Rangers may be facing an unwanted subplot to what has otherwise been a rapid and largely positive summer rebuild at Ibrox: the prospect of losing a young forward to Champions League football before Derek McInnes has even had the chance to properly assess him. Ligue 1 side Lyon have emerged as the latest club to register serious interest in Youssef Chermiti, with reports out of France suggesting the 22-year-old Portuguese forward is being lined up as a direct replacement for Endrick, who is heading back to Real Madrid after an eye-catching loan spell at Groupama Stadium.
For a Rangers hierarchy that has spent the opening weeks of this transfer window moving with unusual purpose — five incoming signings already completed before the end of June, a new manager installed with a clear mandate, and a squad being reshaped around senior, battle-tested characters — the idea of a promising young forward being poached by a European heavyweight represents a very different kind of transfer story. It is not about Rangers adding; it is about Rangers potentially having to let go of an asset just as the club looks to establish stability under its fourth permanent manager since 2021.
Lyon’s financial reality and the Endrick vacancy
To understand why Lyon have turned their attention toward Ibrox, it helps to understand the situation the French club currently find themselves in. Olympique Lyonnais have endured well-documented financial turbulence in recent seasons, operating for a period under restrictions imposed by the French football authorities’ financial oversight body, and the club has since undergone a change of ownership that has brought with it a far more conservative approach to spending. A self-imposed wage cap now shapes much of Lyon’s recruitment strategy, meaning marquee, big-money signings of the kind supporters might once have expected from a club of Lyon’s European pedigree are simply no longer realistic in the current market.
That financial caution has been thrown into sharper focus by the departure of Endrick, whose loan spell in Ligue 1 provided one of the more feel-good subplots of last season’s French top flight. The Brazilian teenager arrived at Groupama Stadium in January without an option to buy attached to the loan, a deliberate structuring choice by Real Madrid designed to preserve full control over a player they had signed for a reported €60million from Palmeiras back in the summer of 2024. Across a five-month spell in France, Endrick made a rapid and vivid impression, scoring in his first appearances in the league, the Champions League and the domestic cup, and finishing his stint with eight goals and eight assists in 21 appearances across all competitions — numbers that made him one of the most productive attacking players in the division since the turn of the year.
Lyon’s recruitment chief, Matthieu Louis-Jean, did not hide his admiration for the teenager after his final match in French colours, a 4-0 home defeat to Lens that brought the curtain down on the loan. He acknowledged that the club would have loved to find a way of extending Endrick’s stay but conceded that the financial and contractual realities made anything beyond a temporary arrangement impossible. Endrick’s own representatives were equally unambiguous throughout the loan spell, confirming from as early as February that a return to Real Madrid at the end of the season had already been decided and was never in serious doubt, regardless of how well the player performed in Ligue 1.
That leaves Lyon and head coach Paulo Fonseca with a clear and pressing need: a replacement forward capable of contributing goals from day one, but available at a fee that fits within the club’s newly disciplined spending framework. It is against that backdrop that Chermiti’s name has surfaced. According to Santi Aouna of French outlet Foot Mercato, Lyon have identified the Rangers forward as a serious option, with the French club reportedly considering an offer in the region of €20million, or approximately £17million, for his signature.
Chermiti’s rollercoaster season at Ibrox
For a player being courted by a club that has just finished fourth in Ligue 1 and qualified for European football, Chermiti’s first season in Scottish football tells a story of considerable resilience. Rangers paid Everton an initial £8million, rising to £10million with add-ons, to sign the Portuguese forward on transfer deadline day back in September 2025 — at the time, the largest fee the Ibrox club had paid for any player since their £9million move for Tore André Flo back in 2000. That the fee ranked among the biggest in the club’s modern history reflected genuine optimism about Chermiti’s ceiling, even though his previous two years at Goodison Park had been disrupted by injuries and had yielded just 24 appearances without a single goal for Everton.
The early signs in Glasgow suggested that pattern of frustration might continue. Chermiti made his Rangers debut in a 2-0 home defeat to Hearts in September, and it took him over a month to open his account for the club, eventually breaking his duck in new manager Danny Röhl’s first match in charge, a 3-1 win away to Kilmarnock in late October. From that point, however, his form transformed dramatically. Chermiti scored twice as Rangers came from a goal down to beat Celtic 3-1 at Parkhead on January 3, a result that pulled Rangers level on points with their fiercest rivals having trailed by 13 points earlier in the campaign. Six weeks later, he registered his first professional hat-trick in a 4-2 win over Hearts at Ibrox, before adding a brace, including an overhead kick, in a home Old Firm fixture on March 1 — four goals in two appearances against Celtic alone across the season.
By the time the campaign concluded, Chermiti had racked up 15 goals and five assists in 41 appearances across all competitions, numbers that represented a striking turnaround for a player written off by some supporters after his sluggish start. That kind of end-of-season form against Rangers’ biggest rivals is precisely the sort of output that tends to catch the eye of recruitment departments elsewhere in Europe, and it goes some way to explaining why Lyon, in the market for a replacement forward on a sensible budget, have zeroed in on a 22-year-old with a big-club pedigree, Champions League-level potential, and a proven ability to perform in genuinely pressurised fixtures.
Shankland’s arrival changes the maths at Ibrox
Chermiti’s timing, however, has been complicated by events off the pitch as much as by his own form on it. Rangers’ appointment of Derek McInnes as manager in June brought with it the swift signing of Lawrence Shankland, the 30-year-old Scotland international who followed his former Hearts boss to Ibrox after finishing as one of the most prolific strikers in the Scottish Premiership last season. Shankland’s arrival, on a two-year contract with the option of a third, was completed using a break clause in the deal he signed at Tynecastle only a year earlier, and it is a move widely expected to see him installed as Rangers’ first-choice centre forward heading into the new campaign.
That immediately reshapes the pecking order in Rangers’ attack. Where Chermiti spent last season establishing himself as arguably the closest thing Rangers had to a talismanic forward, he now finds himself facing direct competition for a starting berth from a manager’s own trusted, proven goalscorer — one who has already built a rapport with McInnes through their time together at Hearts. It is a dynamic familiar to Rangers followers from Bojan Miovski’s situation: reports have circulated that Miovski, only 12 months into his own Ibrox career, has grown unsettled by the level of competition Shankland’s arrival now presents, and something similar could easily develop around Chermiti if he is left to compete from a diminished position in the squad hierarchy.
Given that context, the argument for cashing in on Chermiti this summer, rather than risking a slow erosion of his value through reduced playing time, has an obvious internal logic for a Rangers hierarchy that has shown itself willing to make bold, fast decisions already this window. A club-record departure fee would also represent a significant net transfer profit relative to the £10million originally paid to Everton less than twelve months ago, at a time when Rangers are simultaneously investing heavily elsewhere in the squad — Ivor Pandur’s £6million arrival from Hull City and the various fees involved in bringing in Ross McCrorie and Ben Godfrey all add up, even before accounting for further targets McInnes may still be pursuing.
Rangers’ £21.5m valuation and a queue of suitors
Rangers, for their part, are understood to have set an asking price of £21.5million for Chermiti, a figure that — if met — would comfortably eclipse the £10million paid for him last year and stand as a club-record sale. That valuation suggests Rangers are not simply looking to offload a player who no longer fits the manager’s plans; rather, they appear to view Chermiti’s rediscovered scoring form, his age, and his continued upside as leverage to extract a genuinely substantial fee, one that would meaningfully strengthen the club’s financial position as it continues to invest in McInnes’ rebuild.
Lyon’s reported €20million offer, while sizeable, would therefore fall short of Rangers’ stated valuation, and Chermiti’s situation has been complicated further by the fact that Lyon are not the only club showing interest. The same reporting from Foot Mercato indicates that Lyon are also tracking Hearts striker Cláudio Braga as an alternative option, with talks reportedly already underway between the two clubs. Braga enjoyed a stunning breakout campaign in Scotland last season, scoring 14 goals in 33 Premiership appearances and playing a central role in Hearts’ near-miss title challenge under McInnes before his own move to Rangers this summer. Braga’s performances were recognised at the highest level domestically: he was named the SPFL’s Player of the Year and won the PFA Scotland Players’ Player of the Year award, becoming the first Portuguese player in the competition’s history to claim that honour.
Reports suggest Hearts are holding out for a fee in the region of €10million, or roughly £8.5million, for Braga — a considerably more modest figure than Rangers’ asking price for Chermiti, and one that may make him the more financially palatable option for a Lyon side operating under self-imposed spending restrictions. Should Lyon ultimately conclude that Braga represents better value, or simply a more achievable deal within their transfer budget, it could remove one of the clubs currently circling Chermiti and ease the pressure on Rangers to sanction a sale this summer.
Lyon are not believed to be the only Champions League-calibre club keeping tabs on Chermiti, either. Turkish giants Galatasaray and Eredivisie heavyweights PSV Eindhoven have also been credited with interest in the Portuguese forward, both clubs with a track record of using continental football and attractive project pitches to lure talented, ambitious young players away from smaller leagues. That breadth of interest suggests that even if Lyon do turn their attention fully toward Braga, or fail to meet Rangers’ valuation, Chermiti’s importance to McInnes’ plans could still be tested by a rival approach before the transfer window closes on September 3.
What it means for McInnes’ attacking plans
For Derek McInnes, the situation adds an extra layer of complexity to an attacking unit that had already been reshaped by Shankland’s arrival. Rangers’ likely approach to their Premiership opener away to Dundee United on July 31 has pointed toward Shankland leading the line, potentially in tandem with Chermiti in a front two, giving Rangers a blend of experienced poaching instinct and the younger forward’s mobility and improving end product. Losing Chermiti before that fixture, or indeed at any point before the transfer deadline, would force a rethink of exactly that plan, likely pushing Ryan Naderi or Bojan Miovski into a more prominent role far sooner than McInnes may have originally intended.
It would also represent a notable departure from the broader recruitment pattern McInnes has been pursuing since taking charge. Much of the noise around Ibrox this summer has centred on the manager’s stated preference for experienced, “ready-made” characters — Shankland, McCrorie, Godfrey and Neil all fit that description to varying degrees — rather than developing, high-upside young talents of the kind Chermiti represented when Rangers paid a club-record fee for him under the previous regime. Sanctioning his departure for a substantial profit would not contradict that broader recruitment philosophy so much as reflect a pragmatic reshaping of it: banking the proceeds of a well-timed sale while simultaneously building a more experienced, battle-hardened group around Shankland at the top of the pitch.
There remains, of course, a competing argument for Rangers to resist any offer that falls short of their valuation and instead retain Chermiti as legitimate competition and cover for Shankland across a season that will feature Europa League qualifying football on top of a demanding Premiership title challenge. A rotation option with Chermiti’s proven scoring record against both halves of the Old Firm derby, still only 22 years old and with room to develop further, would represent a considerable asset over the course of a long campaign — particularly given the injury record that limited his time at Everton and the possibility that similar issues could resurface at Ibrox. McInnes, who has been open in press conferences about wanting time to properly assess the whole squad before making firm decisions on futures, may yet be reluctant to sanction the exit of a forward who scored so prolifically against Celtic just months ago.
A summer of change continues at Ibrox
Whichever way the Chermiti situation resolves itself, it underlines just how much is still in motion at Rangers this summer, even after a flurry of early incoming activity. McInnes has already overseen the arrivals of Lawrence Shankland, Ross McCrorie, Ben Godfrey, Ivor Pandur and Dan Neil, while simultaneously managing the uncertain futures of Nicolas Raskin, whose form for Belgium at the World Cup has attracted fresh transfer interest from elsewhere, and now potentially Chermiti as well. Add in the various speculative reports linking Rangers with further incoming targets, including reported talks over an unnamed award-winning midfielder, and the picture at Ibrox remains one of a squad still very much under construction less than a month before a competitive fixture against Dundee United that will offer the first real clues as to what shape McInnes’ Rangers side will actually take.
For Chermiti himself, the calculus is relatively straightforward, even if the destination remains uncertain. A move to Lyon, should the French club meet Rangers’ valuation or find a compromise fee, would offer him the platform of Champions League qualifying football and a return to a level of continental competition he has not experienced since his teenage years at Sporting Lisbon. Given the competition he now faces for a starting role under McInnes following Shankland’s arrival, and the interest from multiple clubs playing at a higher continental level than Rangers can currently offer, a switch to Ligue 1, Turkey or the Netherlands might represent a logical next step in a career that has already featured stops in Portugal, England and Scotland by the age of 22.
For Rangers, the situation is one to be managed rather than feared. A sale at or close to their £21.5million valuation would represent smart business on a player bought for less than half that figure less than a year ago, freeing up further resources for McInnes to continue reshaping his squad during what has already been one of the busiest and most eventful summers in recent Ibrox history. Whether that sale materialises this window, or whether Chermiti instead stays to fight for his place under a new manager who has yet to see him in a Rangers shirt, is likely to become clearer over the coming weeks as Lyon weigh up their options between Ibrox and Tynecastle, and as the broader shape of Derek McInnes’ first Rangers squad continues to take form.
