Rangers land 'sought-after' forward as Ross Wilson lauds capture of Zak Lovelace and work of scouts who landed Lancelot Pollard

Zak Lovelace has left Millwall to join Rangers.

The 16-year-old forward joins from the English Championship club and will be part of Rangers’ academy in the first instance.

Lovelace was being monitored by a host of other outfits in England after he made his debut for the Millwall first team last season.

Rangers sporting director Ross Wilson said: “We are delighted to welcome Zak to Rangers. He is an exciting young player and one we are sure will progress here.

“He has developed really well with the staff at Millwall and we can see lots of potential in him.

“A key part of our scouting strategy has been to identify and invest in talent to strengthen our pipeline and the strategy is working successfully for us with Calvin Bassey and Charlie McCann being examples of that.

“Our scouts are doing a great job and are working on a number of emerging talents this summer with Lancelot Pollard also recently joining from Aberdeen.”

The club’s head of academy Craig Mulholland said: “Our academy strategy will see us develop local homegrown talent that have been with us from a young age, like Nathan Patterson, Leon King and Alex Lowry however importantly, we will augment these exciting prospects with high-potential recruited players ensuring we a have a strong pipeline of talent to challenge for the first team.

"Player trading at academy level, as we have seen this summer, is now becoming a normal part of most major clubs' strategic plans.

"We have been active as a club in this area over the past couple of years as part of our own plan and we see talented players developing well in our ranks and we are sure that Zak will follow that positive path.

“Zak is a very exciting and quick forward player who our recruitment team, headed by David Stevenson, have been tracking for some time.

"We are very much looking forward to working with him and seeing his accelerated development over the coming months and years in the excellent environment we now have at Rangers.

"Zak will be well supported by his dad Devon and his strong family unit and we can’t wait to see what level he can reach.”