Rangers waste £100,000-a-week on wages as Ibrox exits stall – Four Lads
Rangers have £5million in wages “wasting away” this season in the form of four players who need to leave Ibrox, according to Stevie Clifford.
Writing in the Rangers Review (23 August), the Four Lads Had a Dream blogger said the out-of-favour Ianis Hagi, Todd Cantwell, Rabbi Matondo and Ben Davies are taking up over £100,000 in weekly wages.
That equates to over £5million per season in wages on players who, in ideal circumstances, the club would sell, but Clifford acknowledged the difficulty of doing this due to their inflated salaries.
He wrote: “The problem with (selling them) is when these players are told they are surplus to requirements – no clubs are willing to pick them up because of the inflated wages we are paying them.
“We are now seeing this with Ianis Hagi, Todd Cantwell, Rabbi Matondo, Ben Davies – all of whom Rangers would want to move on.
“That’s over £100,000 of wages – or more than £5million a season – just sitting wasting away with little or no return.”
Rangers will struggle to sell quartet before transfer deadline
Hagi, Cantwell, Matondo and Davies are all in different places within the plans of Philippe Clement this summer, and all four leaving looks just as likely as all four staying put at the time of writing.
Matondo, who played the full 90 minutes in the Gers’ most recent match against St Johnstone in the Scottish League Cup, has been heavily linked with an exit with Blackburn Rovers reportedly keen [Daily Mail, 22 August].
That’s despite Cantwell handing in a transfer request to Clement, with both he and Hagi a distance down the pecking order and in training with the club’s B-team, something which could affect the latter’s value [Keith Jackson, 11 August].
Davies, meanwhile, is in limbo, coming off the bench for the injured Robin Propper at Hampden on 17 August. However, with Almeria defender Kaiky linked [Fabrizio Romano, 23 August], the 29-year-old could be the next out of the door.
With a week left of the transfer window, there’s still plenty of work to do in Clement’s Light Blues rebuild, and freeing up £5m in the budget by selling the aforementioned quartet is much easier said than done.
In other Rangers news, the club have been dragged into a Romanian furore following the sacking of Neil Lennon at Rapid Bucharest.
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