Rangers reeling as £7m deal for PSV Eindhoven winger Couhaib Driouech falls through at the 11th hour
Rangers have suffered another major blow after the £7million deal to sign PSV winger Couhaib Driouech was called off at the last minute due to an issue with his medical.
With under-fire boss Derek McInnes desperately seeking new additions in the wide areas, terms had been agreed between all parties for the signing of Driouech.
The 24-year-old was in the stands at Ibrox on Thursday night to watch Rangers as they were dumped out of the Europa League qualifiers against Jagiellonia Bialystok.
But it emerged yesterday morning that Rangers had pulled out of the deal at the 11th hour after an issue was flagged up in the player’s medical.
It is understood that the result against Jagiellonia, which now sees Rangers drop down into the Europa Conference League, had no bearing on the decision.
Instead, when it became clear that Rangers would be without Driouech for a number of weeks due to the injury, they were reluctant to sanction the deal.
Couhaib Driouech watched Rangers’ defeat to Jagiellonia Bialystok from the stand at Ibrox
It plunges the club’s transfer plans into fresh chaos, with McInnes now under major pressure from fans after going four matches without a win at the start of his tenure.
Rangers will face St Mirren at Ibrox tomorrow afternoon in a League Cup tie, licking their wounds from the Europa League exit and desperately seeking to get their season back on track.
Explaining how the deal collapsed, PSV director of football Earnest Stewart said yesterday: ‘In short, we believed that Couhaib would be fit again very soon.
‘He had suffered a minor injury and, in our opinion, would be able to play matches again within a week, or at least very soon.
‘They estimate the period he will be unable to play to be much longer than we do. From what I understood, six weeks. So we think it is considerably shorter.
‘Couhaib is really upset about it. Very unfortunate. He was left in uncertainty for 48 hours.
‘Everything was also postponed by a day, and he has barely been able to do anything. We are now getting a disillusioned player back. That is not nice.
‘During the four to six weeks in which they believe he is unavailable, the whole deal suddenly falls apart. This concerns a period of more than 200 weeks during which he would be under contract. After all, it was a four-year contract.’
The collapse of the Driouech deal is just the latest setback to befall beleaguered boss McInnes
McInnes had said on Thursday night that his team ‘lacked intelligence’ and that they simply were not good enough to qualify for the Europa League.
In particular, he bemoaned the manner of the Jagiellonia equaliser, which came from a simple breakaway, as the Poles levelled the match to win 3-2 on aggregate.
Rangers midfielder Dan Neil admitted that the players were too naive in their performance – and believes that a fallibility to counter-attacks is currently ‘kryptonite’ to the team.
‘Yeah, really tough,’ said Neil of the Europa League exit. ‘We had a full belief going into the game that we’d get the result we wanted.
‘We were really all out, just trying to get the crowd behind us and build momentum. I felt like we did that in the first half, but we just didn’t manage to keep it going in the second half and allowed them back into the game.
‘Then another bad counter-attack goal, which has been our kryptonite over the last four games, cost us again.’
The League Cup tie against St Mirren tomorrow is now must-win. Rangers will then face Czech side Jablonec in the Conference League play-off round, with the first leg at Ibrox on Thursday.
Rangers midfielder Dan Neil has backed his Ibrox team-mates to turn the club’s form around
Asked how they turn it around after a nightmare start to the new season, Neil continued: ‘It’s only natural that you take a bit of a confidence hit after the start we’ve had, but we’ve got a good group of lads in there.
‘It’s not unfixable. It’s something that we have to take ownership of and we have to watch it back and find a way to stop that from happening.’
Meanwhile, St Mirren boss Craig McLeish is not reading too much into current Ibrox woes ahead of the holders’ trip to Govan. He said: ‘There’s no good time to play Rangers or Celtic away from home.
‘People will talk or there’ll be noise about what they’re doing at the moment, but they’re still a very good team, a very good outfit, well-coached, well-drilled and have some real top quality players that can hurt you any moment.
‘You can’t go into it thinking that they’re vulnerable or whatever. There’s never a time where you go and they are there for the taking. You have to prepare for them as best you can and not take your eye off the ball.’
