Lewis Ferguson has confirmed that a move away from Bologna this past summer, amid reports linking him with a return to boyhood club Rangers, never got close to happening — but the Scotland midfielder and Bologna captain has stopped well short of ruling out an Ibrox return somewhere down the line.
Speaking to BBC Sport Scotland’s Colin Moffat, Ferguson was direct about how close the speculation came to becoming reality. “I had a long think after the World Cup about my future and I was a little bit unsure but nothing was ever that close,” he said. It is a clear denial of the idea that a deal was ever on the table, but the framing of his answer — that he genuinely weighed up his options rather than dismissing the idea outright — is itself revealing of how seriously he considered a change of
The context for that uncertainty is a season at Bologna that has been anything but stable. Ferguson made just 17 league starts last term under Vincenzo Italiano, a marked step down in game-time for a player who had established himself as the club’s captain and one of its most important figures since arriving from Aberdeen in 2022. Explaining the upheaval that followed, Ferguson pointed to a rapid succession of managerial changes both at club and international level. “When I went back for pre-season, we had a new manager [Domenico Tedesco] and it was like a fresh start,” he said. “We changed again since
Three head coaches inside two months — two at club level, one with the national team — is an unusually turbulent spell even by the standards of modern football, and it goes some way to explaining why Ferguson admits he considered whether his long-term future still lay in Italy. In the end, he chose continuity over a fresh start elsewhere. “I had a long think about what my future was going to look like and in the end it was still at Bologna,” he said. “I’ve loved every moment that I’ve had there. It was just about continuing that journey and seeing where it takes me.”
That commitment appears to be paying off on the pitch. Ferguson, who is under contract until 2028 with the option of a further year, has played every minute of Bologna’s five Serie A games so far this season under Palladino, suggesting the uncertainty of the summer has settled into a clear, trusted role under the club’s latest head coach.
The speculation linking Ferguson with Ibrox was not simply the product of a slow transfer-window news cycle. In July, newly installed Rangers manager Derek McInnes spoke publicly of an “obvious link” with the player, having worked with him during his time at Aberdeen, where Ferguson made his name before moving to Serie A via Hamilton Academical in 2016 and Aberdeen in 2018.
The family connection to Ibrox is deeper still. Ferguson’s father, Derek, and his uncle, Barry, both played for Rangers, with Barry going on to captain the club and later manage it. Ferguson himself was on Rangers’ books as a boy before being released at 14, a detail that adds real emotional weight to any suggestion of a return, even one that — by his own admission — was never close to happening this summer
It is on the subject of his boyhood connection to the club that Ferguson was at his most open. Asked directly about his bond with Rangers, he did not attempt to play it down. “It’s no secret that I grew up a fan and my family is involved in the club,” he said. “It was a dream of mine as a kid and that’s not changed but I don’t want to speak about that while I’m a player at Bologna.”
He went further when asked whether a future move might still be possible. “In the future, you never know. It might happen, it might not, but it’s always been something in the back of mind.
That is a notably careful answer — not a commitment, not a denial, but an acknowledgement that the idea has never fully left him. Combined with his admission that he seriously considered his options after the World Cup, it paints a picture of a player who is settled at Bologna for now, values the continuity he has found there after a chaotic year, but has not closed the door on eventually fulfilling a childhood ambition.
For McInnes, the message is one of patience rather than false hope. Ferguson has just signed up, in effect, for at least one more full season in Italy, is a regular starter under yet another new head coach, and has given no indication that a move is imminent. Any Rangers interest in the near term would have to overcome a player who has just chosen to stay through genuine upheaval rather than leave for a fresh start — a decision that speaks to real loyalty to his current club, whatever the pull of Ibrox in the background.
But the interview also confirms that the interest was real, that McInnes’s public comments in July were not simply pleasantries, and that Ferguson’s own feelings towards Rangers remain exactly what they have always been described as: a genuine boyhood dream, still there, still unresolved, and — on his own admission — not going away.
