Rangers directors have spoken before about front loading expenditure and the club being in a growth period – the depths of 2015, following years of neglect, demanded that money had to be spent to make us competitive again.
Steven Gerrard has been back as manager since joining in 2018 spending in the region of £40milion, not the £100m claimed by Kris Commons that it would take us to get back up to the top of Scottish football, but, without player departures and because of the financial effects of Covid-19, there is a hole that needs to be filled, as explained by finance expert, Kieran Maguire, to Football Insider:
“Since 2017, they have signed players for £40m but had only physically paid £29m in fees.
“So there is an element of funding via instalment. That is peanuts compared to the Premier League. Man United, for instance, owe over £100m.
“But Rangers have annual revenues of £59m, so £11m is almost 20 per cent of their annual turnover. This means they have got to be cautious.
“I don’t see them having problems but their ability to spend more money is held back.
“It’s a bit like buying something on a credit card. Before you go and get something new, you have to make sure you pay your existing instalments.”
There are two main reasons why we’ve not spent big money on transfer fees this summer; one, we managed to get top targets on pre-contract agreements which saved us a small fortune, and two, we didn’t make the group stages of the Champions League with our Europa League fate still in the balance.
We are lucky to have directors who have the club’s best interests at heart and that they will cover any shortfall in the accounts, this is far from ideal as a long-term plan but we are in unprecedented times, the perfect storm of there being a pandemic which has affected the fluidity of the transfer market just as we have saleable assets is nothing but bad luck.
As Maguire says, it’s nothing to panic about but it does explain why we haven’t been spending big this summer, although I’m pretty sure it still won’t stop some fans from moaning about the lack of money being spent!