Former Rangers boss planning transfer ‘raid’ after landing ex Celtic and Liverpool stars

Former Rangers boss Steven Gerrard has sent a transfer warning out to the rest of Europe as he continues to revamp his Al-Ettifaq team.

The Damman-based outfit were one of many Saudi Pro League clubs to spend huge sums in the summer window as they acquired the likes of Jordan Henderson, Georginio Wijnaldum, Jack Hendry, Moussa Dembele and Demari Gray.

The league’s huge spending was one of the key talking points of this year and it shows no signs of slowing down in 2024 as the January transfer window looms.

Speaking to reporters, Gerrard claimed his team would continue to “scour Europe” in the hopes of elevating his club’s status even further.

The Liverpool icon told Goal.com: “To assure our fans, we are going to scour Europe for more options. But we’ll also, more importantly, need to scour locally to improve this squad to be more competitive.”

Al-Ettifaq are currently seventh in the table with six victories, three draws and three defeats from their opening 12 matches. Their star man this season has been Dembele with seven goals from eight appearances, but it is likely that the club will look to add even more firepower in months to come.

However, one name that is unlikely to make the move is Ex-Man Utd man Jesse Lingard. The England international was seen training with Al-Ettifaq ahead of a potential move to the Middle East and was even on the scoresheet during a friendly, but his one month training contract has not been made permanent by the club.

Reports from The Sun claim that the Saudi outfit were unwilling to meet Lingard’s wage demands, while they would also have had to release two foreign players to make the deal happen due to quota rules put in place by the league.

Lingard has been without a club since the end of the last season and has not made a first team appearance in over seven months.

His last start for Nottingham Forest came in a 3-0 defeat to Manchester United back in December 2022.