Leon Balogun blames van Bronckhorst for his exit from Ranger

Leon Balogun says he’s disappointed with the manner of his exit from Glasgow Rangers, blaming ex manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst for how things panned out.

Balogun, 33, openly revealed his desire to stay at Rangers after helping the club win the Scottish Cup back in May.

Discussions however fell through and Balogun didn’t get a renewal, was forced to leave and he joined Championship side Queens Park Rangers as a Free Agent.

Speaking to the Beautiful Game podcast, the Nigerian CB said he was hurt “so much” with how his time at the club ended.

“For me it was a sad departure from Rangers, I loved the club and I really got infected by the Blue Fever, and that’ll be for life,” said Balogun.

“It’s not that I regret being at QPR now but it was a heartbreak for me to leave Rangers. It was because I did not leave Rangers, I was released.

“That’s the fair way to put it. And I did not really expect it. At one point down the line I got prepared for it, but I still didn’t expect it.

“We were talking about a new contract, but I didn’t ever receive an offer and it was just conversations really. I asked my agent around March what was going on because my contract was coming to an end.

“I told him it was clear I wanted to stay as I had found my football home there. That’s what Disco, one of the masseuses, used to say ‘you have found home here,’ and that hit home for me because I never thought about it like that.

“But he was right. We were busy with games at the time and then there was a meeting for them to decide. They were talking about the legalities about the contract and what they thought it could look like.

“It was pretty much about agreeing a base, a foundation of how we were going to carry on from there. But to me it felt like a drag. At the end of the day, we sent them an offer a few days before my contract ended. The defender also suggested that Sporting Director Ross Wilson spent some time trying to keep him, but then manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst kicked against it.

“We didn’t hear anything back from them and then on May 31, I got a call from my agent to say they weren’t going to do it. From what I’ve been told, the manager was not too sure about it and that the Sporting Director Ross Wilson tried to convince him. Then they had him on board, but then it was a constant back and forth, back and forth.

“At one point I thought it was going to go quite quickly because they told me ‘we want to keep you and we will find a solution blah blah blah.

“But then on the final day they said, ‘no, we can’t come to a conclusion and we think it’s better, if we can’t come to a 100 percent decision, that we let things end the way they are.’ It was a tough one to take, really,” he concluded.