With former Director of Football Ross Wilson’s exit now all said and done, how does this change at Ibrox affect Rangers manager Michael Beale and especially his summer wallet?
Rangers fans are asking this question, wondering how the integral fulcrum of transfers, the Director of Football, affects the manager’s summer task now that Wilson has departed Govan for the last time?
The truth?
No significant impact at all. Apart from one, and admittedly, it’s quite the doozy.
All players being scouted by Rangers will continue to scouted, all targets will continue to be monitored, and in terms of budget, Wilson’s exit doesn’t change what Rangers have at our disposal and will have going forwards, financially-speaking.
The big key difference now is the inevitable sales of Glen Kamara and anyone else Rangers seek to cash in on – instead of that work being carried out by Wilson, others will, for now, be promoted to negotiations with potential suitors about price and details.
We admit this was one area where Wilson was actually pretty good – despite our misgivings about the potential loss of £12M on market value, the ex-director nevertheless secured £37M for three players – Bassey, Aribo and Patterson, and managed to sign long-gone Juninho Bacuna for nothing, not to mention just £1M outlay on Ianis Hagi.
When it came to shrewd deals, Wilson was quite good for getting some decent terms on Rangers’ behalf even taking into consideration the ‘loss’ on those big three sales made last year.
So that kind of negotiation acumen is gone now, and Rangers will have to find a new way to work with suitors and indeed clubs of teams we’re targeting in order to buy and sell.
That was, put simply, the DoF’s job, and now Rangers lack a negotiator – of course there’s a team of staff in the department, so like the commercial sector the football sector has a hierarchy, and someone will take up that mantle in the absence of a DoF.
Or Michael Beale himself will get involved.
Who knows.
Money-wise it doesn’t impact a thing, but negotiations-wise it could have quite the effect.