Forget Danny Rohl & Gassama - Sheffield Wednesday made Rangers seriously jealous | OneFootball

Danny Rohl faces a fight to retain Djeidi Gassama, but this isn't the first time that his current & former clubs have come face to face over a player.

Sheffield Wednesday's jealousy of Rangers may linger for as long as Danny Rohl and Djeidi Gassama are contracted at Ibrox, but the situation can also be reversed to see how the Scottish giants will have had envy of the Hillsborough outfit, too.

Missing out on a place in next season's Champions League could be about to hit Rangers hard. Finishing in third place in the Scottish Premiership at the end of 2025-26 behind Celtic and Hearts has led to speculation that they could be set to lose some of their star players for next season, including the former Sheffield Wednesday favourite Djeidi Gassama.

Gassama made the switch from Hillsborough to Ibrox in July 2025, but there have been reports since the end of the season that they are increasingly likely to lose him this summer as a result of this failure, which will see Rangers competing in the Europa League next season instead.

This isn't the first time that a former Wednesday player has ended up at Ibrox, and Rangers may always have cause to regret the sale of one former Gers player who kicked on at Wednesday after joining the Owls via Wigan Athletic.

Gassama's departure would be a big loss for Rangers

The former Sheffield Wednesday star Dejeidi Gassama attracted a lot of attention throughout the season, and was subject to a failed transfer bid from Monaco at the end of the January transfer window.

They wanted to take him to Ligue Un on a loan-to-buy deal which was rejected by the club, with the Daily Record reporting at that time that "the price would have to be right for the former France U20 international as he remains a key member of Rohl's squad as they aim to win the league and push themselves towards Champions League millions next season."

Rohl and Rangers were successful in neither of these objectives, over the second half of 2025-26. They ended the season in third place in the table, ten points behind Celtic and eight behind Hearts, and this only puts them into the Third Qualifying Round of the Europa League for next season. For ambitious players who want to play at the highest level, that absence of Champions League football matters, and there may now be a fresh round of interest in the 22-year-old winger.

Should Gassama leave the club, this wouldn't be the first time that Rangers have had cause to regret losing a player with a Sheffield Wednesday connection. In the case of striker Josh Windass, they sold a player into the EFL who found himself at Hillsborough, and who they've been unable to get back even though they wanted him.

Josh Windass return to Rangers rumours have been repeatedly played down

There was a degree of controversy surrounding the way in which Josh Windass arrived at Ibrox in 2016. Windass was playing for Accrington Stanley at the time, and along with another Stanley player, Matt Crooks, had signed a pre-contract with Rangers in January of that year. Stanley, however, banned the players from training with Rangers as no compensation package had been agreed. Eventually, the Scottish giants paid £120,000 for the pair of them.

Rangers certainly got value for money out of Windass. Despite recurrent hamstring injuries throughout the first half of his first season at Ibrox, there was interest in the player from Championship clubs, but Rangers didn't sell and he ended the 2017-18 season as their second-highest League goalscorer, having found the net 12 times.

Windass completed a £2.5 million move to Wigan Athletic that summer, but went on loan to Sheffield Wednesday at the end of the January 2020 transfer window and made his move to Hillsborough permanent that September, having hinted earlier in the year that he'd be open to doing so.

Over the next five years, Josh Windass would go on to make 182 appearances for Sheffield Wednesday, scoring 53 goals. Windass left the club in July 2025 by mutual consent, with his next destination being Wrexham, but the arrival of the former Wednesday head coach Danny Rohl at Rangers prompted fresh rounds of speculation about Windass returning to Ibrox.

But a strong start at Wrexham provoked interest from north of the border, and at the end of 2025 it was reported that Wrexham had rejected a loan offer from Rangers for the remainder of the 2025-26 season. There was a fresh round of gossip linking Windass with a potential return to Ibrox at the end of the season, but these have already been played down by the Wrexham manager Phil Parkinson.

Rangers may always regret the decision to sell Josh Windass to Wigan Athletic. That particular transfer didn't go according to plan for the player, but over five years he shone at Sheffield Wednesday, and his release to Wrexham last summer was the result of the financial problems that blighted the whole of Wednesday's 2025-26 season. Danny Rohl is likely to have a lot of rebuilding work to do at Ibrox over the summer, but Josh Windass seems unlikely to return.