Michael Beale has revealed he urged Fashion Sakala to accept a big money offer from Saudi Arabia despite ‘counting on’ him to be part of his Rangers plans this term.
The striker confirmed his departure from Ibrox on Monday evening as he bid an emotional farewell on social media and jetted out to put pen-to-paper on a deal with Al-Fayha.
Rangers announced the completion of the switch on Tuesday night and have banked a fee in the region of £4million for Sakala.
And Beale believes the incentives on offer were too great for the Zambian to turn down as he left Ibrox having scored 24 goals in 91 appearances for the club.
Beale said: “Fashion Sakala is very close to moving to a team in Saudi. He was a player I was counting on, a boy I had a really close relationship with, maybe even stronger than with anyone else in the group.
“He’s done very well for us and the strength of the relationship was probably important because the offer for him and his family I felt was a very good one. We spoke at length about it and he leaves with everyone’s well wishes.
READ MORE: Michael Beale outlines Jose Cifuentes' Rangers settling in period
“He’ll always be invited back to Rangers but financially that was an offer for Fashion and his family that he should have taken and he has done now.”
Beale confirmed that there had been no update on Glen Kamara’s future as half-a-dozen clubs from across the continent keep tabs on the midfielder this summer.
Defender Ridvan Yilmaz will miss the visit of Servette in the Champions League and is not expected to return to action until the Viaplay Cup clash with Morton.
But Ben Davies is due back in the coming days as Rangers continue to move through a hectic fixture schedule that started with their shock Premiership defeat to Kilmarnock on Saturday.
Beale said: “Ben will return to training probably Tuesday or Wednesday next week.
READ MORE: James Bisgrove provides Rangers director of football search update
“At this moment of time, Ben is still not available for selection. For this round, you only have to pick the European squad for the next two weeks.
“Tom Lawrence hasn’t featured for a long time, Kemar Roofe is only just back in and we can’t keep selecting him for a game every two or three days if he’s going to pick up on his fitness.
“Ben wasn’t available. Rabbi actually got injured the day we submitted the squad so that was really unlucky.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here