£22M Youssef Chermiti bid offers massive Rangers shift | OneFootball

As we touched on in our last article about the potential interest in South Africa’s Olwethu Makhayna, there has been a paradigm shift at Ibrox. As Rangers fans will be well aware, last summer there were a considerable number of bids that came in for some of our key assets. While the Nico Raskin bid was 11th hour and unacceptable to the club, the same cannot be said for Beşiktaş’s bid for Youssef Chermiti. The Rangers transfer strategies have clearly changed.

Rangers transfer strategy on Chermiti

The Portuguese youth international had a bit of a sticky time during his first season at Ibrox. He occasionally impressed spectacularly but, unfortunately, for the majority of the campaign he failed to impress at all. Yet despite all this, his numbers for the season were impressive, with 20 goals and assists. It is hard to argue with those numbers. They were, of course, curiously mashed among three massive key matches and one insignificant split match. Almost half of his goals came as bizarre aberrations or were irrelevant. The rest of the time, he barely got anything on target or scored, which was not the best opening to a campaign. No goals in the Europa League, and 2 goals for the rest of the entire season aside those key matches.

There has been a slight paradigm shift, however, regarding him and indeed other players in the Rangers shirt. That is to say that Rangers received a bid in January for Chermiti’s services. That bid was around £13 million and Rangers rejected it outright. At the time, fans were absolutely outraged that a player who had been this bad for the amount of money Rangers had spent had been retained, despite a bid that exceeded the amount spent. The frustration was clear among supporters who could not understand the choice.

£22M bid shows Rangers transfer strategies

Then the summer of 2026 saw another bid arrived from Beşiktaş and this time the numbers were extraordinary: £22M. Rangers rejected that as well, and this is where the paradigm shift appears. Whether it is greed or ruthless business sense, Rangers’ owners and chairman Andrew Cavenagh will not accept less than an excellent, top quality bid for any asset player.

Rangers spent £8M initially on Chermiti, rising to £11M, and a £22M bid represented double what the club had paid. But this was not enough. Cavenagh and co rejected that extraordinary bid, which in itself left fans absolutely bewildered by the strategy. The paradigm shift, however, is simple: Rangers as a management and as a board will not tolerate bids which do not impress them. Selling for double what you paid is decent but is not breathtaking, and we know that American business is all about greed and profit.

However, there is a risk to this strategy when rejecting a £22M bid. It may not have made any difference regarding his injury. Chermiti ironically ended up out for the season. There was frustration from some fans that Rangers did not accept the bid. As such we have ended up with an expensive paperweight. However, that injury might not have happened. Had Rangers accepted the bid, Youssef Chermiti would have likely been taken out of the first team. Ergo the injury almost certainly would not have happened at all. However, had he played and suffered the injury anyway, the deal would still have ended up collapsing.

Makhanya could command top dollar

But the point is that, in the case of Olwethu Makhanya, as we have mentioned, Rangers’ board will only accept a bid that is truly top dollar. Rangers are done with accepting anything low or modest. The feeble numbers of previous years are now gone.

There is, of course, one slight paradox to this, and that is the Mohamed Diomande situation, which ended up a mild disaster. Having rejected a £10M bid from Beşiktaş for him last summer, Rangers then accepted a £5 million bid this summer. Having paid £4.5M for Diomande, Rangers accepted a modest £500,000 profit. This flies in the face of the general Rangers transfer strategies.

Rangers want major transfer profits

However, the rejection of such massive bids, including, of course, the around £7M to £10M bid that came in for Djeidi Gassama, who Rangers signed for £3M, suggests that in the majority of cases ownership will not tolerate bids below what they deem a player to be truly worth.

It is big profit that the club wants now. The trading model has to deliver as often as possible, even if there will be occasional exceptions. But rejecting £22M for Chermiti suggests Rangers will only accept absolutely massive bids for players in cases where they believe that player is worth big money.