Hamza Igamane set for Rangers exit as Lille meet forward's release clause

Rangers are set to sell forward Hamza Igamane to Lille after the French side met a 12 million Euros release clause in the player’s contract.

Head coach Russell Martin expects the player to complete a medical with the Ligue 1 side and end his association with Rangers shortly.

The 22-year-old Moroccan moved to Ibrox from AS FAR in his homeland last year and the £10.5m sale means Rangers will turn a large profit on the player, who scored 16 times in 46 appearances last season.

While an initial success on the park, and seen as a promising player who could develop at the club, his future has been the subject of speculation all summer.

Questions about his attitude came to a head during Rangers’ 1-1 draw at St Mirren on Sunday, when Martin said the forward refused to come off the bench, claiming he was injured.

Igamane now looks set to move to France in the coming days and, speaking on Tuesday ahead of Rangers’ Champios League play-off second leg against Club Brugge, Martin said that his time with the club would “come to a close soon”.

The head coach denied that the player had been disruptive in the build-up to the crucial qualifier, saying he had not been around the first team squad. And when asked about the injury that Igamane said prevented him from playing in Paisley, Martin said simply “I expect him to pass his medical.”

“I think we all expect that to come to a close very soon,” the Rangers boss said. “And he won’t be our player any more.

“That will be that.

“It’s not really [been disruptive] because we haven’t seen him.

“He had a scan yesterday and got assessed and then there’s stuff happening today so he hasn’t been in.

“It’s happened, we’ve dealt with it and we move forward. It looks like he’s got what he wanted, to play somewhere else, and we get a sum of money that we wanted for him.

“Ideally it wouldn’t have happened but it did and now we move on.”

Martin reflected on a similar situation when he took charge at Southampton and said that he had to deal with “around 15 players” who believed they would be leaving the club before the end of the transfer window. He said he didn’t hold the players themselves responsible and that it was understandable that some could become unsettled.

“It’s not the players’ faults,” he said. “It’s really not.

“For a young man, a young man that doesn’t speak the language, who is being told ‘Don’t worry, your future is going to be elsewhere, and then I’m asking him to be all in and ‘Do this’ or ‘This is what I expect from you’, it’s difficult.

“I don’t take it personally from Hamza. The group has been amazing and there’s not a lack of effort and ti’s not the reason we didn’t win on Sunday.

“It’s frustrating but it’s part and parcel of the transfer window.”