Lewis Ferguson Lands Glowing Bologna Appraisal From New Boss After Rangers Transfer ‘Ship Sails’

For a story that dominated Scottish football’s transfer conversation for much of the summer, the Lewis Ferguson-to-Rangers saga has ended up fizzling out in about as low-key a fashion as possible: not with a rejected bid, not with a dramatic deadline-day collapse, but with the player’s own father quietly confirming that the “ship has sailed,” followed almost immediately by Ferguson receiving a glowing vote of confidence from a Bologna manager who didn’t even exist in the picture when the transfer talk first bega

Few Rangers transfer stories generated as much genuine hope among supporters this year as Ferguson’s. The links stretched back to before the World Cup, when Il Resto Del Carlino reported that the midfielder had informed Bologna of his desire to assess his options and consider approaches from bigger clubs ahead of the tournament in the United States. From there, the story built steadily through the summer: TEAMtalk reported that sources close to the player described him as “very open” to a move to Ibrox, with Bologna setting an initial valuation in the region of €17million, while other reports floated the idea of a swap deal involving Nicolas Raskin heading the other way as a means of bridging the financial gap.

By late August and into September, the story had escalated further still. The Rangers Review reported that Rangers had secured a verbal “agreement” with Ferguson over personal terms, with father Derek Ferguson — himself an Ibrox hero from his own playing days — going public with claims that his son had effectively given his blessing to reunite with Derek McInnes, the manager who gave Ferguson his breakthrough in Scottish football during their time together at Aberdeen. The framing at the time was unmistakable: this was being presented as a boyhood dream on the verge of coming true, a player “destined to pull on the Rangers jersey one day,” in his own words, with the emotional pull of the McInnes connection doing much of the heavy lifting in convincing supporters the deal was as good as done.

Then, just as quickly as the optimism had built, it began to unravel. Ferguson himself moved to publicly clarify the situation in early September, with the Rangers Review reporting he had made a point of “clarifying” his Bologna situation after his father’s comments had suggested an agreement was already in place. The Daily Record and Glasgow Evening Times ran versions of the same story within hours of each other, each describing Ferguson “setting the record straight” and issuing a “denial” of the bold transfer claims that had circulated over the previous fortnight. Football Insider, in among the competing reports, suggested Rangers were still working on a deal for a 27-year-old with an indication that a £15million offer would be accepted in January — muddying the picture further as to whether this was a summer deal that had fallen through or a January move still very much alive

It was Derek Ferguson, once again, who provided the clearest and most quotable summary of where things actually stood, telling Open Goal in comments picked up widely across the Scottish football media that the “ship has sailed” on his son’s proposed reunion with Rangers and Derek McInnes. It was a notably more resigned tone from a father who, only weeks earlier, had been talking up his son’s willingness to move in terms that suggested the deal was close to a formality. The explanation behind that shift lines up closely with reporting elsewhere in the transfer saga: Bologna’s valuation, sitting somewhere between £15million and £17.2million plus add-ons depending on the report, proved difficult for Rangers to match at a time when the club’s midfield transfer budget was already being stretched by the ongoing Nicolas Raskin saga.

Raskin’s situation absorbed an enormous amount of Rangers’ attention and resources over the closing weeks of the window, with Besiktas twice attempting to prise the Belgian away — first with a loan-with-option offer, then with a straight bid reported at around €12million — before both approaches were ultimately knocked back. Fending off that interest, while also managing the broader demands of a squad rebuild that saw nine new signings arrive at Ibrox over the summer, appears to have left little room, financially or logistically, to also complete a deal for a player Bologna were never going to release cheaply. However genuine Ferguson’s own willingness to move may have been, and however strong the emotional pull of a reunion with McInnes, the practicalities of competing with Bologna’s valuation while simultaneously managing Raskin’s future proved too much for Rangers to overcome this summer.

Whatever hopes remained of the story being revived have been complicated further still by a dramatic managerial upheaval at Bologna itself — one that has nothing to do with Ferguson personally but which now shapes his immediate future at the club regardless. Domenico Tedesco, who had only been appointed in June following Vincenzo Italiano’s own departure, was sacked by Bologna after just four Serie A matches, with the club taking just a single point from a possible twelve and suffering back-to-back 1-0 defeats to Lazio, Atalanta and Napoli. It was a brutal, rapid end to Tedesco’s tenure — barely 99 days in the job — and made Bologna the second Serie A club to change manager inside the opening month of the season, following Fiorentina’s decision to sack Fabio Grosso and swiftly re-hire Paolo Vanoli.

In Tedesco’s place, Bologna moved immediately for Raffaele Palladino, a 42-year-old who had previously managed Monza, Fiorentina and, most recently, Atalanta, where he led the Bergamo side to a seventh-place Serie A finish and Conference League qualification before being relieved of his duties at the end of last season. Palladino was handed a contract running until June 2029 — a striking show of long-term faith from a Bologna hierarchy that had shown considerably less patience with his predecessor — and took his first training session within hours of the appointment being confirmed, ahead of his first match in charge against Torino before the extended international break.

It’s in this context — a brand new manager, parachuted in to firefight a struggling Bologna side, with every incentive to make swift and decisive judgements about which players he can build around — that Palladino’s early comments on Ferguson carry real significance. Asked directly about the Scotland international, who will be hoping to catch new national team head coach Sebastien Pocognoli’s eye during the upcoming Nations League campaign, Palladino did not hedge in his assessment: “He’s a versatile player, he can play in a two-man midfield or under a striker. He’s an intelligent player. I believe in him a lot and I believe in all the midfielders I have. I’m satisfied with the midfield.”

For a manager who has been in the building barely a matter of days, that is about as clear an endorsement as Ferguson could have hoped for. It speaks to exactly the profile that made him such an attractive target for Rangers in the first place — genuine tactical versatility, the intelligence to operate in more than one system, and enough consistency to have already earned Bologna’s captaincy in recent times. Palladino’s willingness to publicly back Ferguson so early into his own tenure suggests the Scotland international is set to remain central to Bologna’s plans as the new manager looks to arrest what has been a genuinely alarming start to the season, rather than being viewed as a squad player who might be moved on to fund other priorities in January.

That last point matters enormously for anyone in Scotland still holding out hope of a January reunion with Rangers. Football Insider’s earlier report of a £15million offer being accepted in the New Year always looked more like an aspiration than a firm indication of Bologna’s willingness to sell, and Palladino’s comments this week make that path look considerably narrower still. A new manager who has publicly stated satisfaction with his midfield options, and who has gone out of his way to praise a specific player’s versatility and intelligence within his first week in the job, is not a manager likely to sanction that same player’s sale three months later — particularly not while he is still trying to establish his own identity and stabilise a side sitting perilously close to the relegation zone.

There is also the practical reality of Bologna’s situation to consider. A club that has taken just one point from four matches and sacked a manager as a result is not one likely to weaken its own squad in the January window, whatever individual offers might come in. If anything, Palladino’s early priority will be adding to his group rather than subtracting from it, and a player he has already identified as central to his midfield plans is about the last player he would want to lose during a rebuild of this

None of this diminishes what has otherwise been a solid, if unspectacular, individual campaign for Ferguson at club level. He has made regular appearances for Bologna in the current Serie A season, continuing to operate primarily as a defensive midfielder, and remains a senior figure within a squad that has undergone considerable turnover across the summer. His standing as a Coppa Italia winner from the 2024–25 season, and his continued involvement with the Scotland national team, both point to a player still very much considered a first-team fixture rather than one drifting towards the exit.

The international dimension adds an extra layer of intrigue to how the coming months might play out. Ferguson will be part of Scotland’s plans as Sebastien Pocognoli takes charge of his first Nations League campaign as head coach, following on from a World Cup campaign in the United States over the summer that offered Ferguson further exposure on the biggest stage the international game has to offer. A strong showing under the new Scotland regime, allied to Palladino’s public backing at club level, would only reinforce the sense that this is a player entering a settled and productive period professionally, even as the Rangers transfer saga that dominated headlines for much of the summer quietly draws to a

For Rangers and Derek McInnes, the lesson from the Ferguson saga sits alongside a broader story about the constraints of this summer’s transfer window. Fending off Besiktas’s determined pursuit of Nicolas Raskin evidently came at a cost elsewhere in the squad-building process, and Ferguson’s situation is the clearest example of a target that got away not through any lack of genuine interest on either side, but through the practical limits of what Rangers could realistically finance while also protecting one of their most important existing assets. It is a trade-off McInnes and the Ibrox hierarchy will hope pays off on the pitch — and, on the evidence of Rangers’ recent Old Firm form, there is a reasonable case that keeping Raskin has already justified itself many times over, even if it meant a boyhood-supporting midfielder’s homecoming had to be shelved in the process.

Whether that shelving proves permanent remains to be seen. Football has a habit of reopening stories that look definitively closed, and Ferguson’s stated ambition to one day wear a Rangers jersey has not disappeared simply because the circumstances around this particular window made a deal unworkable. But with a new manager at Bologna publicly vouching for his importance within days of taking charge, and with Rangers’ own midfield now built firmly around the Raskin-Neil-Devlin trio that has been central to the club’s revival, the realistic timeline for any Ferguson reunion looks to have been pushed back considerably further than the optimistic talk of late August ever suggested. For now, as his father has already conceded, that particular ship has sailed — and Palladino’s Bologna look in no rush to help it dock in Govan any time soon.