Following on from our earlier article about Kyogo possibly leaving to Spurs in a deal worth up to £16m, it only shines the light again on the incompetence of pervious members of the old regime at Ibrox.
However, this has been a major issue at Rangers for a good number of years, where we struggled to make a good profit on players. Over the past 20 years players like Boumsong, Cuellar, Hutton, Bassey, Aribo and Patterson, are the only ones that spring to mind where good money has been made-and two of these sales were academy products (please let me know if I’ve missed any)
Our trading model is not fit for purpose in modern football, it’s a business nowadays. Yes players will get attached to the club, and fans will love players who show commitment & passion for the jersey. But the vast majority of fans will understand that 95% of players brought in will only be at the club for two/three seasons, with them hopefully being sold for profit.
Our trading model seems to fit certain players – Aribo & Bassey bought in for next to nothing and sold for alright money. So I can’t work out why Fred, and also Kamara, were not sold when bids came in, as huge profits would have been made. This money would have been recycled back into the playing squad (well I like to think it would have done!!!), which in turn would have given a more competitive squad & allowed Gerrard at the time to invest ahead of the Champions League qualifiers against Malmo.
Kyogo cost them around 4.5m, so it’s still a good profit being made. Plus they have others who will be attractive to others due to their performances (as it pains me to say that), along with their age & international experience.
Who currently in our squad would go for good money, aside the obvious of Raskin & Cantwell would be seen as a saleable asset who would bring in a good profit for us? Yilmaz maybe, but he needs to have a cracking season (which I think he will) before teams come in and offer more than what we paid for him. Hagi could be sold, but that would be a more of a break-even sale if that were to take place.
Both Allen & Wilson kept on saying we had a business trading model where players are bought, then developed, and sold on for profit, so what exactly is our strategy going forward with player recruitment? Are players just being bought with no focus on development & sell on? Don’t get me wrong, there are some positions in the team where you would like to have continuity, like centre half & goalkeeper.
At the moment we don’t seem to have a clear direction, and I say that even though I have trust in the current board; however if money is tight and you need to raise more each season, then you need to look at what you’ve got asset wise – as one or two players will need to be sold each year (at a good profit) to ensure we can still compete both domestically & in Europe.
Look at Ajax, Dortmund, Porto, Sporting Lisbon, PSV, Brugge, Lille – these are all clubs who turn over players each season with a great operating model in place. They can identify talent from across the globe, and turn them into saleable assets within a season or two – why can’t we do this? Why don’t we have something in place where we are seen as a place to go, and then move on for big money?
I know some fans will say that this is Rangers, that’s not who we are. I get that, but we knew that some players like Aribo, Bassey were only here for a while – as they were destined to move onto to better leagues.
Due to incompetence across certain areas of the club, we now have on paper a squad with less sellable assets that we had before Gerrard arrived – does this mean we’ve gone backwards? Or does it mean that our CEO has a major job on his hands to address these issues within the football, recruitment and accounting departments? Or worse, both?