Ranbers star who wabt to leave before have now agreed to sign new contract with the club

Rangers have moved quickly to begin reshaping their squad for the season ahead, with five new signings already through the door at Ibrox as the club embarks on a new era under head coach Derek McInnes. But for every incoming addition, questions inevitably arise over which existing players might make way — and this summer looks set to bring plenty of movement out of Ibrox as McInnes stamps his own identity on the squad he’s inherited.

The backdrop to this summer’s transfer activity is a Rangers side that finished third in the Scottish Premiership last season, a result considered well below the standards expected at a club of their size and history. Finishing behind both Celtic and newly ambitious Hearts represented a genuine disappointment for the Ibrox faithful, and the manner of the campaign’s conclusion did little to soften that blow — Rangers limped over the line with four defeats in their final five matches, a run of form that made clear something needed to change heading into the new season.

That poor finish ultimately proved decisive in reshaping the club’s management structure. Danny Röhl, who had been in charge during that difficult end to the campaign, opted to leave Ibrox to take up the head coach position at Red Bull Salzburg in the Austrian Bundesliga — a move reportedly motivated at least in part by a desire to be based closer to home. Röhl’s departure created an opening that Rangers moved quickly to fill, turning to Derek McInnes after his impressive campaign in charge of Hearts, where he’d guided the Edinburgh club to within touching distance of a first top-flight title in decades.

With McInnes now installed in the Ibrox dugout, the challenge facing him is significant: rebuild a squad capable of closing the gap on Celtic and reversing the club’s slide behind Hearts, while also determining which of the players he’s inherited fit into his own plans for the club going forward, and which don’t.

McInnes has wasted little time getting to work on that rebuild. Five new faces have already arrived at Ibrox as the summer transfer window has progressed, giving an early indication of the kind of squad the new head coach is looking to build. But alongside those incoming arrivals, attention naturally turns to the flip side of the equation — which existing Rangers players might be shown the door, either because they no longer fit McInnes’ plans, or because their form and fitness over the past year have raised genuine questions about their long-term futures at the club.

Chief among the players whose situation bears close watching is Thelo Aasgaard, the Norwegian playmaker who arrived at Ibrox with considerable promise but endured an inconsistent debut season in Scottish football. At the time of writing, Aasgaard is away representing Norway at the World Cup, and reports suggest new boss Derek McInnes is genuinely keen to work with him and assess what he can offer once pre-season gets fully underway.

Complicating matters, however, is the fact that Aasgaard remains under contract at Ibrox until 2029 — a deal that, on paper, gives Rangers considerable security over his long-term future, but which hasn’t stopped speculation linking him with a move away from the club. Reports have specifically connected him with a potential switch to Atalanta in Italy, and there’s a recognition that a sufficiently large bid from a club like that could realistically shift the goalposts on his Ibrox future, regardless of McInnes’ own personal interest in working with him. For a player still developing and searching for consistency after a mixed first season in Scotland, the next few months — both in terms of World Cup form and pre-season performances back at Ibrox — could prove pivotal in determining which direction his career takes next.

Few Rangers signings in recent years have generated quite the same sense of unfulfilled promise as Nedim Bajrami. The Albanian international arrived at Ibrox in the summer of 2024 for a fee in the region of £3.4 million, having built a reputation as an exciting attacking talent prior to his move to Scotland. Since then, though, things simply haven’t clicked in the way many hoped they would.

Bajrami has shown flashes of the quality that persuaded Rangers to sign him in the first place, but those moments have proven frustratingly sporadic rather than sustained. Across a succession of different managers during his time at the club, he’s found himself increasingly reduced to a bit-part role, unable to nail down a consistent starting position or fully establish himself as an important contributor to the team’s attacking play. That pattern of underperformance, stretched across multiple managerial regimes rather than being attributable to any single coach’s system or preferences, raises genuine questions about whether a change of scenery might ultimately suit both player and club as Rangers enter a new era under McInnes. As things stand, his future at Ibrox heading into the new campaign remains genuinely uncertain.

The situation surrounding French winger Djeidi Gassama presents a somewhat different picture, in that his time at Rangers hasn’t been characterised by the same consistent underperformance as some of his teammates. Signed from Sheffield Wednesday for a fee of around £2.2 million, Gassama made an impressive start to life at Ibrox, showing early signs that he could develop into a genuinely important player for the club. However, his form tailed off notably as the season progressed, raising some questions about his ability to sustain that level of performance across a full campaign.

Despite that dip in form, there’s no indication that Rangers themselves are actively looking to move Gassama on this summer — his situation appears to be less about the club wanting to sell, and more about managing external interest. Reports indicate he attracted considerable interest from clubs on the continent during the January transfer window, interest that hasn’t necessarily disappeared simply because that window has since closed. Given that level of attention from elsewhere in Europe, a move for Gassama can’t entirely be ruled out this summer, even if Rangers themselves would likely prefer to keep hold of a player who showed such promise during his early months at the club, once his form settles back to the levels he displayed upon arrival.

Finnish international Oliver Antman rounds out the list of players whose Ibrox futures currently look most uncertain. Antman arrived at Rangers with a strong reputation, having impressed sufficiently at Go Ahead Eagles in the Eredivisie to earn a move to Scottish football. Unfortunately, his first season at the club failed to live up to that promising background, with Antman struggling for both form and consistent fitness throughout his debut campaign.

That difficult first year prompted speculation, even as early as the winter transfer window, over a potential return to Dutch football, where he’d previously enjoyed considerably more success. Those murmurs of interest from the Eredivisie appear to have persisted into the summer, and given how his debut season at Ibrox unfolded, a return to a league where he’s previously thrived can’t be discounted. As with several of his teammates on this list, his future heading into the new campaign remains very much an open question, contingent on both his own recovery of form and fitness, and on the level of interest that materialises from elsewhere

Taken together, the situations facing Aasgaard, Bajrami, Gassama and Antman illustrate the scale of the task facing Derek McInnes as he looks to reshape the Rangers squad this summer. Each player arrived at Ibrox with genuine promise and, in some cases, a significant transfer fee attached to their signing, yet each now finds themselves facing a summer of uncertainty for different reasons — whether that’s inconsistency in Aasgaard’s case, a sustained inability to establish themselves under multiple managers as with Bajrami, fluctuating form prompting external interest as with Gassama, or a difficult, injury-affected debut season as with Antman.

For McInnes, the challenge over the coming weeks will be determining which of these players he believes can still be turned around and integrated successfully into his own footballing philosophy, and which represent players whose Ibrox chapter may be better brought to a close, whether through permanent sales or loan moves designed to help them rebuild form and confidence elsewhere. With five new faces already arrived at the club, and further incoming activity expected as the summer progresses, the outgoing side of Rangers’ business looks set to be just as significant a storyline as the incoming one, as McInnes works to build a squad capable of closing the gap on Celtic and reasserting Rangers’ position at the top of Scottish football after a disappointing third-place finish the previous season

With pre-season now well underway and the World Cup providing an unusual complication for a club with several players away on international duty, much of the coming weeks will likely be spent assessing exactly how players like Aasgaard perform on the biggest stage in world football, and how that form translates once they return to Ibrox for the resumption of domestic pre-season training. For those already facing question marks over their long-term futures — Bajrami’s struggle for regular game time, Gassama’s fluctuating form and continued continental interest, and Antman’s fitness and form struggles — the coming months are likely to prove decisive in determining whether they remain part of McInnes’ plans, or whether this summer marks the beginning of a new chapter away from Ibrox entirely.