AEK Athens’ Vassilis Lambropoulos was linked with Scottish Premiership giants Rangers last week – but Millwall’s Jake Cooper won’t be joining.
After months of speculation, any lingering hopes that Rangers had of luring Jake Cooper to Ibrox are over.
The 23-year-old Millwall defender has committed his future to the London club by signing a long-term contract, just weeks after Steven Gerrard had told Rangers that he wanted the man-mountain centre-back snapped up, according to The Express.
Fortunately, Cooper is not the only defender on Rangers’ hit-list. And with the former Reading man now out of their reach, the sensible move would be to switch attention to another powerful centre-back who could add combativeness and strength to the back-line.
According to SDNA, Rangers are interested in the 28-year-old AEK Athens defender Vassilis Lambropoulos. In a dream 2018, Lambropoulos won the Superleague title, knocked Celtic out of Europe and forced his way into the Greek national team for the first time.
Now, Lambropoulos would probably represent more of a risk given that he would arrive at Ibrox as something of an unknown but his aggressive style marks him out as a fine alternative to Cooper.
He could be cheaper too. Lambropoulos’ contract expires at the end of the season with AEK likely to let him go in January.
Cooper, meanwhile, was the subject of a rejected £3 million bid from Rangers in July (Sky Sports) – and that is before he scored three goals and set up six more in the first few months of the current Championship campaign.
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