With summer upon us, regardless of the title’s destination or sales this upcoming window, Rangers will need to spend.

And spend significantly. The days of Steven Gerrard getting £11M a summer are done, and with inflation, and need, the budget for the summer window has now doubled.

Giovanni van Bronckhorst, regardless of whether he picked the players signed or not, spent £15M in the summer of 2022:

Yilmaz £6M, Davies £4M, Matondo £3M, Colak £2M, plus Lawrence (free), and Tillman (loan).

If we add the wages and admin costs, it was probably closer to £20M but we’ll stick with £15M.

The following summer it was Michael Beale’s turn to make all the additions, and he spent £18M:

Danilo £6M, Dessers £6M, Lammers £3.5M, Cifuentes £1.5M. Sima was a loan, and Butland, Dowell and Sterling were free.

So that’s around £17M-£18M, and that’s before fees and admin – more like £22M. We’ll stick with £18M for now, albeit 4lads have quoted that £20M was spent. That’s probably fairly close.

So what does this mean this summer?

It means for Philippe Clement, we’d expect a serious amount of spending, aside of any sales. And going by historical spending patterns, Clement could get close to £25M to play with. That does include admin/wages/fees etc, but then all windows do. We just don’t talk about that stuff much.

But the point is Rangers have signed a serious manager and he will expect to have a bit of a warchest to play with.

Now, while we say ‘regardless of title and sales’ and stand by it, there is also an eye on Champions League qualification. Secure that, aka, the title, and it’s a COMPLETELY different ball game – that’s a reward, off the bat, thanks to the new format, of around £45M-£60M. And no, we’re not exaggerating.

It changes the picture totally.

But we’re refusing to rely on it. Which is why we’d imagine baseline spending to continue on the line of recent summers by increasing a notable amount – this time to around £25M. If we get UCL then it’s a totally different picture.

But regardless, we certainly don’t see another 2021 where Steven Gerrard got no money at all.

There will be cash used.