Why Rangers Are Keen on Hugo Siquet as Their Right-Back Search Takes a New Twist
Rangers’ hunt for reinforcements at right-back appears to have taken on a fresh dimension, with a new name now being linked to the Ibrox club. Club Brugge’s Hugo Siquet, a 24-year-old Belgian international, has emerged as a target as Derek McInnes continues to look for additional options in that area of the pitch, despite already having brought in Ross McCrorie earlier in the window.
The interest in Siquet comes against the backdrop of comments made by Rangers chairman Andrew Cavenagh, who recently told shareholders that he expects somewhere between three and five further signings before the transfer window closes. If those comments are anything to go by, the club’s business this summer is far from finished, and a move for another right-back would fit within that broader picture of continued squad strengthening.
Siquet has been on the books at Club Brugge since the summer of 2024, having previously played in Germany for Bundesliga side Freiburg. His performances for the Belgian giants over the past year appear to have caught the attention of Rangers’ recruitment team as the transfer window enters its final, more urgent phase.
What makes the reported interest in Siquet particularly notable is that he is not the only right-back to have been linked with a move to Ibrox in recent days. Earlier this week, the Daily Record reported that Aston Villa’s Kosta Nedeljković had also been the subject of transfer speculation involving Rangers. Taken together, the two links suggest that this is an area of the squad Derek McInnes is not entirely satisfied with as things stand, and one he is actively looking to strengthen before the window shuts.
According to French outlet Foot Mercato, Rangers have been closely monitoring Siquet’s situation at Club Brugge, with the report suggesting the Ibrox club have taken a particular liking to his profile as a player. His performances in Belgian football over the course of the past season are said to have played a significant role in raising his profile among clubs elsewhere in Europe, Rangers apparently included.
From a contractual standpoint, Siquet is tied to Club Brugge until 2028, meaning there is no obvious pressure on the Belgian club to sell purely because his deal is running down. That said, clubs in Siquet’s situation — under contract for a healthy length of time but attracting interest from elsewhere — are often more open to entertaining a sale if the price is right, since selling now, while his value and reputation are on the rise, may be more attractive than waiting and risking his value plateauing or declining without the security of a contract extension in place. In other words, Brugge may see this as a sensible moment to cash in at a premium fee, rather than gamble on his stock remaining as high in future windows.
Any discussion of Rangers strengthening at right-back inevitably invites comparison with James Tavernier, the club’s long-serving and hugely influential former captain in that position. Tavernier’s importance to Rangers over the course of his time at Ibrox went well beyond simple defensive duties — he was, for a long period, one of the most productive attacking full-backs in Scottish football, combining defensive responsibility with a genuine goal-scoring and chance-creating threat down the right flank that few, if any, opposite numbers in the Scottish Premiership could match.
Replacing that level of all-round output was always going to represent a significant challenge for Rangers, and it’s a challenge that has evidently continued to occupy the club’s recruitment thinking well after Tavernier’s Ibrox career came to an end. The pursuit of a player like Siquet suggests the club isn’t simply looking for a competent, defensively sound right-back, but specifically one who can offer something in the final third as well — a like-for-like attempt, in spirit if not necessarily in identical statistical output, to recapture some of what Tavernier brought to that position for so many years.
The statistical picture behind the growing transfer interest in Siquet paints him as an attacking-minded full-back whose end product ranks among the best in Belgium’s top division. According to data from FotMob, no right-back in the Belgian Pro League created more chances per 90 minutes over the course of the 2025-26 season than Siquet, whose figure of 2.66 chances created per game placed him at the very top of the positional charts in that metric.
His crossing numbers tell a similarly impressive story. Siquet averaged 2.24 successful crosses per game across the season, a return that placed him inside the top 4.4 per cent of players in his position — a strong indication of both the volume and accuracy of his delivery from wide areas, an attribute that would translate well to a Rangers side looking to create more clear-cut chances from the flanks.
Perhaps most tellingly, his expected assists figure of 0.25 per 90 minutes placed him within the top 5.9 percentile among his positional peers — a metric that reflects not just how often he was getting the ball into dangerous areas, but the underlying quality of the chances he was creating for teammates, based on the type and location of the passes and crosses he was providing.
Taken together, these numbers depict a full-back whose defensive duties are complemented by a genuine attacking output — someone capable of consistently contributing to chance creation from a wide starting position, rather than a player whose game is confined largely to defensive containment. For a club looking to add precisely that kind of attacking value from right-back, those are the sort of underlying numbers that would understandably attract interest.
The context in which this interest in Siquet has emerged makes his statistical profile particularly relevant. Rangers have, at various points already this season, been criticised for struggling to convert general attacking dominance into actual goals on the scoreboard — a pattern that was evident, according to the report, in matches against both Dundee United and Hibernian. In games where Rangers have had control of possession and territory without finding the back of the net as often as their overall performance might have suggested they should, questions have naturally been raised about where the extra spark or cutting edge might come from.
A right-back with Siquet’s chance-creation numbers would, at least in theory, offer one route toward addressing exactly that problem. Full-backs who can consistently deliver dangerous crosses and create high-quality chances add an additional attacking outlet that doesn’t rely purely on central midfielders or forwards to unlock opposition defences. If Rangers have indeed been guilty of dominating games without translating that dominance into goals, a right-back capable of regularly putting the ball into dangerous areas from wide positions could meaningfully sharpen the side’s overall attacking output, even without changing personnel in more central areas of the pitch.
The emergence of Siquet’s name alongside that of Kosta Nedeljković also raises an interesting question about how Rangers’ recruitment process is likely to unfold from here. It’s not uncommon for clubs to track multiple targets in the same position simultaneously, particularly during the closing stages of a transfer window when negotiations can move quickly and any one deal can fall through at short notice — as was recently highlighted in reporting around PSV Eindhoven’s difficulties completing several deals this year.
Having more than one option identified in the same position gives Rangers a degree of flexibility, allowing the club to pursue whichever deal proves most achievable, whether on the basis of transfer fee, personal terms, or willingness on the selling club’s part to do business. Whether that ultimately means a straight choice between Siquet and Nedeljković, or the possibility of both eventually arriving at Ibrox as part of the broader squad rebuild Cavenagh has spoken about, remains to be see What happens next
For now, Siquet’s situation is one to watch the transfer window edges toward its conclusion. With his contract at Club Brugge running until 2028, there is no obvious urgency on the Belgian side to sell, meaning any deal is likely to depend on Rangers being willing to meet a fee Brugge consider to reflect a fair, premium valuation for a player whose underlying numbers suggest he is performing at, or near, the top of his positional category in Belgian football.
Given Andrew Cavenagh’s recent comments about further incoming transfers before the window shuts, and given the apparent gap McInnes still sees in his right-back options despite the earlier addition of Ross McCrorie, it would be no surprise if this pursuit intensifies in the coming days. Whether it’s Siquet, Nedeljković, or another name yet to emerge, Rangers’ business at right-back looks set to be one of the more closely followed subplots of the closing stages of this transfer window.
