Rangers face a summer transfer battle with CSKA Moscow after the Russian giants scouted Peterborough United’s red-hot centre-forward Jonson Clarke-Harris this month, as reported by The Daily Mail.
As luck would have it, neither Clarke-Harris nor Charlie Wyke managed to find the target during the 1-1 draw between two League One promotion chasers on Easter Monday.
The CSKA scouts, it seems, caught the strikers on a bad day.
There certainly haven’t been many occasions this season when both Clarke-Harris and Wyke have trudged off the pitch without a goal to their name on the same weekend.
The former has scored 29 times during his debut season at Peterborough – three more than Wyke has produced for Lee Johnson’s Sunderland.
But, after the in-form frontmen both drew a blank at London Road, it remains to be seen whether CSKA Moscow turn their apparent admiration into anything more serious.
As it stands, CKSA are fourth in the Russian league, finding the net on 13 fewer occasions than runaway leaders Zenit St Petersburg.
Peterborough have yet to comment on CKSA’s interest but, speaking a few weeks ago, director Barry Fry was happy to reveal clubs had been looking at League One’s top scorer.
“Rangers have been to a lot of our matches this season and they were there on Saturday (a 7-0 thrashing of Accrington Stanley). Sheffield United were also there,” Fry told Peterborough Live.
Rangers certainly timed their trip to Cambridgeshire better than CSKA did. Clarke-Harris scored a brilliant hat-trick during that seven-goal shellacking of Stanley.
Fry also suggested Peterborough are likely to demand about £5 million for a man they signed for just £1 million from Bristol Rovers last year.
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