Rangers released their annual accounts yesterday and although the headline grabbing figure will have done much to excite the financial experts from the East End, there are underlying signs that progress is being made.
The £15.9million loss, reported by The Scotsman was revealed alongside the need for an additional £20m worth of funding for the coming year, that Chairman Douglas Park and Director John Bennet have already agreed to provide this speaks volumes for the support that the board is currently giving the club.
That is, fundamentally, the bad news, we know it is a business model that isn’t sustainable over the long term but Dave King was clear from the outset that there was a requirement to front load the investment to get the club back up to some form of self-sustainability.
We had a series of crumbling assets in the training centre, Ibrox and Edmiston House but the future for all three looks significantly brighter given the money that has been ploughed into them.
More importantly, on the pitch, we now have a squad that looks as though it is capable of challenging for the duration and not just for a few months, in terms of the balance book, it has been recently valued at some £170m – this summer proved that we have players who are attracting interest, if we truly needed the money we would have sold them.
That we turned down a £16m offer for Alfredo Morelos won’t have gone unnoticed by many when reflecting on the books, a quick look across the city shows that – but for the sale of Kieran Tierney – they would have lost in the region of £25m, the headline figures don’t always reflect the true picture.
Social media can be full of nonsense, however, it can also be a source of reasoning. Heart and Hand’s resident financial expert, Andy McGowan, and the Price of Football’s well respected, Kieran Maguire, both looked at the finer details that showed the gap isn’t as big between Scottish football’s big two as it once was.
There is now just an £11m gap in revenue and that is with Rangers not seeing the full benefits of a “proper” retail deal until the end of this reporting period, for perspective, in 2018 the gap between the two sides was £70m.
Rangers publish full accounts for year ended 30 June 2020. Despite Covid-19 revenue increased by 11% compared to 16% decrease at Celtic. Gap between two clubs down to £11m from £30m in 2019 pic.twitter.com/PyD0ZOLi9I
— PriceOfFootball (@KieranMaguire) November 20, 2020
Celtic are also losing more money per week and have a significantly bigger wage to turnover ratio, Rangers won’t have to cut the wage bill and downsize the squad to minimise the effects of coronavirus.
For second consecutive year Rangers’ day to day losses are lower than those of Celtic, although the latter have offset these through player sales. pic.twitter.com/jZq0rQRR2r
— PriceOfFootball (@KieranMaguire) November 20, 2020
We all knew it was going to be a hard year financially and it has proven so, but the incredible support of the fans through season ticket sales, the response to the Castore retail deal and the backing of the board has closed the gap on Celtic both on and off the pitch, next stop, title 55.