MEDICAL TODAY: MCINNES MAKES PERSONAL PHONE CALL TO PUSH THROUGH DEAL — JOURNALIST

Rangers are on the verge of completing what would be Derek McInnes’s twelfth signing of a remarkably busy summer, with reports confirming that Girona winger Kim Min-su is set to undergo his medical today as the Ibrox club moves to finalise a deal built around triggering the South Korean’s £8.5million release clause. According to reporting from the Rangers Review, McInnes has taken it upon himself to speak directly with Min-su in recent days as part of the club’s efforts to get the move over the line, a personal touch that’s fast becoming something of a trademark of how the Rangers boss operates in the transfer market, and one that appears to have played a decisive role in convincing the 20-year-old that Ibrox represents the right next step in his career.

This isn’t the first time this summer that McInnes has picked up the phone himself rather than leaving matters entirely in the hands of his recruitment department, and it’s a pattern worth paying attention to given how it’s played out previously. When Rangers moved to sign James Penrice on loan from AEK Athens, it was a direct call from McInnes to the player, someone he’d previously worked with during his time at Hearts, that proved decisive in swaying the left-back away from Celtic’s interest and towards a return to Scottish football under a manager he already knew and trusted. TEAMtalk reported at the time that Rangers moved decisively within a 48-hour window once McInnes made that call, outlining his plans for the player and effectively selling him on the project at Ibrox, with personal terms wrapped up and a medical booked within days. It’s evidently a tactic McInnes believes in, leaning on his own relationships and powers of persuasion to close deals quickly once Rangers have identified their man, rather than purely relying on the mechanics of formal negotiation between clubs.

The Min-su pursuit itself has been gathering pace steadily over the past week, ever since Rangers’ recruitment team, led by technical director Dan Purdy and chief executive Jim Gillespie, settled on the South Korean as their preferred target ahead of alternative options being considered for the club’s persistently under-strength wide areas. The Daily Record reported that the recruitment department had recommended pushing ahead with the move, believing Min-su offers considerably better value for money than other targets on the table, and that recommendation has clearly carried weight with McInnes given how swiftly things have now progressed towards a medical. It’s understood the Rangers boss was set to speak directly with Min-su, and potentially other potential arrivals besides, over the weekend as talks between the two clubs continued in parallel, underlining just how hands-on McInnes has chosen to be in personally selling Rangers to the players he wants brought into his squad.

Min-su’s situation at Girona has made this particular deal a genuinely achievable one for Rangers to pursue, even at a fee stretching towards £8.5million for a player with fewer than fifty senior appearances to his name. The Catalan-raised South Korean, who moved to Spain as a young boy and progressed through a string of Barcelona-area academies before eventually breaking into Girona’s first-team picture, made what could prove to be his final appearance for the La Liga 2 side in their 2-1 defeat to Cordoba last Friday, a fixture in which he played 76 minutes and showed exactly the kind of eye-catching quality and directness that’s convinced Rangers he’s worth the outlay. With Girona having been relegated from La Liga last season and Min-su’s contract at the club running down, the timing has aligned neatly for Rangers to take advantage of a release clause that represents relatively modest business by modern market standards, even if some scepticism remains among certain observers over whether that fee is justified given his relatively limited experience at the senior level.

For McInnes personally, getting this deal done represents a significant and timely boost following what’s been an undeniably difficult opening stretch in the Ibrox hotseat. The manager has been consistently vocal in recent weeks about the club’s need to add fresh faces, particularly out wide, where Rangers have relied heavily on a rotation of Djeidi Gassama and Findlay Curtis following the summer departures of Oliver Antman, Danilo and Nedim Bajrami. Speaking after Thursday’s 1-0 win over Jablonec in the first leg of Rangers’ Conference League play-off, McInnes made his priorities abundantly clear, stating plainly that the squad still needs strengthening and that while any new arrivals wouldn’t be able to feature in Thursday’s second leg, he’d like to have a couple of additions confirmed before the trip to face Aberdeen at Pittodrie the following weekend, a fixture that will mark his first competitive meeting with the club he managed for the best part of a decade. He was also careful to stress that incoming signings aren’t simply about adding numbers or squad depth for its own sake, but rather about drawing improvements out of the players already at the club too, framing new arrivals and internal development as two sides of the same coin in his rebuilding project.

It’s worth noting that Min-su’s arrival won’t be an instant fix given the timing involved. Because the medical is happening today, he won’t be eligible to feature in Thursday’s second leg against Jablonec, and reports suggest his likely debut won’t come until Rangers host Aberdeen on 30 August, meaning McInnes will have to navigate at least one more significant fixture without his new winger’s direct involvement even once the paperwork is finalised. That’s a minor frustration in the context of a deal that’s otherwise moving at real pace, but it underlines the reality that squad-building in the closing weeks of a transfer window rarely aligns perfectly with a club’s immediate fixture list, and Rangers will simply have to manage without their newest attacking option for a little while longer even once his signature is confirmed.

Beyond the immediate boost of adding a genuinely exciting, if unproven, attacking talent to his ranks, there’s a broader symbolic value to McInnes personally driving this deal over the line at a moment when his own position has faced real scrutiny following Rangers’ underwhelming start to the season. A manager under pressure taking the initiative to pick up the phone and directly convince a target to join his project sends a clear message, both to his own dressing room and to the wider fanbase, that he remains fully engaged and proactive in shaping the squad in his own image, rather than simply waiting on results elsewhere to determine his fate. Whether Min-su ultimately proves to be the kind of game-changing addition Rangers need to kickstart their season remains to be seen, and there will inevitably be an adjustment period as a 20-year-old with limited senior experience acclimatises to the physicality of Scottish Premiership football. But for a club and a manager both in need of some positive momentum, seeing a deal of this nature pushed decisively over the line, medical and all, will offer a welcome sense that the summer rebuild continues to move forward even amid the wider noise surrounding McInnes’s early tenure at Ibrox.