Rangers check on Swedish-based pair

[laudrupno1 3,932]

soz just seen swedish pair in the title and was hoping for sumthin else

[Plamf 39]

Swedish based? Must be bullshit.

After all we only sign/target players from the SPL and we have no scouting network at all

It's weird, you seem to be sarcastic but you're actually right, we don't have a scouting network to speak of

[toolongawake 1,264]

soz just seen swedish pair in the title and was hoping for sumthin else

[Thaum1el 5]

"Juventus looked at me against Spartak Moscow and they have looked at me at least one more time. You know that Milan have also looked at a few of us, and so have Glasgow Rangers. There are clubs that are watching all the time - I could go any day."

Jimmy Durmaz

http://www.sydsvenskan.se/sport/fotboll/article1430955/Ur-ilskan-vaxte-arets-stora-succé.html

Next quote, though:

"We've said no straight away. I would never leave before the Champions League qualifiers, and I want to win another domestic title. After that we'll see."

[Ted E Bayer 541]

Note on original post, these were pre takeover targets..... Unlikely to still be targets?

[Thaum1el 5]

Two questions:

1) Is he any good?

2) Do you think he's telling the truth about wanting to stay until the end of the season? In other words, if Rangers had an offer accepted, would he go, or is he pretty loyal to his club?

From what I read from the guy, he seems quite attached to the club. He had a year when he was thinking about leaving, because he had problems finding playtime, and he had an offer from Twente. But the fans wanted him to stay and the club was helping him, and he decided to give it another year, in which he turned from a bench-warmer to one of the stars in a team that won the league in a fashion that everyone is sucking up to them now. His position in the club is quite solid. I believe he would want to stay for another year.

With that said, the article in reference was written on april 3rd. After that, his club has started the season less than perfectly. After only a few games, the manager was very close to resigning himself, he would have if they hadn't won their first game just then. Perhaps things have changed.

I think to get him one would have to either be a club in the likes of Man U or Barcelona or offer a wage in the levels far more than he's worth for him to go at the moment.

On the question of wether he's good enough for Rangers, I don't know. He is a promising youngster who's just made himself an established name in a Swedish top club. But, that concidered, he started 15 games and played 27, and even a top club in the Swedish league would perhaps become a middle one in the SPL.

He could be one youngster that becomes very good if he gets the chance to develop in the right club. And we wouldn't mind a left winger. But as of now, he's definately not good enough to be a regular starter in Rangers. He needs to explode this season to be worth the effort. And then we'll have to fight harder with richer clubs to get him. I think we might want to look elsewhere.

That said, I am happy to see that we're looking into alternatives. It'd be nice to see someone from Sweden succeed in my beloved club after Bojan Djorjic (who I went to school with) and Kalle Svensson. Jonatan Johansson, btw, also plays in Sweden, even if he's Finnish.

[Thaum1el 5]

Cheers for that, great insight into the player. Can I ask how a Swede like yourself ends up following the Rangers though?

Oh yeah, one more thing....'Kalle' Svensson....I read the Millennium trilogy, and Blomqvist always got annoyed when people called him 'Kalle' Blomqvist. Is it Swedish for idiot or something?

One simple and one slightly complex question.

As for my Rangers interest, the family on my father's side are Scottish. My dad died when I was wee, but on of my memories is that my dad would always check up the latest results and react to them. And so did I, of course, we're all very sensitive when we're young on what our parents do. Of course, in Sweden when I grew up there wasn't much exposure of Scottish football, so I never really knew what all that Rangers stuff was all about, but I did know that Rangers is the greatest team in the world, cause that's what dad says.

I haven't had really much contact with his side of the family since for various reasons, but I started embracing it more as I left my teens and lost interest in trying to instigate world revolutions or whatever I was up to back then. One of the things I did explore was Rangers. And now I'm helplessly in love with a club that has so much culture, history and traditions, that I'm a part of even though I spent so much time not knowing about it.

As for the Blomqvist thing, it's a matter of popular culture. A popular child book author, Astrid Lindgren (with Pippi Longstockings among other hits) wrote a series of stories about a child "private detective" named Kalle Blomqvist. Those have been turned into movies and are basically an integrated part of Swedish popular culture. Calling someone "Kalle Blomqvist", would be like telling them, basically, that they're a bright kid who's playing Sherlock Holmes. Kalle is the established nickname for Karl, though, nothing to do with that. It's the combination of the names that does it.