Where ‘different class’ Rangers player could end up as McInnes confirms exit talks
Derek McInnes has confirmed that centre-back John Souttar remains in talks to leave Rangers this month, even though the Scottish and English transfer windows have already closed — with a handful of countries still trading able to give the Scotland international a genuine escape route from Ibrox.
Souttar’s situation is about as stark as squad-management stories get. He hasn’t featured for Rangers at all under McInnes this season, having also been overlooked throughout pre-season — a near-total exclusion from first-team plans for a player who, as recently as 2024, was being publicly hailed as “different class” by his Scotland teammate Andy Robertson. That’s a striking gap between reputation and current reality, and it underlines just how far Souttar has fallen down the pecking order since McInnes’s arrival from Hearts over the summer.
He was heavily linked with moves elsewhere in Scotland and to clubs south of the border throughout the summer transfer window, but neither route materialised before those windows shut last week. With Rangers evidently still willing to let him leave, and Souttar himself presumably still open to a fresh start elsewhere given his lack of game time, McInnes confirmed on Tuesday that a small number of possibilities remain live.
Interestingly, McInnes didn’t rule out the alternative scenario either — Souttar being reintegrated into the first-team fold if no exit materialises. The manager said he’s “not against” bringing the 29-year-old back into contention should a move fail to happen, leaving the door open for him to return to at least the matchday squad, if not necessarily the starting XI, rather than being frozen out indefinitely regardless of the transfer situation.
With the major European leagues’ transfer windows now shut, Souttar’s realistic options are narrower and more unusual than they’d have been just a fortnight ago. McInnes specifically referenced Europe as a continued source of possibility, and a handful of leagues remain open for business: Cyprus’s window runs until Wednesday, while Greece’s stays open for another full week — realistically the two most viable destinations given their proximity to closing and the more familiar footballing context they’d offer compared to some alternatives.
Beyond those, windows also remain open in Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Switzerland and Slovakia, giving Souttar a wider but considerably more unconventional spread of markets to consider should nothing materialise in Cyprus or Greece. There’s also the Saudi Arabian window, which remains open for a while longer yet — a route that’s become increasingly familiar for experienced Scottish and British players in recent years, offering significant financial incentives even if it represents a considerable step down in terms of competitive profile compared to European football.
Souttar’s situation is really a smaller subplot within the much larger story of Rangers’ squad overhaul under McInnes and the 49ers Enterprises ownership group this summer — a rebuild that’s brought in a dozen-plus new faces while simultaneously squeezing several established players toward the exit. Unlike some of Rangers’ more actively pursued departures this window — Djeidi Gassama’s interest from Danny Rohl’s Salzburg, or the long-running Nicolas Raskin saga — Souttar’s case is less about outside clubs clamouring for his signature and more about a player who’s simply fallen entirely outside his new manager’s plans, left searching for any viable route to regular football wherever the calendar still allows it
For McInnes, resolving Souttar’s situation — whether through a departure to one of the still-open markets, or a reluctant reintegration into a squad that’s already extremely stretched given injuries to Lawrence Shankland and Youssef Chermiti — represents one more piece of unfinished business in what’s been an unusually eventful and complicated summer of squad management at Ibrox.
