Hot on the heels of Ibrox Noise reporting last night about the financial shambles ex-Rangers Sporting Director Ross Wilson and former manager Michael Beale left Rangers in, manager Philippe Clement has backed up the sentiments by (indirectly) confirming he basically can’t sign without selling.
The Rangers Review, a bit of a Rangers mouthpiece as we know, went to press with a story that essentially calls it ‘one-in-one-out’ pertaining to the striker situation, but the reality is Rangers’ financial issues go deeper.
Rangers were already on the back foot to Celtic this summer, Ibrox Noise reporting that our budget was said to be around £25M, including wages and sign-on fees.
Unfortunately the further catch appears to be that the outgoing investment will be dependent on sales, and as we said last night, Rangers will only sign players when they sell them.
We don’t have spare pits of cash to dig into, unfortunately – losing 56 and the £65M guaranteed jackpot that came with automatic Champions League group participation has, in a word, decimated Rangers’ summer budget plans.
This club, let’s face it, needed to win 56 critically to get that £65M bonanza from the UCL – we practically gift-wrapped it (again) for Celtic.
And this means that the signing policy got affected.
Rangers have spent around £3.3M – £2.5M on Igamane and £800,000 on Jefte. Barron’s price is yet to be determined by tribunal, while Nsiala and Kelly were free.
It’s already, in fairness, a bit more than Rangers even have – we haven’t sold anyone yet this window, and we’ve basically stretched to breaking point the disposable budget.
For anyone new now arriving, Rangers need to sell first, and we’re not doing a lot of that at all.
This is why shipping out Cyriel Dessers is vital – the £4.5M-£6M Rangers are seeking on that deal will fund new captures.
It’s why selling he and indeed Scott Wright not to mention a host of others is essential now.
Problem is it’s not happening very fast. Rangers have 3 weeks till the Champions League starts, and as things go we’re a million miles away from being ready.
We hope things ramp up aggressively in the next 10 days to two weeks.