Rangers flop jeered by his own fans as £2.5m transfer takes a bad turn
The most casual observes of Dutch football may be a little surprised to hear that former Rangers striker Sam Lammers recently departed the pitch to ironic cheers from his own FC Twente ‘supporters’.
After all, the one-time Rangers misfit scored one of the finest solo goals you will ever see as recently as February.
Squint, and you would be forgiven for thinking it was Dennis Bergkamp in his Arsenal pomp. Sam Lammers controlled the ball on the swivel, sat one RKC Waalwijk defender down inside the penalty area and then scooped a sumptuous finish over a flailing goalkeeper.
A truly world-class effort from a man who tends to make the beautiful look straightforward and the simple look complex.
Yet, throughout much of his time in Eschede, FC Twente coach Joseph Oosting has had to defend Lammers from a vocal set of critics.
Photo by Marcel ter Bals/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
Photo by Marcel ter Bals/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
Sam Lammers jeered as Rangers flop struggles to win over FC Twente fans
Signed in a deal worth around £2.5 million last summer, expectations were high, and not just because of a price-tag Dutch football does not see all that often outside the ‘big three’ of Ajax, PSV Eindhoven and Feyenoord.
Lammers had been prolific during a loan spell at Utrecht in the second half of 2023/24. In 18 games, he scored ten Eredivisie goals.
Lammers has now played exactly the same number of league matches as a Twente player. In that time, he has found the net seven times by comparison. And, after he failed to add to that tally during the tense 1-0 win over Almere City last time out, the Rangers flop was hauled off on the hour mark to some very audible jeers from the Grolsch Veste stand.
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Twente coach urges supporters to back Lammers
Oosting can understand the frustration. What he cannot fathom, however, is why the fans would so clearly turn on one of their own.
“Sam didn’t play well. We didn’t play well,” Oosting admits, speaking to Tubantia while confirming that Lammers played through the pain barrier against Almere. “Bad is bad.
“But Sam did take risks for the team and the club on Sunday. If a player does play, I think the public shouldn’t react like that.
“He didn’t deserve that. We need a great crowd and each other, even if things don’t go so well against Feyenoord on Sunday.”
“He was not booed. It was even worse [than that]. They cheered as if a goal was scored”, explains reporter Tijmen van Wissing. “That is even worse than booing, I think, because that is cynical and I would find that even worse.”
Over the course of the last week, much of the discussion has centred around what many view as Lammers’ lack of real fire and aggression. He is a player, former Twente coach Jan van Staa adds, who ‘relies too much on his technical qualities’.
Van Staa believes that a large part of the reason why Lammers failed to fit in at Rangers was that he simply lacks the requisite physicality or the drive to put himself about.
Some are even starting to wonder whether Twente would be better off dropping Lammers and promoting Lucas Vennegoor of Hesselink – son of former Celtic frontman Jan, as you might have guessed – to the starting XI in his place.
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