Derek McInnes has overseen one of the most dramatic squad overhauls in recent Rangers history this summer, bringing in 14 new signings while shipping out a significant chunk of what came before. With the Scottish Premiership title the clear priority after McInnes came agonisingly close to delivering it at Hearts last season, the expectation among supporters has been that the Ibrox squad this year would look almost unrecognisable from the one that finished third under Danny Rohl.
By and large, that expectation has been met. But not entirely. Buried in the small print of Rangers’ registered squad are three names that even engaged supporters could be forgiven for having forgotten still exist on the club’s books — players who have drifted so far from first-team contention that their continued presence at Ibrox comes as something of a surprise.
Top of the list is Jose Cifuentes, whose entire Rangers career has amounted to just 20 appearances since his move to Ibrox back in 2023. By any reasonable measure, the Venezuelan international’s time in Govan has failed to work out — a transfer that promised more than it delivered, and one that Rangers would, in all likelihood, have already looked to move on from given the scale of change elsewhere in the squad.
The reason he’s still around comes down to circumstance rather than any change of heart from the club. Cifuentes has been managing a knee injury, and repeated setbacks in his recovery have effectively kept him tied to Ibrox by necessity rather than design — there’s little market for an injured player who has already struggled to make an impact, and no incentive for Rangers to force through an exit before he’s fit enough to be properly assessed by potential suitors.
Complicating matters further is the calendar. Cifuentes’s contract is set to run until the end of the 2026-27 season, meaning that unless Rangers can find a club willing to negotiate an early departure in the January window, they stand to recoup nothing at all for a player once seen as a first-team addition. Adding to the awkwardness, once the clock ticks past January, Cifuentes will become free to open pre-contract talks with clubs abroad — a scenario that would see him leave for nothing at the end of the season regardless of what Rangers might prefer.
The second name likely to raise eyebrows is Clinton Nsiala, whose Rangers career has followed a broadly similar trajectory of promise unfulfilled. Since arriving in 2024, the French youth international has managed just 17 appearances across all competitions, never quite establishing himself as a regular fixture in Rangers’ back line under any of the managers who have overseen the club during that spell.
What sets Nsiala apart from Cifuentes, at least in terms of the club’s leverage, is his age. At 22, he remains young enough that another club could plausibly take a chance on him as a developmental project rather than a finished, proven asset — the kind of profile that tends to retain at least some transfer value even after a difficult spell elsewhere. His contract situation also gives Rangers considerably more breathing room than Cifuentes’s does: with his deal not expiring until June 2028, there’s no looming deadline forcing the club’s hand, and plenty of time to negotiate a permanent departure on Rangers’ own terms rather than being backed into a corner by an approaching contract expiry.
The third and perhaps least prominent name on the list is Paul Nsio, an academy product who joined Rangers’ youth ranks back in 2022 and has made just three first-team appearances in the years since. Nsio is currently out on loan at St Mirren for the season, which goes some way toward explaining why his continued presence on Rangers’ books has slipped under the radar for so many supporters — a player who is, technically, still a Rangers player, even if his day-to-day football is being played out at another club entirely.
His situation now carries a note of finality regardless of how the loan spell goes. Nsio is entering the final year of his contract, leaving Rangers with a decision to make over whether to offer an extension, and leaving Nsio himself with an equally open question over whether he’d even accept one if it came. Whatever happens, it looks likely he’ll end his time at Ibrox having made fewer than a handful of senior appearances for the club that developed him from a young age — a quiet, largely unremarked conclusion to what was presumably once a promising academy pathway.
Taken together, these three cases are a reminder that even the most sweeping squad overhaul rarely accounts for every player on the books cleanly. Injury recovery timelines, contract structures, and loan arrangements all have a way of keeping fringe players tied to a club long after their realistic path back into first-team contention has closed off. For Rangers, the presence of Cifuentes, Nsiala and Nsio on the periphery of an otherwise heavily rebuilt squad is a minor footnote in a summer defined by far bigger headlines — but it’s also a useful illustration of just how much housekeeping remains even after 14 new arrivals and a host of departur
None of the three appear to have any realistic route back into Derek McInnes’s first-team plans this season, and the practical business now facing Rangers is less about squad selection and more about asset management — extracting whatever value remains from each situation before contracts run down entirely. Cifuentes’s fate looks likely to be decided by his fitness and any January interest that materialises; Nsiala’s by whether a buying club emerges willing to take a punt on a player still young enough to develop elsewhere; and Nsio’s by a straightforward contract decision once his loan spell at St Mirren concludes. For now, though, all three remain, technically at least, Rangers players — even if few inside or outside Ibrox would have named them if asked to list the club’s current squad from memory.
