Stunning Nico Raskin U-turn not ruled out as Rangers reject latest Besiktas offer

Rangers have rejected a second bid from Besiktas for Nico Raskin, but the door has not been fully closed on a stunning late U-turn that could yet see the Belgian midfielder leave Ibrox before the Turkish transfer window shuts on Friday. Sources have detailed the numbers behind the collapsed offer, with Besiktas tabling a permanent proposal worth £13.7million, a figure Rangers view as significantly short of the valuation they have placed on one of the most important players in Derek McInnes’s squad, leaving the Super Lig side needing to substantially improve their offer if they are to have any realistic chance of getting a deal done before their own domestic deadline arrives.

The numbers involved tell their own story about just how far apart the two clubs remain. Besiktas’s opening approach on Wednesday came in the form of a loan with an option to buy, an offer Rangers turned down almost immediately, making clear internally that they had no intention of sending out one of their most important players on a temporary basis so late in the transfer window, regardless of how the option-to-buy clause might have been structured. The Turkish club returned on Thursday with a considerably more concrete proposal, a straight permanent transfer worth in the region of £13.7million, roughly sixteen million euros or eighteen and a half million dollars depending on the currency used to describe it. That figure, however, still falls around thirty per cent short of the twenty million pounds Rangers have been holding out for throughout the summer, a gap significant enough that Ibrox chiefs rejected the second offer just as swiftly as they had the first, sources say, while making clear to their Turkish counterparts exactly how far away that number remains from what would be required to sanction a sale.

To understand why Rangers have set their valuation quite so high, and why they have been prepared to knock back two separate approaches from a genuinely persistent suitor in the space of just two days, it helps to look back at Raskin’s trajectory since arriving at Ibrox from Standard Liège back in 2023 for what was, relative to his current value, a genuinely modest outlay. The Belgian has developed into one of the standout performers in the Scottish Premiership over the seasons since, a status underlined emphatically by last season’s numbers alone: seven goals and nine assists across fifty appearances, an excellent return for a central midfielder and one that goes a long way towards explaining why Rangers regard him as their prize asset heading into this final, frantic stretch of the transfer window. That form continued onto the biggest stage of all this past summer, with Raskin impressing for Belgium at the World Cup, a tournament that appears to have only sharpened the level of interest circling around him from clubs across Europe in the months since.

Besiktas are, notably, far from the only club to have made an attempt at prising Raskin away from Ibrox this summer, even if they are the ones who have ultimately proven the most persistent as deadline day itself arrived. Hull City had an earlier bid for the midfielder turned down by Rangers, while reported interest from clubs in England, Italy and Spain across the course of the window never crystallised into anything approaching an offer that matched Rangers’ asking price, according to sources close to the situation. It was only once those various major European windows had closed, narrowing the field of realistic suitors considerably, that Besiktas emerged as the most credible and consistent avenue for a Raskin departure, and it is against that backdrop of interest that failed to translate into serious money changing hands that Rangers’ current hard-line stance on valuation becomes rather easier to understand. Having already knocked back one meaningful offer from Hull earlier in the window, there was never likely to be much appetite inside Ibrox to suddenly soften that stance for a Turkish side tabling a figure some thirty per cent below what the club has wanted all summer.

There is also a contractual dimension underpinning Rangers’ evident confidence in holding firm on their asking price. Raskin signed a new deal at Ibrox back in February that runs through to 2028, meaning the club retains two full years of contractual control over the midfielder even if this particular transfer window closes without a departure being agreed. That security removes any real pressure on Rangers to accept a discounted fee purely to avoid the risk of losing the player for nothing further down the line, a dynamic that so often forces selling clubs into accepting lower offers than they might otherwise want when a player enters the final year or two of his contract. With Raskin tied down well beyond this season, Rangers have been able to approach Besiktas’s interest from a position of genuine strength, comfortable turning down offers that fall short of their valuation safe in the knowledge that keeping hold of the player represents a perfectly acceptable, and arguably preferable, outcome to selling him on the cheap.

It is that contractual leverage, combined with the scale of the gap between the two clubs’ respective valuations, that explains the headline framing of this situation: rejected, for now, but not necessarily dead. Sources indicate Besiktas have been warned in no uncertain terms that they will need to significantly raise their offer if they are to strike any kind of deal before their own Super Lig transfer window slams shut on Friday, a deadline that gives the Turkish club a narrow but genuine additional window in which to return with improved terms even after Scotland’s own domestic cut-off passes at five o’clock on Thursday afternoon. Should Besiktas find the financial means to close that thirty per cent gap between their current offer and Rangers’ valuation in the space of the next twenty-four hours, the door to a stunning late U-turn, one that would see Raskin depart Ibrox for Istanbul after all despite two rejected bids in as many days, remains at least theoretically open, even if the practical odds of the Super Lig side finding several million additional pounds at such short notice must be considered long.

The picture emerging from various strands of reporting around this saga has, it should be said, been genuinely difficult to pin down with total precision, and different outlets have offered competing accounts of exactly how Wednesday evening’s events unfolded. Some reporting from Turkish sources suggested that Rangers had, at one stage on Wednesday night, actually agreed to sanction Raskin’s exit following the club’s two-one win over Falkirk, with the switch in stance attributed to a U-turn on Rangers’ own part after Raskin had completed a full ninety minutes in that fixture, only for the midfielder himself to subsequently turn down the move at the very last moment. Other accounts, including sources speaking to reporters covering the story from the Ibrox side of the negotiating table, describe a rather more straightforward sequence: Rangers rejecting the loan approach on Wednesday and the permanent offer on Thursday without ever seriously entertaining sanctioning a deal on the terms being proposed. What can be said with confidence, given the consistency across multiple credible outlets, is that no departure has yet been agreed, that Raskin remains a Rangers player as things stand, and that Besiktas’s pursuit, whatever the precise back-and-forth of the past forty-eight hours actually involved, has so far fallen short of what Rangers require to sanction a sale.

Derek McInnes himself has been notably candid in his public comments on the situation as the saga has unfolded, striking a tone that suggests genuine, if guarded, confidence that Raskin will remain part of his squad beyond the deadline. Discussing the ongoing speculation, McInnes said: “Yeah, I think he will [stay]. I can’t say for certain; I’m not in control of that.” It is a carefully worded response, one that acknowledges the manager’s own limited influence over what is ultimately a decision to be made between two clubs’ hierarchies and the player himself, while still conveying a clear underlying expectation that the saga will resolve itself with Raskin still on Rangers’ books come Friday morning. That expectation lines up closely with reporting suggesting Raskin was given the opportunity to leave on Wednesday and that it “wasn’t something he wanted or the club or entertained,” language that, if accurate, points towards a genuine alignment between player and club on preferring to keep this partnership going rather than forcing through an exit purely to satisfy Besiktas’s interest.

The timing of this saga adds an extra layer of jeopardy to how Rangers navigate the closing stages of the window, given just how significantly the club’s central-midfield department has already been reshaped this summer. Connor Barron departed on a season-long loan to Middlesbrough on deadline day itself, following the earlier exits of Nedim Bajrami, Mohamed Diomande and Lyall Cameron, meaning Rangers have already sanctioned four separate central-midfield departures across this single transfer window before any final word on Raskin’s own situation has even been settled. Losing a fifth central-midfield option, and by some distance the most important one given Raskin’s status as a genuine Premiership standout and full Belgium international, would leave McInnes facing a considerably more threadbare-looking engine room than the one he inherited, particularly with so little time remaining to identify and complete a replacement given Scotland’s own deadline falls on the same day this saga has been playing out. That practical reality, finding a suitable like-for-like alternative at such short notice, has itself been cited as a significant factor in Rangers’ reluctance to sanction any departure without either receiving a fee that properly compensates for the gap he would leave, or having already lined up a credible incoming replacement of their own.

There is also reported interest from beyond Turkey that adds further intrigue to how the final hours of this saga might play out. Saudi Pro League side Al-Ittihad have also been credited with interest in Raskin according to some reporting around the collapsed loan discussions, a reminder that Besiktas, for all their persistence, may not necessarily remain the only party with genuine ambitions of prising the Belgian away from Ibrox before various windows around Europe and the Middle East close over the coming days and weeks. Whether that Saudi interest amounts to anything more concrete than background speculation remains to be seen, but it underlines the broader demand that exists for a player of Raskin’s calibre, and it offers Rangers a further reminder, as if one were needed, of why they have been so reluctant to accept anything below their stated valuation from a single Turkish suitor when other admirers may yet be watching how this particular saga resolves itself with an eye to their own future business.

For Rangers supporters, the emotional temperature around this story has been unmistakable throughout, and it is not difficult to understand why. Raskin has established himself as arguably the standout performer in an otherwise turbulent Rangers midfield this year, a genuine World Cup performer for Belgium who has continued delivering at the top level of Scottish football even amid a season of considerable upheaval at Ibrox on almost every other front. The prospect of losing him for a cut-price fee, particularly to a Super Lig club rather than one of Europe’s traditional elite leagues that Raskin himself might have viewed as a more natural next step in his career, would have represented a genuinely painful outcome for a fanbase already digesting a season without European football and a summer of substantial squad turnover. That Rangers have twice rejected Besiktas’s advances, and that McInnes himself sounds quietly confident the saga will ultimately end with Raskin still on Ibrox’s books, will offer considerable reassurance, even with the technical possibility of a stunning late U-turn still theoretically alive until Besiktas’s own window finally shuts on Friday evening.

As things stand, then, Nico Raskin remains a Rangers player, having survived two separate rejected approaches from Besiktas inside the space of forty-eight hours and with his manager expressing genuine confidence the situation will stay that way beyond Scotland’s own deadline this Thursday afternoon. Whether Besiktas can conjure a significantly improved offer in the narrow window still available to them before their own Friday cut-off, closing that thirty per cent gap to Rangers’ valuation that has proven decisive twice already this week, will determine whether this saga ends here or produces one final twist before the story is finally put to bed. For now, McInnes and his Ibrox hierarchy appear to be holding their nerve, banking on their contractual security, Raskin’s own apparent reluctance to force the issue, and a valuation they have shown no sign of budging from, to see this particular transfer saga through to a conclusion that keeps their prize asset exactly where they want him: at Ibrox, and central to whatever McInnes is trying to build across a season already shaping up to be one of the most transformative in recent Rangers history