Rangers can now hit January transfer window hard after £55million windfall
Rangers have the cash to strengthen their flagging squad in January with the money brought in this season, according to Ken Pattullo of Begbies Traynor.
Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s job is on the line, the European campaign is over, and the Scottish title may already be out of reach, thanks to a squad that has been ravaged by injuries and left sorely lacking for weeks.
But after the club posted a strong financial record for the 2021/22 period, with a huge loss a year earlier reduced to less than £1million, financial consultancy partner Pattullo is convinced that there is much-needed money available to spend in January whether the manager is sacked or not.
He told the Scottish Daily Express: “I can’t see why Rangers can’t go out and spend big in January whether there is a new man in charge or Gio van Bronckhorst is still there.”
“Since [the recent financial report] they have sold Joe Aribo and Calvin Bassey which looks like bringing in over £30million and they will earn around £25million for getting into the group stage of the Champions League. So there would appear to me that the money is there to go and strengthen the squad.”
Good news at last?
This is the news that Rangers fans have been waiting for ever since the club went straight from a Europa League final into a transfer window where they took in far more than they spent, then successfully qualified for the Champions League group stage for the first time in years.
The noises coming out of the club at each step were encouraging, before repeated heavy defeats in Europe put a huge dampener on things, and suggestions that there wasn’t as much money as widely thought.
When last year’s accounts came out and showed that the Europa League run and the then-club-record sale of Nathan Patterson to Everton had helped the club nearly break even there seemed to be little reason why there wouldn’t be cash to spend now.
There are still loans to be serviced but a major payment from last year, believed to be to Mike Ashley in the Sports Direct dispute, isn’t due to be repeated.
Clearly, Rangers aren’t going to blow £55million in January, but there must be enough to rejuvenate this squad, barring a major unforeseen expense.
The main question now is who will be entrusted with it, as the World Cup break has arrived with the Gers nine points off the top of the SPFL and speculation over van Bronckhorst off the charts, but whoever is in charge by the new year is surely going to need it.
In other Rangers news, BBC pundits were in unison in sticking the boot in on one want-away Light Blues player for one of the worst performances of the season.