Aberdeen & Hibs owe Rangers a great debt of gratitude

Aberdeen and Hibs in particular may owe Rangers a huge debt of gratitude after both sold players for a combined sum of around £16M, which before this summer would have been an unthinkable amount of money coming into Scottish football’s non Old Firm contingent.

Why Rangers?

Rangers’ run to the Europa League final opened big doors. Ok, we didn’t win, and that will gut us forever more, let’s be honest, and the doors it would have opened for us would have been staggering.

But while smaller doors did still open for the Famous thanks to that run, Rangers simply getting to the final was the highest profile thing to happen to Scottish football for 14 years, in this new era of inflated player prices and exposure.

And as a result, even lesser SPL sides are selling players for sums they could never have expected, with much more ease.

That Ramsay was the SPL’s biggest sale outwith of the Old Firm owed a lot to Rangers’ run to Sevilla, and the fact Scottish football got global exposure on a scale never seen before in modern times.

And as a result, it made our league look better – with clubs like the Dons (and Hibs) able to sell their best players for more than they once would have.

This flurry of activity of selling and buying owes a great deal to Rangers’ achievements, with clubs throughout Europe looking at the SPL in ways they didn’t before, and learning there are good players in this league.

But of course, rather than acknowledging any of this, said club fans will likely abuse this article, and attack Rangers instead.

Prices and exposure may have gone up thanks to Rangers, but attitudes will never change.