It appears Rangers are increasingly likely to secure Fabio Silva from Wolverhampton Wanderers on the cheap after Wolves’ losses rose to £67M as explained by Ibrox Noise some weeks ago, meaning they are desperate to balance the Molineux books to avoid breaking FFP rules.
The main reason for this is their player investments haven’t worked out, particularly Silva, and this is essentially called amortisation, which is effectively the loss on players when their values decrease. This is particularly prominent when a player’s contract expires – Rangers are going to be potential victims of this in the summer ourselves.
But because of amortisation, and other factors, Wolves have lost £80M of player value in the last 12 months, and they need to balance that to avoid the overall losses of £67M causing them to be penalised in the FFP books.
And to do that, among others, they will sell Silva.
Wolves do not want to breach FFP and be hit with sanctions, so anything from £3M-£6M for the Portuguese striker would certainly hit the spot as far as they’re concerned.
As Rangers know only too well, when a football club hits financial trouble, the value of its players reduces dramatically – courting clubs know this stricken side needs the money badly, so can play much more effective hardball with fees and get great players for knockdown prices.
This means Wolves, and Silva, and that Rangers will be able to ‘rob’ Wanderers of Silva for a fraction of his (former) value.
In fairness, even today transfermarkt attributes a value of just £10M on Silva’s signature, which is hugely down on what they paid (£35M) and actually matches the value he ironically had at the time which was indeed only around £10M in the first place.
They really, really overpaid on the lad.
And that’s on them, and Nuno Santo for wasting on Silva.
But with such lavish spending they’re close to FFP breaches so have to balance the books significantly.
And Silva’s sale to Rangers is part of that.
If, that is, Philippe Clement actually still wants the lad permanently.