KENT READY FOR LIFT-OFF
‘I was set to sign for Brugge then I got a call from my agent saying: “Don’t get on the flight!”’
THE BAGS were checked in and he’d passed through airport security. The boarding pass tucked inside Ryan Kent’s passport said he was off to Belgium until a last-minute call from his agent changed everything.
‘I was pretty close to getting on the flight,’ recalled the £7million signing. ‘I was already checked in and sitting in the departure lounge at Manchester airport. I was getting ready to fly out and sign for Club Brugge.
‘That’s when I get a call from my agent and the gaffer saying: “Don’t go on the flight”. They are in the Champions League and that was one of the main reasons I was heading there.
‘It would have been a big platform for me to showcase myself against the best European clubs. But, my heart was set on coming back here.’
From day one of pre-season, Kent knew he wanted to return to Glasgow.
During a season-long loan deal, he found personal and professional contentment. After bouncing around a series of loan deals, his heart was set on leaving Liverpool.
Speaking in Edinburgh after a preseason game against Napoli, Jurgen Klopp was clear. If Kent was leaving, he would be going nowhere on loan. It was a permanent deal or nothing.
There were no guarantees Rangers either could or would agree to the £7m asking price. Yet, as he hung up his mobile in departures that Monday morning, he finally had the certainty he craved.
‘I had a big smile on my face,’ he continued. ‘It was probably the first time I had smiled in quite a while.
‘I was just delighted. That was the call I had been waiting for the whole transfer window and for it to finally come around was a no-brainer for me.
‘I had to get in the car and get up here.’
Champions League group football at Brugge would have been no catastrophe. Drawn against PSG, Real Madrid and Galatasaray, a move to the Belgian champions held some appeal.
‘It would have been hard,’ said Kent. ‘But I knew that as much as I wanted to be here, I do have to look after myself as well. Brugge did offer a good platform for me to go and play against some of the best teams and best opposition in the world on a big stage, so there was an element of excitement about going there.
‘But there was also a side of me disappointed that Rangers had not come to bring me back here again.’
Pushed around from loan to loan between 2015 and last May, Kent had been sent to Coventry, fretted in Freiburg and spent separate spells at Barnsley and Bristol City. Steven Gerrard (below left) believes Rangers represented his ‘breakthrough year’ and the player himself agrees.
‘This is the first place I have really enjoyed my football,’ said Kent. ‘I was excited to come into training everyday, I couldn’t wait to step out on the pitch at the weekend.
‘That is down to the fans here, the coaching staff and the players. They made me feel special. The first day I arrived at Rangers, everybody treated me not only as a player but as a friend.
‘I have a lot of good mates here and, as a team, there is a lot of ambition.’
Kent met a new girlfriend in Glasgow and the reasons for returning were personal as well as professional. The clamour from Rangers supporters to return was incessant and, for a player shoved around from club to club in the last four years, humbling and flattering.
‘I was aware of it, although I tried not to read into it too much,’ said Kent. ‘There were times when it was getting quite frustrating because everyone wanted to see me back here.
‘I wanted to come back but I was being restricted from that happening. ‘The support I received from everybody was overwhelming. The other players kept asking me when I was coming back, although there wasn’t much I could tell them.
‘I didn’t know myself until the last day of the window. I asked Liverpool if I could come to Rangers because I felt I got so much out of myself last season.
‘I felt there was still more time and this was the right place for it to happen. I worked hard at the start of pre-season and we had agreed I could come back here.’
After telling Liverpool he wanted to go, the transfer fee was the obstacle.
He travelled to the United States for pre-season and still the European champions refused to entertain a loan deal. An Under-23 game against Spurs ended in a 3-0 defeat before a couple of hundred fans and, when it was over, the first thing he did was check his phone. Still the call didn’t come.
Training alone, he always knew he would move somewhere. The question was where. ‘It was quite hard because it felt like the longest pre-season of my life,’ added Kent. ‘I was running every day and mentally, it did get quite tough at times.
‘Not just for me, but for everybody around me as well. Everybody who wanted to see me back up here. I knew I had stay focused and make sure this moment would come.’
Last season, Kent played 43 games, scoring six goals and teeing up ten assists.
A big-game player, he caught the eye when he scored a fine equaliser at Celtic Park. In another game, he turned Mikael Lustig inside out and back again and, for Rangers fans, those days created a level of expectation he now has to live up to.
He added: ‘I probably wouldn’t have come back here if I wasn’t comfortable with it. I know what I have to go and deliver just as every other player has to go and deliver it.
‘There are 11 people on the pitch and I am just one of them. If I can do my part then that’s all I can do.’