Rangers have thrown their hat into the ring for one of English football’s most tantalising young wide players, with reports suggesting the Ibrox club are monitoring Brighton & Hove Albion’s Amario Cozier-Duberry ahead of a potential summer swoop. The 21-year-old, who spent last season on loan in League One with Bolton Wanderers, has emerged as a genuine transfer target after a breakout campaign that has clubs across three different leagues jockeying for position.
According to reporting from The Athletic, Anderlecht have already tested Brighton’s resolve with an offer worth just under €6 million, only for the Seagulls to knock it back without hesitation. That rejection tells its own story. Brighton, renowned across the football world for their meticulous player trading model and their reluctance to be rushed into sales, clearly view Cozier-Duberry as more than a squad makeweight to be cashed in on at the first sign of interest. Instead, the club appear to be exploring a new contract that would tie the winger down well beyond his current terms, which run until 2028.
That hasn’t stopped the queue from forming outside the AMEX Stadium door, though. Rangers are said to be readying themselves to challenge for his signature, and they won’t be alone in that pursuit — Bundesliga side Augsburg and Ligue 1 outfit Paris FC are also credited with interest, turning this into a genuine continental scramble for a player who, twelve months ago, was still searching for regular first-team minutes.
The interest in Cozier-Duberry doesn’t exist in isolation. Rangers have been one of the most active clubs in Scottish football this summer, and the potential swoop for the Brighton winger fits neatly into a wider pattern of recruitment that suggests Derek McInnes and his recruitment team are building something with real ambition behind it.
Part of the logic here is timing. Mikey Moore’s loan spell from Tottenham Hotspur is set to expire, which leaves a gap out wide that needs filling one way or another. Cozier-Duberry, comfortable operating on the right and cutting inside onto his favoured foot, profiles as exactly the kind of direct, unpredictable attacking option that could plug that hole and then some. Where Moore offered flashes of quality during his spell in Govan, the sense from those tracking Cozier-Duberry’s rise is that this is a player who could offer a more consistent end product across a full campaign.
It’s also worth remembering the kind of season Cozier-Duberry actually had. Loaned out by Brighton to gain first-team experience, he ended up being one of the driving forces behind Bolton’s promotion push from League One, contributing nine goals and 13 assists in 37 appearances. Those numbers, at that level, for a player still just 21, represent serious end product — not just a talented kid dabbling in senior football, but a genuine difference-maker who took a lower-league promotion race by the scruff of the neck.
No discussion of Cozier-Duberry’s profile is complete without addressing the comparison that has followed him for years now — to Arsenal and England star Bukayo Saka. It’s the kind of tag that can be a burden for a young player as much as a compliment, but in this case it comes from someone who watched him up close during his formative years.
Jack Wilshere, now managing Luton Town but previously on the coaching staff at Arsenal’s academy, has spoken about Cozier-Duberry’s development and the parallels with Saka’s own rise through the same academy system. Wilshere described him as an exciting talent who catches the eye of Mikel Arteta, occupying the same position as Saka and sharing similar attributes, while also noting that his decision-making still needs to catch up to that of the England international at a similar stage. Wilshere didn’t hold back on the ceiling he sees, either, suggesting that in flashes “he’s unplayable” — the kind of player capable of pulling off something out of nothing even when the game plan says otherwise.
That’s obviously heady praise, and it needs the appropriate caveat: no one is suggesting Cozier-Duberry is the finished article, or that he’s about to replicate Saka’s trajectory to Premier League and international stardom. But it does explain why so many clubs, across so many countries, are willing to compete for a player who was playing League One football as recently as last season. Elite academies produce a lot of talented young footballers who never quite make the step up — the fact that Wilshere, someone who has coached inside one of those academies and played at the very top of the English game himself, rates him this highly is a meaningful data point for any club doing their due diligence.
His path so far has been unconventional in one sense: he came through Arsenal’s academy but left upon the expiration of his contract in 2024, opting to join Brighton rather than fight for a route into the first team at the Emirates. That move has arguably worked out well for him — Brighton have built a reputation as one of the best environments in English football for developing and then either integrating or selling on young talent at a significant profit, and Cozier-Duberry’s loan spell at Bolton looks very much like a deliberate part of that pathway.
🏆 Rangers’ Summer Rebuild Gathers Pace
Whatever happens with Cozier-Duberry specifically, his name being linked to Rangers is symptomatic of a much bigger story unfolding at Ibrox this summer. The club have been conducting business with real intent, and the accumulation of incoming names suggests a squad being built with a serious Scottish Premiership title challenge in mind.
Ivor Pandur has already arrived to bolster goalkeeping options, while Ross McCrorie, Dan Neil, Lawrence Shankland and Cammy Devlin have all been added to strengthen various areas of the pitch. Ben Godfrey has also arrived on loan, giving Rangers extra cover and quality at centre-back. That’s already a significant list of incomings before you even get to the players still being finalised — Jens Hjerto-Dahl and Vanja Dragojevic are both reported to be in advanced talks over moves to Ibrox, which would add further depth in defence and midfield respectively.
Taken as a whole, it’s a squad rebuild that goes well beyond patching up holes from last season. Rangers appear to be recruiting with real positional planning — goalkeeper, centre-back, midfield, attack — rather than simply reacting to departures. Adding a winger of Cozier-Duberry’s profile, assuming a deal can be reached, would round out an attacking unit that already has genuine firepower and creativity threaded through it.
There’s an obvious subtext here too: after the disappointment of recent seasons in terms of silverware, and with the manner in which the title race has unfolded domestically, Rangers’ hierarchy appear to have sanctioned a summer of genuine reinvestment. The message being sent to the fanbase, and to the rest of the Scottish Premiership, is that Ibrox intends to compete on every front next season — domestically and, if results go their way, back in continental competition as well.
The contrast with Celtic only sharpens the picture. Rangers’ fiercest rivals have been notably restrained in the market so far this summer, with Camilo Duran the only new arrival confirmed at Celtic Park to this point. There have already been suggestions from within Celtic that further additions may be limited, which — fairly or not — will be read by many as a gap opening up between the two Glasgow giants in terms of transfer ambition this summer.
For a rivalry that so often plays out as much in the transfer market as it does on the pitch, that discrepancy in activity is bound to generate plenty of discussion among supporters on both sides of the divide. Rangers fans will point to the volume and quality of incomings as proof their club means business; Celtic supporters, meanwhile, may take the view that their side is simply being more selective, banking on continuity from a squad that has enjoyed recent success domestically rather than overhauling things wholesale.
Either way, the perception battle this summer is currently being won comfortably by Rangers, and a move for a player of Cozier-Duberry’s calibre — should it materialise — would only add to that narrative heading into pre-season.
The situation remains fluid, and there are a number of variables still to play out before anyone can say with confidence where Cozier-Duberry will be playing his football next season. Brighton’s stance, as things stand, is that they have no interest in selling and are working to extend his contract rather than cash in this summer. That puts the ball firmly in Brighton’s court, and it means any move — whether from Rangers, Augsburg, Paris FC or another suitor entirely — may hinge as much on convincing Cozier-Duberry himself that fresh terms at the AMEX aren’t the right next step for his career, as it does on convincing Brighton to sanction a sale.
For Rangers, that means patience may be required. Deals of this nature — involving a player who isn’t obviously for sale, a fee that will likely creep well past Anderlecht’s rejected €6 million offer, and competition from clubs in three different countries — rarely move quickly. But Rangers’ recent business this summer suggests a club willing to be patient and persistent when they’ve identified a target, rather than simply moving on to the next name on the list at the first sign of resistance.
Given the progress already made on signings like Pandur, McCrorie, Neil, Shankland, Devlin and Godfrey, and with Hjerto-Dahl and Dragojevic reportedly close to finalising their own moves, there’s every reason to believe Rangers have both the recruitment infrastructure and the financial backing to see a deal of this complexity through if they decide Cozier-Duberry is the right man to fill the winger slot left by Moore’s departure.
Whether he ends up in Govan, or whether Augsburg, Paris FC or an improved contract at Brighton wins out instead, one thing seems fairly certain: Amario Cozier-Duberry’s stock is only going one direction after the season he’s just had, and this transfer saga is likely to run for some time yet before it reaches a conclusion.
