Just under a year on, the figures still bring on a weary shake of the head. Five first-team squad members under contract shipped out the door. A grand total of £810,000 brought in for the lot in transfer fees.
As an indication of just where Rangers’ reckless, scattergun approach to recruitment had been leading them, it didn’t quite carry the same weight as letting Alfredo Morelos and Ryan Kent leave for nothing when there was once £30million of offers on the table. However, it was every bit as damning. Arguably, even more sobering.
Sam Lammers had cost £3.5m from Atalanta the previous summer. Sure, it didn’t work out for him in Glasgow, but a loan move to his native Netherlands with Utrecht for the second part of the campaign had rekindled his spark and delivered 11 goals in 20 appearances. He was, by anyone’s definition, a perfectly marketable asset before moving permanently to Twente Enschede.
Connor Goldson was, admittedly, 31 years of age. However, he had been a regular in the heart of the defence, won a title, built up a CV of top-level European experience. He still had two years left on his deal. It wasn’t unrealistic to think Rangers might get back a reasonable chunk of the £3m they had spent to bring him from Brighton six years earlier when Cypriots Aris showed an interest.
Todd Cantwell was 26. Although proving not to be former manager Philippe Clement’s cup of tea, there had to be some residual value there. His early performances after initially arriving from Norwich City had punters purring about sell-on value and suchlike. He ended up sloping out of a side exit to Blackburn for buttons.
Of the others, Robby McCrorie, although short on first-team action ahead of moving on to Kilmarnock, was a member of the Scotland international set-up. Scott Wright, picked up by Birmingham, had just turned 27 and had a credible background including a starting slot in a Europa League final.
Cyriel Dessers has a healthy goal return but his performances have rarely fully convinced
Sam Lammers was a Rangers misfit but the club should still have banked a better return on him
Todd Cantwell was desperate to get out of Rangers but was allowed to leave far too cheaply
It had all gone to pot at Rangers under their chaotic old regime, though. They just needed folk off the wage bill. And 800 grand, give or take a few extra coppers, for all five would just have to do.
It was ridiculous. Particularly when placed alongside Celtic’s continuing ability to cash in on their own bit-part players. Just consider some of those who left there last summer.
Mikey Johnston. Three million quid to West Brom. Oh Hyeon-gyu. £4m-plus to Genk. Sead Haksabanovic. Off to Malmo in a deal that returned more or less all the £2m he cost from Rubin Kazan. Tomoki Iwata brought in £800,000 from Birmingham City.
Then, there was Bosun Lawal. A bloke barely heard of in his own household flogged off to Stoke City for £3m.
Those five guys, by all available estimates, brought in the guts of £13m. Then, full-back Alexandro Bernabei, who had looked a colossal waste of £3.75m, went to Brazilian outfit Internacional in January for £4.5m after lighting up the place Lammers-style during 10 months there on loan.
Much of the focus on Celtic’s successes in the market has centred on the £25m fees brought in for Matt O’Riley, Kieran Tierney and Jota. Those are the headline figures, all right, and the kind of windfalls dreamt about at Ibrox as the new US-based owners endeavour to finally bring into being the infamous — brace yourselves, folks — ‘player-trading model’.
Mikey Johnston banked Celtic a cool £3million when making his move to West Brom
Most Celtic fans would struggle to recognise their £3million former defender Bosun Lawal
Already this summer, there are some outlandish views being put forward about what Nicolas Raskin might be worth based on his arrival in the Belgian national squad. There’s talk about Everton eyeing Mohamed Diomande. Time will tell whether interest in Hamza Igamane from France and England leads to someone taking a punt on his undoubted potential.
Rangers had a platform to build up a strong reputation as a club willing to sell at the right price when Calvin Bassey went to Ajax for just short of £20m three years ago, at the same time as Southampton were paying up to £10m for Joe Aribo. But, just like everything else, they blew it.
They didn’t replace their sporting director. Gave Michael Beale the keys to the castle and an open chequebook, for that matter. Ended up all over the shop. And then found themselves having to cut costs. And players. Sharply.
That can’t happen again. Ideally, they will quickly get to a stage where game-changing amounts of cash will be slapped on the table for their better players, allowing them to profit and reinvest.
In the meantime, though, just making inroads on recouping meaningful funds for moves that maybe haven’t quite worked out as well as expected will be a start. And that brings us conveniently to a certain Cyriel Dessers.
Sources in Athens suggest the Nigerian international striker has already agreed personal terms on a move to AEK. It’s now all about the clubs settling on a fee — with all reports suggesting the Greeks are keen to get a deal closed out.
Dessers applauds the travelling fans in Rangers’ final fixture, knowing his future was unclear
In many ways, this transfer could be viewed as a barometer of where Rangers are going under new sporting director Kevin Thelwell, who brings a decent record from his previous jobs and looks a relatively safe pair of hands.
That Dessers should be sold is a no-brainer. Be sure, 51 goals from 109 outings over two seasons is not to be sniffed at. It is a very good return. Without going over old ground, though, this is simply not a guy you can have as your main man up front. The eyes tell you that, even if the statistics don’t.
He misses too many big chances. Fails to deliver in too many big games. It is impossible not to admire the way he has continued to bounce back from disappointments and keep putting himself out there, but his time is up in Glasgow.
There’s talk of AEK being willing to go as far as £5m to land him. Considering he will be 31 in December, getting anything in the ballpark of the £4.5m forked out to Cremonese for his services two years ago would be a really, really good result.
No, it isn’t the stupendous £10m creamed off Rennes by Celtic for a 30-year-old Kyogo Furuhashi carrying a shoulder problem, but it’s still a step-change from routinely seeing folk walk out the door with nothing — or next to nothing — coming in the other way.
Raskin’s involvement with Belgium has seen some people ramp up his value to the £20m mark
Dessers hasn’t been a disaster at Ibrox, but he is not the answer either. And where Rangers have to start in getting themselves properly functional as a club that can work the market to its advantage is in making sure such deals just don’t end up in fortunes simply being written off over and over again.
Birmingham City seem keen to secure Ben Davies and Kieran Dowell on permanent arrangements after good loan stays. Fine. They must pay, though. And if they don’t, another buyer must be found.
Same goes for Jose Cifuentes, who, having been on loan at Aris Thessaloniki, surely carries some worth as a 26-year-old Colombia internationalist. Rabbi Matondo should command a fee. As must Ridvan Yilmaz or Nedim Bajrami.
And if Robin Propper is going back to Twente, a sizeable amount of the £1.5m that brought him to Ibrox should be changing hands too.
Getting to a point where Rangers can bring in sums in the tens of millions for their Raskins or Igamanes is the desired end destination and who is to say they can’t get there a little more quickly than expected.
Rangers manager Russell Martin could do with a big sale to help him reshape a tired squad
However, ahead of that, they simply have to show the market that they are no longer a soft touch, a weak, directionless, messed-up entity that will take anything close to 10 fags and a packet of joob-joobs for their players simply to get expensive mistakes off the books or reverse out of onerous contracts.
Dessers can be a platform for that. A signal of new purpose. Stand firm and get your cash back on him, a bloke more likely to have his managers ripping their hair out than ripping up the league, and they’ll have done very well indeed.
Official line from Mulraney isn’t borne out by reality
SFA president Mike Mulraney reports himself cock-a-hoop with the performances of the nation’s referees of late. He reckons the overall standard of officiating is right up there with any other league on the continent.
‘In general terms, I think our refs are doing better than OK,’ he said during the week. ‘I think we are comparable to any other country in Europe.’
SFA president Mike Mulraney has thrown his weight behind Scotland’s beleaguered referees
Someone might want to tell the big knobs at UEFA and FIFA then. By the time the World Cup rolls around in North America next summer, it will have been 10 years since Scotland had a refereeing representative at a major men’s finals tournament.
Willie Collum, current head of whistlers at Hampden, was called up for Euro 2016. Since then? Nada. Not even a whiff of anyone being asked along.
At the 2018 World Cup, Turkey, Russia, Poland, Serbia and Slovenia had guys there. At Euro 2020, Sweden, Israel and Romania got in on the act.
World Cup 2022 had Romania, Poland and Slovenia represented and, at the last Euros, Slovakia, Romania, Switzerland, Slovenia, Turkey, Poland and Sweden were all present and correct along with the major footballing nations.
Without wishing to question Mr Mulraney’s expertise, it seems fair to say that the general opinion from folk you bump into at matches all over this little country of ours is that Scotland’s referees are simply not good enough.
Collum was the last Scots referee to officiate at a major international tournament, at Euro 2016
Collum, in fairness, is trying hard in his current role. He has brought transparency, admitted openly to mistakes and even shown himself willing to cut the likes of Alan Muir from the VAR list after one unfathomable foul-up too many.
Whether things are actually improving or not is less convincing. Guess the proof will be in the pudding when UEFA put forward their refereeing teams and VAR bods for next year’s affairs in Mexico, Canada and the US.
How many of our men-in-the-middle do you think will be looking out their passports?
Pressing questions around Pressley remain
Steven Pressley has always hit a little bit different than your run-of-the-mill football person — and that’s to his credit, by the way, rather than his detriment.
It’s maybe why his opening press conference as Dundee manager was a little discombobulating. As a former player across the street at United, there’s no question he has a fanbase he really has to win round following a quizzical — and that’s putting it politely — reaction to his appointment.
Steven Pressley has some work to do to win over those unsure of his appointment at Dundee
He’s not seen terribly often at Dens Park, but don’t doubt Gordon Strachan’s influence
Yet, there he was. Telling them there’s nothing in his background to suggest he’s going to win trophies. Talking about signing his contract in a service station on the way to an airport. Discussing how failures in England have left him with almost no ego at all.
Dundee have an odd record of appointing — and firing — managers. Pressley’s their seventh in eight years and it’s easy to reach the conclusion they don’t really know what they’re doing.
Interesting a character as Pressley is, he didn’t exactly assuage concerns he’s little more than just another old ally, years out of the dug-out, given a job by his ex-Celtic boss and current Dens technical director Gordon Strachan.
Still, if there is one thing bamboozled Dee fans can hold onto amid the confusion and instability, it’s this. He isn’t Mark McGhee.
