Happy birthday – but £6M shows Rangers board just wasn’t fair with Giovanni van Bronckhorst

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Happy birthday – but £6M shows Rangers board just wasn’t fair with Giovanni van Bronckhorst
Rangers' Dutch manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst speaks to journalists ahead of the UEFA Champions League Group A football match between Glasgow Rangers and Liverpool at the Ibrox Stadium, in Glasgow, on October 12, 2022. (Photo by ANDY BUCHANAN / AFP) (Photo by ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP via Getty Images)

On former Rangers manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s birthday today, Ibrox Noise wanted to have a look at one thing which really stands out about how Rangers’ board supports Michael Beale, but didn’t support the Dutchman.

In Gio’s first transfer window, January 2022, he got what ended up being a grand total of £350,000 to spend – and it went on a random Pole by the name of Mateusz Zukowski (still on loan at Loznan, incidentally).

The rest of the incomings were all loans – Amad Diallo, Aaron Ramsey and James Sands. It was a truly dire window. And despite it, he still won the Scottish cup and got us on a historical and stunning rip-roaring adventure to Sevilla.

Now, compare that with what Michael Beale ended up on – £2M on Todd Cantwell, £1.75M on Nicolas Raskin, and the club had bid around £1.5M on Morgan Whittaker as well – the bid was in and was accepted till Swansea changed their minds and decided to keep the winger instead.

Around £5M+, by far the most any Rangers manager has ever had to spend in that window, certain in recent memory, and dwarfs the previous record from Walter Smith in 2007 with £2M.

What does this tell you? Now, we know the club wasn’t in the strongest place financially during Gio’s early time at Ibrox, but it had still made £4.5M off the sale of Steven Gerrard, and £16M off Nathan Patterson.

So there were funds. And that following summer Gio’s incoming totalled around £13M – Yilmaz, Davies, Colak and Matondo in total cost around that amount, but that previous winter window wasn’t great.

Beale? Has been strongly backed in the January window, and while the spending reached £3.75M (itself a record) it could have approached £6M, which for the winter window would have been an absolutely staggering number at that time of year.

Rangers’ board really didn’t back the previous manager – they are clearly backing this one. Whether it was a personality clash we’ll never know, but Michael Beale is being given opportunities and support where his predecessor lacked any.

We hope he uses it well.

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4 COMMENTS

  1. The club hung GvB out to dry they never in both windows supported him tonthe tune we needed . Maybe senior players didn’t like him

  2. The board thought they could do 56 on the cheap after Gerrard won 55 so convincingly. They were wrong. It looks like they’ve learned their lesson on that, but yeah, there’s a good argument GVB was hard done by.

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