as they are to thrive.

The reasons are plentiful and varied, anything from injury derailing a career to players falling out of favour with a manager, having difficulties settling in or even not liking the English weather.

 

Ian Graham, the former director of research at Liverpool, set out the seven most common problems as follows: current player is better than the new player; the player is not as good as first thought; the player does not fit the style of the team; the player is played out of position; the manager does not rate the player; the player has fitness issues; the player has personal issues.

If a club was 90 per cent confident in each of those elements being successful, once those probabilities are worked out you end up with a 48 per cent chance of overall success.

 

Analysis by Plaier, a Hamburg-based football data consultancy, reinforced this point. It found that, on average, half of all new players in the Premier League appear for 540 or so minutes (or six matches of game time) before being moved on.

This number includes every player that has at least one minute of playing time, taking in reserves and academy prospects called upon in tricky situations who would otherwise realistically not be regulars.

 

Nonetheless, the number is enormous, especially when considering that wage and transfer expenditure are the biggest outlays for Premier League clubs, their importance heightened in the era of Profitability and Sustainability Rules.

But is it possible to head off these issues before signing a player? Can clubs know for certain, or act with at least near certainty, that they are not buying a dud?

Jan Wendt, the chief executive of Plaier, believes using data can help remove some of the uncertainty associated with buying players.

“We don’t look just at one single player and have a look at his metrics and compare these. We also say, against whom was he playing and with whom was he playing?” he says.

 

Measuring what players do is simple enough. Nowadays there is both event data (manually collected information that records every action by a player with the ball) and tracking data (automatically collected information captured by cameras, to document the actions of every player on the field at once) for clubs to work with.

 

The answer, Wendt believes, is in a correlation engine — a computer tool which is designed to recognise patterns.

 

“A correlation engine creates chunks out of data,” he says. “The AI runs them in parallel and selects the best tool with the highest accuracy; it guarantees that you always have the best outcome.

“It’s not just used in football, it’s also used in other areas, for example, in aviation where it’s more professional — a matter of life and death if the system has a failure.”

 

So how can this link back to football, specifically in terms of scouting and increasing the likelihood of transfers succeeding?

“The first thing we can measure is a player’s performance, but we do not measure his capabilities as a player, we measure his efficiency in a system,” he says. “We do not care how well he dribbles or how well he shoots or how many goals he scores. That has no influence on the game itself.

“We measure his contribution or, in definite terms, his efficiency in connection with 11 players and with other players playing 11 opponents home and away in a specific league.

“All these things in itself have an influence on your own performance and your performance has an influence on this whole system with the 21 other players.”

By doing this, Wendt hopes that clubs can be much smarter in their recruitment. They will be able to analyse and model what sort of players suit a specific tactical system and how they interact with team-mates — even down to the likelihood that a player will succeed in a different league or role.

Soon, perhaps, that 50 per cent figure may start to rise.