Why Charlton Athletic and Rangers won’t believe what's going on with Joe Aribo | OneFootball

Midfielder Joe Aribo was a solid performer at both The Valley and Ibrox, but his 2025-26 season has not gone according to plan.

Joe Aribo's loan move to Leicester City at the end of the January transfer window couldn't have gone much worse, and this will be a surprise to supporters who remember the midfielder at his very best.

Of all the shocks to have sent tremors through the Championship over the course of the 2025-26 season, the biggest has probably been the ongoing decline of Leicester City. It's not just that the club headed for a second successive relegation. As much as anything else, it's about the players themselves.

This isn't any team, heading towards League One football next season. The most shocking aspect of Leicester's relegation has been the calibre of players that have got them into this position. Stars such as Harry Souttar, Ricardo Pereira, Jannik Vestergaard, Harry Winks and Jordan Ayew shouldn't have been in the bottom three of this division in the first place.

And the downward trajectory of midfielder Joe Aribo will come as a considerable surprise to the supporters of a couple of his former clubs. Aribo was a solid performer for Charlton Athletic, Rangers and Southampton, but he's barely been able to get a game at The King Power Stadium since joining Leicester on loan for the remainder of this season from Southampton at the end of the January transfer window.

Joe Aribo has had a disastrous 2025-26 season for Southampton and Leicester City

As with so many players on the current Leicester City squad list, Joe Aribo looked like a good idea when he joined the club on loan from Southampton. Aribo is a seasoned international, having collected 34 appearances for Nigeria since 2019. He was also a strong presence at his former clubs.

But over the course of 2025-26, things have gone very wrong for him. Aribo made 32 appearances in the Premier League for Southampton last season, and might have expected to play a central role back there this season. Instead, though, he's barely played at all.

He made just seven appearances for Southampton over the first half of the season, all of them from the bench, and has only started once in six appearances since making the move from St Mary's the The King Power Stadium at the very end of the January transfer window.

And this will be particularly perplexing to those who remember him at his best at his former clubs, where he was part of success that is still called to mind with a degree of fondness.

Joe Aribo's fall from grace will shock Charlton Athletic & Rangers fans

The sudden downward curve of Joe Aribo's career will come as a shock to supporters of all three of his former clubs, not least because he played a big role in happy times for them.

Charlton Athletic were the club who plucked him from the non-league game in the first place, and he was part of their team which won the League One play-offs in 2019. He made 39 appearances in the League and play-offs that season, and there was considerable disappointment around The Valley when he turned down a new contract afterwards.

Charlton's loss was Rangers' gain. Aribo moved north of the border to join the Glasgow giants, and was part of their team which won the Scottish Premiership in 2021, the first time they'd done so in a decade.

Throughout the 2021-22 season, he played 17 Europa League games for them as they finished runners-up in the competition, opening the scoring in the 1-1 draw in the final against Eintracht Frankfurt, before they lost out on penalties.

A move back to England to join Southampton was another step up the ladder. At the time, the Saints had just finished 15th in the Premier League at the end of their 10th consecutive season in the English top-flight. And while they were relegated at the end of his first season with the club, but were promoted straight back through the play-offs with Aribo a regular in their first team, making 45 appearances for the in all competitions over the course of the season.

The Saints' return to the Premier League was another calamity, with the club finishing bottom of the table, but Aribo managed to hold down a place in their first team, making 32 appearances and scoring 3 goals. This season, however, he's found himself out of favour at every turn; at Southampton, under both Will Still and Tonda Eckert, and even after completing his loan move to Leicester City.

Since moving to The King Power Stadium, nothing seems to have improved for him. He made his debut for Leicester in a 2-1 defeat against Birmingham City on the 7th February, but this has turned out to be the only game he's started for them. His appearances since then have all come from the substitutes bench, and he hasn't even managed that since their goalless draw with Watford on the 21st March.

Aribo was brought in at Leicester to cover very serious injury problems at the club at that time, and he wasn't an inexpensive option. It's not known how much of his wages is being covered by whom, but Capology estimates him to be on £35,000-a-week, which puts him among the top earners in the entire Championship.

He turns 30 in the summer, and needs to get his career back on track. He hasn't represented his national team in over two years - it says something for the trajectory of his career that his last appearances for Nigeria came when he played in five of their seven games at AFCON 2024 - while 13 appearances in a 46-game season, of which only one was a start is a poor return for a player on his salary.

What happens next in terms of his career is open to question. There was conjecture that he could return to Rangers before the January transfer window opened, but that wasn't taken up, while there were also rumours of interest in him from the Turkish club Besiktas. What can be said with a reasonable degree of certainty is that a player of Aribo's quality should be able to tie down more regular football somewhere this summer.

His contract with Southampton expires at the end of this season, and he may need to take a significant pay cut in order to get it. The player's position at Southampton was considered something of a mystery before his move to Leicester, with him having been told that he wouldn't play for the Saints under Will Still, and given that he was moved on once Tonda Eckert replaced Still, there doesn't seem much likelihood of him being offered a new deal there.

As he reaches 30 years of age, then, Joe Aribo's playing career is at a crossroads. Having failed to tie down regular football at both Southampton and Leicester this season, he'll be keen to tie down a new contract this summer. The problem that he now faces is that the raw numbers for his 2025-26 season have been poor, and that he's not getting any younger, either. What we can say with a reasonable degree of certainty though, is that wherever he does end up next season, it's unlikely to be either Southampton or Leicester City.