As Ibrox Noise discussed earlier, James Taylor, chief financial office at Ibrox, has announced a £10.5M player trading deficit for the past year plus.
What this means in layman terms is Rangers have spent more on players than they’ve earned from sales of them, and in truth, that’s been the case for a very long time.
Not even that Gerrard/Patterson/Bassey/Aribo period seems to have been able to fix that, not permanently anyway, and there’s a very good reason why.
Michael Beale.
Unfortunately for Rangers, Beale did untold damage to the club, spending £25M last year. Those figures were only just revealed by official/unofficial Rangers mouthpiece the Rangers Review, and while Ibrox Noise’s info was that summer spending was £17M or so, it’s actually been confirmed at £20M, while the January saw around £4M spent, taking it to roughly about £25M for 2023.
This is where Rangers’ deficit is – we spent more than we had, and not on particularly good value either.
Some fans have tried to play devil’s advocate and defend Beale as signing players ‘who actually weren’t that bad after all’.
Well, Danilo has been terrible, Lammers horrendous, and it’s taken till January to get some real change out of Dessers, even if Ibrox Noise defended him all season regardless.
Another £2M went on Cifuentes, and that’s the bulk of the spending. About £17M on those plus another £3M on the bits and pieces (Sterling etc) that went on summer as well. £20M.
So let’s not try to revise history and claim Beale’s spending was better than it seemed.
And it’s left Rangers in the red for player trading.
It means we need to sell players before player trading is in a good place – we need to sell one or two big asset players to cover that £10M shortfall.
Now, it’s also worth pointing out this doesn’t mean we can’t spend. There is cash set aside for Philippe Clement this summer, but to spend that money without selling players means the shortfall increases. And there’s the issue of the £10M ringfenced to make Cortes and Diomande permanent.
But in simple terms, the damage Beale did really hurt our club, and set it financially back potentially years.
It’s not critical, not by a long way, but Rangers do not want to be in a position where we’re in player trade debt.
Unfortunately, Beale has made it very hard for us to get out of that.
Beale should pay it fkn donkey
I have no great reason to defend Beale, but I feel some perspective is in order.
So, he spent £25 M in 2023. Look at what he has bought. Cantwell, £5-10M, Raskin at least £2-3M. Over the summer, I agree Lammers was a pointless buy, we had enough cover there. But we may even get our money back as he is shining in Holland without the same level of pressure. Sterling has been good value. If GvB had not released Balogun, he might have kept his job, Beale brought him back. Big Plus. Cifuentes, Money back. Dowell, squad player, on a free. Dessers, ok but not worth the money and there is better out there. Sima? great Loan. Danilo? Not convinced, but unfair to call him terrible, can’t blame him for his injuries.
then we come to Butland, who will likely cover £20M of the spend on his own.
Scotswhahae
Where I think Beale went wrong was in bringing in too many and selling too many. he is a decent coach, although clearly not in PC’s league. But if he had kept Sakala instead of Dessers and possibly Colak instead of Danilo, while never looking at Lammers, we would have had much more of a strong squad at the start of the season, when we needed it.
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