Russell Martin expects Hamza Igamane to leave Rangers soon

Russell Martin expects Hamza Igamane to soon leave Rangers.

The Morocco striker made headlines after he reported an injury when the Gers boss asked him to come off the bench at St Mirren on Sunday, with the William Hill Premiership game ending 1-1 to pile more pressure on the former Southampton manager.

Lille are reported to have had a bid of around £10.5million accepted by the Ibrox club for the 22-year-old forward, who hit 16 goals in his debut season for the Gers following his move from Moroccan side AS Far in 2024.

Igamane did not travel to Belgium for the second leg of the Champions League play-off tie with Club Brugge, who lead 3-1 from the first leg at Ibrox and Martin spoke of impending developments.

“We all expect that to come to a close soon and he won’t be our player anymore so that will be that,” said the Rangers boss, who confirmed striker Cyriel Dessers is back in the squad following his recovery from injury.

“And everyone else is pretty much here. So looking forward to a big, big game tomorrow.

“I haven’t seen him (Igamane), he had a scan yesterday and got assessed.

“And then, obviously stuff’s happening today, so he wasn’t in, so it hasn’t been disruptive, moving forward, at all. It’s happened, we moved forward, we dealt with it.

“He’s got what he wanted, well, it looks likely to get what he wanted, to play somewhere else.

“And it means we’ve got a sum of money that we wanted for him.

“So ideally it wouldn’t have happened, but it did and now we move forward and we can move on.”

Asked if Igamane’s scan revealed an injury issue, Martin said: “I expect him to pass his medical.”

Dessers took part in the open part of the session at Rangers’ training ground in Milngavie on Tuesday morning.

The Nigeria international has missed the last three games, including the 3-1 first-leg defeat by Brugge, with a knee injury, but Martin said: “Cyriel is here and good to go.”

The Light Blues were well-beaten last week by Club Brugge who were 3-0 up in 20 minutes before a second-half recovery of sorts by Rangers but Martin is “excited” about the return game.

He said: “I think we have a real chance to come here and attack it and every team will have a plan, so it’ll be interesting to see what their plan is, and I’m sure it’ll be to try and build on the margin that they’re winning by.

“But we’ve been on the other end of this position already twice going into games, not quite knowing how the opposition will approach it.

“So our energy and our mentality has to really alter their plan very quickly and make their energy change. So they’re a good team, we know that.

“I think they felt we were a good team in the second half and I hope we put enough good moments together in that second half to make sure that they have a little bit of fear of what’s to come. And we’re ready for them.

“So we’re going to attack it and see where it takes us. This game is very much alive and the tie is very much alive in our eyes.”