A player acquired quietly in the summer transfer window is drawing serious attention at Rangers, with former Ibrox striker Kevin Kyle suggesting that South African centre-back Olwethu Makhanya could become a significant source of transfer profit for the club — a trajectory he explicitly compared to the player-trading model that rival Celtic has deployed to considerable financial effect.
Kyle’s broader reading of Rangers’ trajectory under McInnes is cautiously optimistic. He pointed to the cohesion visible in last Sunday’s derby performance as qualitatively distinct from the fractured early weeks of the manager’s tenure, when small signals — including a reported failure to hand captain Lawrence Shankland the armband when he came on as a substitute — suggested internal friction. Whether Makhanya’s rise translates into the kind of seven- or eight-figure transfer profit Kyle envisions remains to be seen; the sample size is ten matches, and the Scottish Premiership is not the Premier League. But the early evidence, measured against the modest expectations that accompanied his arrival, is striking enough to warrant the attention now gathering around him.