And another significant take from the chairman statement is an official announcement from the club about expenditure. Now, we have already heard Kevin Thelwell’s claims and consequently we do have to be a little bit scrupulous about exactly what Andrew Cavanagh meant when he said what he said regarding finances. That is the fact that he claims that Rangers spent in the two windows thus far on players £36M. This is an interesting claim and an interesting take.
Breaking down the numbers
We understood at the base level previously that Rangers spent £35M last summer. Kevin Thelwell, former sporting director, then updated that claim by saying it was £20M net. This meant that the amount spent was logically £45M because we had sold £25M worth of player. In January, we spent around about £13M, £5M on Naderi, £10M give or take on both Rommens and Chouki. That came to about £13M. There was also the addition of Skov Olsen, a loan worth supposedly £15M, but who was of course borrowed and free. That was essentially over £20M worth of player, but the actual expenditure was supposedly £13M, give or take, as covered in recent transfer roundup.
The chairman version
Added to the £45M based on what Thelwell said last summer, that of course comes to £58M. But clearly that is not the case. The chairman has stated it is £36M total in both windows, which pours a lot of cold water over a lot of the reported figures. That means that Rangers spent a lot less last summer and a lot less in January than the numbers we were led to believe. £36M is still a significant amount of cash. That would be £25M last summer and £11M this winter. Still massive amounts of cash by the level that Rangers have been spending, something fans have debated in pieces like this.
What it really means
But nowhere near the big overwhelming cash numbers that the press and our own sources in fairness had been reporting. What does this mean. It means that the players are not coming in for the big cash that it had looked like. It appeared that the big money was being splashed out, that Chermiti for example alone was the £11M. But that does not appear to have been the case, unless we believe all the other dozen or so players that came in last summer came in for a grand total of barely £15M. Probably not the case, with context also discussed in manager comments.
Consequently, it does suggest that Rangers are being more scrupulous in business and not wasting the cash that we thought that perhaps either they were or the previous regimes definitely were. £36M is still a huge amount of cash and far more than any previous Rangers regime in recent times has spent, but it is still not as big as the numbers we were led to believe. Especially with Kevin Thelwell’s claims. Is that a good or a bad thing? We are not entirely sure, but we would suggest it verges on good because it means that we have not wasted as much on mostly rubbish last summer and indeed in January that we thought we had, something also reflected in wider reporting like this.
Further analysis across outlets such as this and statistical breakdowns like this continue to track the evolving picture.