Expert View: Rangers new signing could plug gap in the market in Premier League
Olwethu Makhanya has been at Ibrox for less than two months, but FootballTransfers.com’s chief editor Robin Bairner is already framing the South African centre-back as a player Rangers may struggle to keep hold of, with pundits drawing comparisons to Virgil van Dijk’s breakthrough move from Celtic to Southampton and warning that a Premier League club could come calling as early as January.
Makhanya joined Rangers from MLS side Philadelphia Union for an estimated £3.4million in July, following the 2026 World Cup, at which he was part of South Africa’s squad but did not play a single minute. Two months on, he has become one of the most talked-about young defenders in Scottish football, with his reputation cemented by a pair of outstanding displays against Celtic inside a single week — a 3-0 League Cup quarter-final win and a 1-0 league victory — that swung early momentum in the title race towards Ibrox
The starkest assessment came from former Rangers midfielder Andy Halliday, quoted by the Evening Times. “Makhanya, I can’t see him being a Rangers player for long. I can’t,” Halliday said. “He’s an absolute Rolls-Royce of a defender. [Camilo] Duran tried to roll him twice and we know how quick Duran is. When [Haissem] Hassan comes on, Makhanya goes one vs one with Hassan. Complete composure on the ball and his goal… Alright it was ruled out and rightfully so, it hits his hand, but when it hit the back of the net I couldn’t believe what I was watching. I just think he’s been an absolute revelation since he’s come into the side. He’s made Emmanuel Fernandez better alongside him as well.”
That last point matters, because Fernandez had himself been the subject of ambitious transfer talk earlier in the season, with a reported Arsenal link. Bairner’s analysis argues that Makhanya, not his more heavily talked-about defensive partner, now looks the more likely of the pair to complete the kind of move Van Dijk made a decade ago — arriving in England unheralded, via Scottish football, before becoming one of the Premier League’s dominant central defenders. Unlike Fernandez, whose occasional defensive lapses have been visible this season, Makhanya has shown none of the same errors, at least not yet, appearing strong, quick and composed, and willing to take responsibility carrying the ball out of defence.
The numbers back up the eye test. Across Makhanya’s last eight starts, Rangers have conceded only three goals, a run that has included three successive 1-0 league wins.
Former Rangers and Scotland defender Alan Hutton struck a similar note, but with a specific historical parallel that will resonate uncomfortably with Ibrox supporters. “It’s a real concern that Makhanya is doing so well that somebody might come in and try to pinch him in January, similarly to what happened with Boumsong,” Hutton said. “He’s been one of the best signings for Rangers for a long time. He’s come in and settled in seamlessly, a bit under the radar. Rangers haven’t had much success recently with guys coming in from MLS, but he’s just taken everything in his stride.”
The reference is to Jean-Alain Boumsong, the French centre-back whose brief but electric spell at Ibrox in 2004-05 ended with a £8million move to Newcastle United after only six months, a deal that remains a byword in Scottish football for a smaller club losing a breakout talent the moment its value became impossible to ignore. Hutton’s comparison signals that this is not simply idle transfer chatter — it is a warning rooted in a very specific and painful piece of Rangers history, and one that suggests seasoned observers of the Ibrox dressing room see real parallels between the two situations.
The framing of Makhanya as a player who could “plug a gap” in the Premier League rests on more than reputation. English top-flight clubs have shown a recurring willingness to pay well over the odds for young, physically imposing, ball-playing centre-backs who can operate in a back four or a back three — exactly the profile Makhanya offers, and exactly the profile Van Dijk offered when Southampton paid a club-record fee for him in 2015. The current Premier League landscape, with several clubs still searching for a long-term successor to ageing central defenders and others simply hoarding promising young talent regardless of position, means a defender performing at Makhanya’s level in a title-chasing Scottish Premiership side is unlikely to go unnoticed for long.
New data from the CIES Football Observatory has already placed Makhanya’s market value at approximately £12million, a fourfold increase in the seven weeks since he joined Rangers from a fee of around £3million. Football Insider has separately reported that Rangers would be prepared to accept a sufficiently large offer from a top-five European league in January, even while publicly stating their priority is to keep him for at least a full season under his contract, which runs until 2030.
Bairner’s analysis is careful to frame the short-term picture as one of restraint rather than urgency. Rangers’ goal, in his words, will be to retain Makhanya until at least the end of the season and take stock of their position at that point; losing such a talent in January is “not on the cards unless a club arrives with a crazy bid.” But the longer-term ambition inside Ibrox is already visibly shaped by the scale of profit on offer. Rangers’ current record sale stands at the £23million (then around £20million) Ajax paid for Calvin Bassey in 2022, and the club will, in Bairner’s words, “have one eye on a record sale” if Makhanya’s rise continues at anything like its current pace.
That is a striking position for a club to be in barely two months after signing a player for a fraction of that figure. It also illustrates the particular commercial logic Rangers, and Scottish football more broadly, now operate under: unable to compete financially with the Premier League’s middle and lower tiers, let alone its elite, the realistic model for progress is to identify undervalued talent, develop it in a competitive but affordable league, and sell at the point value peaks — precisely the trajectory Bassey followed, and the one now being sketched out for Makhanya
For Derek McInnes, the upside and the risk sit uncomfortably close together. Makhanya’s form has been central to a defensive record that has underpinned Rangers’ recent six-game unbeaten run and, in particular, the club’s derby double over Celtic — results that have done more than anything else this season to reshape perceptions of McInnes’s rebuilding project. Losing that platform in January, even for a substantial fee, would represent a serious blow to a title challenge that has only just gathered real momentum.
At the same time, nobody at Ibrox is likely to complain too loudly if the valuation keeps climbing. A player signed for £3.4million who could eventually surpass Bassey’s £23million departure fee would represent one of the most efficient pieces of transfer business in the club’s recent history, whatever the short-term cost to the team’s defensive stability. For now, Rangers’ position is to hold firm, enjoy the performances, and let the market — rather than any external pressure — decide when the moment to cash in has arrived.
