Rangers sign Bournemouth star in intriguing £3.4m January transfer predictionplaceholder image
Rangers sign Bournemouth star in intriguing £3.4m January transfer prediction | Getty Images
A look at what Rangers will do in the January transfer market - according to Football Manager 2026.
While results have started to improve to some extent, it’s fair to say that Rangers’ season hasn’t exactly gone according to plan. They head into this weekend a full 14 points off the top of the Scottish Premiership table, they’ve already had to sack their manager, and they may need to be active in January to build a team capable of challenging for silverware of any kind this season.
Working out what Rangers will do in the upcoming transfer window isn’t an easy task given that there are so many areas in which they could be improved, so in order to glean some insight as to what moves they might make, we turned to the most advanced simulation of the footballing future we have at our disposal – Football Manager 2026.
We loaded up a game and sent it a year into the future to find out what changes the Ibrox club made over the winter, and to see whether it made much of a difference. Will the game have a realistic handle of what the club does this January? Let’s find out…
Rangers sign Bournemouth man & Serie A stars in January – according to Football Manager 2026
Cas Odenthal - £1m from Sassuolo: The Dutch centre-back has lost his place at Sassuolo in real life, and thus makes a perfectly realistic transfer target for Rangers in the game – a solid performer, Odenthal became a regular starter and a very useful member of the squad.
Adrien Tamèze - £1m from Torino: A defensive midfielder and Rangers’ second addition from Serie A, Tamèze is getting a little long in the tooth – he was 32 by the time he moved to Ibrox – but would be a solid defensive anchor in real life who is a rotational member of the genuine Torino squad. Another regular starter in the game.
Dominik Takáč - £1.1m from Slovan Bratislava: The single biggest outlay made in a busy but cost-controlled window was for a back-up goalkeeper. Takáč still hadn’t made an appearance for Rangers by the end of the season and was ultimately just an expensive bench-warmer.
Julio Soler – loan from Bournemouth: A breakthrough prospect at Bournemouth, wing-back Soler spent the second half of the season at Ibrox in our game and performed well, making 12 appearances and livening things up down the left-hand side. It was only a temporary switch, with no deal in place for a permanent move.
Alex Valera - £300k from Universitario: A 30-year-old Peruvian international striker, Valera didn’t make much of a mark in the five months after he arrived in our game, making just four league appearances and scoring once. A cheap back-up, basically.
Daichi Okamura – free from Machida: Not content with letting Celtic be the only team signing Japanese stars, Rangers snapped up 29-year-old centre-back Okamura without paying a penny and he immediately became a regular member of the starting XI, scoring two goals in 15 games.
All of which meant that Rangers signed six players for a relatively budget-conscious £3.4m, and improved their squad sufficiently to finish second in the Premiership, a solitary point behind Celtic. Not the perfect final result, perhaps, but at least the game thinks that the club will spend wisely…
Rangers star sold in FM26 January window prediction
Of course, Rangers didn’t only sign players – they sent a few on with their careers as well, both on a temporary and permanent basis. Let’s see who got sold during our simulated January window…
Nedim Bajrami - £1.9m to Monza: Rangers basically broke even on their dealings with Italian sides, sending the Algerian winger – really just a back-up in the real world – to Monza. He didn’t make much more of a splash in Serie A than he did at Ibrox, to be honest.
Thelo Aasgaard - £1.6m to Damac: Apparently Aasgaard didn’t make much of an impression at Rangers in our game – after just three appearances, all from the bench, he was deemed surplus to requirements and sold to Saudi Arabia.
Findlay Curtis – loan to Inverness Caledonian Thistle: Curtis is getting game time in the real world, but here he was given the chance for some minutes in a lower division and thrived, scoring five goals in 11 games.
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