John Bennett sends Rangers supporters £10.5m message after latest Ibrox revelation
John Bennett has revealed that Rangers lost £10.5million last year before player trading after being called out over the Light Blues’ financial losses.
The Gers have spent heavily over the last few seasons at Ibrox and have relied upon a player trading model to turn a profit, with Rangers’ latest accounts showing the Light Blues’ costs had reached £108 million, with losses of £4.1 million.
But Bennett revealed that those losses were £6.4 million higher before the Ibrox club traded players and the chairman has ambitions to reduce that number to zero so all sales directly turn a profit for the Light Blues in the future.
As quoted by the Heart and Hand Podcast’s Colin (5 December) he said: “This club lost £10.5 million last year pre-player trading, that’s a number that needs to go away and you should keep an eye on that number.
“That £10.5 million needs to become zero. I’ve been kicking tyres and finding cost savings and it will come down. Rangers will go to a place where they break even before player trading so don’t be concerned about that.”
Losses to be cut
It appears from Bennett’s comments that Rangers will be keen to reduce their losses over the coming years so that player sales during the transfer window directly provide a profit for the Light Blues in the future rather than just reducing the amount of money lost.
No club wants to lose money whatsoever and even fewer clubs want to be haemorrhaging upwards of £10 million before selling a single player in the transfer market, the Light Blues don’t want to find themselves in a situation where they need to sell players just to keep the club’s head above the water.
While supporters in attendance at the AGM received no idea of just what cost-cutting measures are being put in place at Ibrox in an attempt to push spending down, they can rest assured that Bennett is looking at all ideas of how Rangers can cut costs.
That certainly makes it feel as though there won’t be many more summers that see nine first-team players signed for millions of pounds each as was the case under Beale this summer. Maybe once the books are balanced the Gers can spend big again.
In other Rangers news, Real Betis have suffered a huge injury blow ahead of their Europa League clash with Clement’s side