James tavernier told derek he will return to Rangers if he will be the aptain again and also

James tavernier told derek he will return to Rangers if he will be the aptain again and also Rangers are closing in on what would be their twelfth signing of an extraordinarily busy summer transfer window, with reports from the Daily Record confirming that Derek McInnes’s recruitment team have recommended pressing ahead with a deal for Girona winger Kim Min-su, and a medical now scheduled for Monday as the Ibrox club moves to trigger the South Korean’s £8.5million release clause. It’s the clearest signal yet that this deal, which had been gathering momentum for the best part of a week, is now genuinely close to being finalised, and it represents exactly the kind of fresh attacking reinforcement McInnes has been crying out for since replacing Danny Rohl at the helm two months ago. For a Rangers support that has watched the club’s wide areas remain stubbornly short of options throughout the early weeks of the new season, the prospect of a genuinely exciting twenty-year-old with real upside arriving before deadline day will be a welcome development, even if question marks remain over just how quickly he can adapt to the rigours of Scottish football.

According to Record Sport, Rangers have made a deliberate decision to push the button on this particular deal rather than continue shopping elsewhere in the market, a call that reflects the club’s belief that Kim represents better value for money than some of the alternative targets they’d been considering throughout the window. That’s a significant detail, because it confirms Rangers have been actively weighing up multiple options for their wide-attacking positions before ultimately settling on the young Korean international as their preferred route forward. Technical director Dan Purdy and chief executive Jim Gillespie are understood to have been central to that recruitment process, with the pair firmly landing on Kim’s name after an extensive assessment of potential attacking targets available within Rangers’ budget. It’s worth noting too that this decision arrives against the backdrop of Rangers having already opened separate talks with Besiktas over a potential return to Ibrox for Vaclav Cerny, though sources close to the club have indicated the financial demands involved in restructuring that particular deal make it considerably less likely to materialise than the more straightforward Kim Min-su transfer, even as conversations with the Turkish side are said to remain ongoing in parallel.

Kim’s underlying profile explains exactly why Rangers have identified him as such an attractive target despite his relative inexperience at the top level. The 20-year-old, who moved to Catalonia as a young boy after being born in South Korea, progressed through a string of Barcelona-area academies before eventually breaking into Girona’s first-team picture, making half a dozen senior appearances during the 2024-25 campaign before a hugely productive loan spell in the Spanish second tier with Andorra last season, where he contributed six goals and four assists across forty appearances. That loan spell proved to be exactly the platform he needed to establish himself as a genuine first-team option, and he’s continued to impress since returning to Girona this season following their relegation from La Liga, putting in an eye-catching display in the club’s second league game of the new campaign against Cordoba on 21 August, playing 76 minutes and showing real quality on the ball along with an evident ability to beat defenders in one-on-one situations, even as his side went down 2-1 on the day. It’s exactly the kind of directness and unpredictability from wide areas that McInnes has made abundantly clear he’s been desperate to add to his squad since taking charge, and Kim’s inverted, right-footed style operating primarily from the left flank fits neatly into the high-tempo, transition-based approach the new manager has been trying to implement at Ibrox.

The broader context behind Rangers’ urgency in this specific pursuit is impossible to separate from the club’s well-documented struggles out wide throughout the summer. McInnes inherited a squad that lost Oliver Antman, Danilo and Nedim Bajrami from its attacking positions, and while Daisuke Yokota’s arrival from Hannover 96 earlier in the window addressed part of that shortfall, the left side of Rangers’ attack has continued to rely on a rotation of Djeidi Gassama and Findlay Curtis, neither of whom has yet nailed down the position with the consistency McInnes will be demanding as the season progresses. That need has only grown more pressing given the club’s underwhelming start to the campaign under the new manager, a run that included a Europa League qualifying exit at the hands of Jagiellonia Bialystok and dropped Rangers into a Conference League play-off against Czech side Jablonec, results that have intensified scrutiny on McInnes and sharpened calls from supporters and pundits alike for fresh faces to arrive as quickly as possible. Former Rangers midfielder Andy Halliday was among those to publicly stress the scale of what’s still required at Ibrox, arguing the squad shouldn’t be anywhere near as imbalanced as it currently is given how late into the window the club finds itself, and specifically calling for additional reinforcements out wide as one of several priority areas.

It’s also worth placing this move within the wider pattern of Rangers’ recruitment activity across what has already been an extremely busy summer under new ownership backing. Kim would arrive as the club’s twelfth new addition of the window, following an extensive list of incomings that has included Lawrence Shankland, Ross McCrorie, Ben Godfrey, Ivor Pandur, Dan Neil, Cammy Devlin, Vanja Dragojevic, Olwethu Makhanya, Daisuke Yokota, James Penrice and, most recently, Kosta Nedeljkovic on loan from Aston Villa. That represents a genuinely significant overhaul of the first-team squad, reflecting both the scale of the rebuild McInnes was tasked with undertaking and the level of financial backing being made available to him by chairman Andrew Cavenagh, who has previously indicated during a shareholder meeting that further additions should be expected before the window shuts. Even with Kim’s arrival appearing close to confirmed, reports suggest Rangers aren’t finished there, with the club also continuing to explore options at centre-forward following Youssef Chermiti’s serious knee injury, an issue that has forced McInnes and his recruitment team to simultaneously hunt for a replacement striker in addition to their wide-area reinforcements. Lens forward Rayan Fofana has been mentioned as one option under consideration on that front, with reports suggesting a loan move for the young Frenchman could potentially follow on the back of the Kim deal being completed.

There are, inevitably, some reasonable questions attached to a move of this nature, and it would be doing supporters a disservice to pretend this represents a risk-free piece of business. Kim remains a player with fewer than fifty senior appearances to his name, the vast majority of which have come either in Spain’s second tier or in a Girona side that’s now playing at that same level following relegation from La Liga, meaning there’s a genuine element of projection and potential involved in committing a fee that could stretch to £8.5million for a player yet to properly establish himself at the very top level of European football. Adjusting to the physicality and relentless intensity of Scottish Premiership football is never a straightforward transition, even for more experienced imports, and it remains to be seen how quickly Kim can find his feet in an unfamiliar league and footballing culture should the move go through as expected. Those are fair considerations, but they need to be weighed against the calculated logic behind the pursuit: a versatile, direct young attacker available at a release clause that represents relatively modest business by modern transfer market standards, arriving from a club in Girona whose own relegation and contract situation with the player have created exactly the kind of opportunity Rangers’ recruitment team have been well-placed to exploit.

For McInnes personally, getting this deal over the line before Monday’s scheduled medical will represent a genuinely welcome boost after a difficult opening stretch in the Ibrox hotseat. The manager has been consistently vocal about the pace of incoming transfer business needing to quicken, and with a Conference League play-off against Jablonec looming along with the ongoing task of rebuilding momentum in the league following the club’s stumbling start, reinforcements of Kim’s profile arriving sooner rather than later will go some way towards easing the pressure that’s built around the Ibrox hotseat since his appointment. Should the medical proceed without complication on Monday as scheduled, Rangers fans can expect confirmation of a deal that’s been quietly gathering pace behind the scenes for the best part of a week, adding a fresh and potentially exciting new dimension to a wide-attacking department that has, by most assessments, been crying out for exactly this kind of injection of pace, unpredictability and youthful ambition since the summer rebuild first got underwa