One for the money
The money
As the club published yet another year of increasing losses you couldn't be blamed if you decided to stay off social media for a few days. It always brings out the most ardent of Sevcoholics. You know the type, receive a regular payment into the bank of around £75 every two weeks, usually spend it all on white lightning and are amazingly experts in both sports law and chartered accountants.
That being said, the readings are grim. An operating loss of £23.5m, up from £15.9m last year, does not sit comfortably with me, not after everything we went through in 2012.
Another disappointment is the merchandise intake, £4.2m. We were probably all expecting that to come in a lot higher after record kit sales each year and a new Castore shirt out every second weekend. However when you look at it, it does fall in line with the estimated £25m over 5 years, so it's perhaps a case of we got ahead of ourselves.
I'm no accountant so I'm not going to sit and say everything is rosey, or that everything is in the pan, but I'm confident that with our board willing to fill the shortfall we're not quite in panic stations yet. Think about it, if things were as grim as all that there is no way we wouldn't have sold someone in the summer. We've seen it before, when things are grim we sell players for less than we can get, Jelavic, and yet this time we made an effort to retain the players. I don't expect any fire sale in January either with that in mind.
I do think though it's imperative that we win the league this season to get that Champions League money, and even with that, I would expect a sale or two in the upcoming summer.
That's not necessarily a bad thing however. That is the model we should be striving for, bring players in relatively cheap (in football terms) and then sell for a big profit. We all know we can't compete with the English market, but if we can bring in a player for £50k, for example, and then turn him into a £15m player then we have achieved a goal that allows us to then strengthen the squad and try to repeat the format.
This won't be the case for every player we bring, there will be duds, for every Morelos there will be an Eros Grezda, but if we can get to the point where the sale of 1 player can fund the purchase of 3 or 4 then we are on the right track to becoming self-sustainable and we can stop relying on our board and fans to inject so much money into the club.
The players
That moves me on to a brief topic of the players. After Sunday's emphatic win over Motherwell most of us were probably expecting the team to kick on and pick up that form we saw last season, and then Thursday brought us back down to earth.
In true Rangers in Europe in the 90's style, we managed to score 3 goals and draw 1-1...
Connor Goldson just looks like a guy that has checked out this season. The drama around his contract and the will he, won't he, is a distraction no matter what anyone else says. That or the form he showed last year was the outlier. Either way, I'm at the stage where I'm, a bit like him, unable to defend anymore. He either needs to sign a new contract and sort his head or he needs to go, because this distracted, half in half out style is causing more harm than good.
As for Fashion Sakala, he made more than a few folk look silly on Sunday, @DerickSnake, and @Chr1sBett I'm looking at you. He has also provided a lot of joy this past week with his post-match interview and new song... but I'll be honest, after an initial impressive showing against Real Madrid I'm still not sure, and it's going to take more than a hattrick against Motherwell to completely win me over.
Even Jo Garner has a Rangers Hattrick to his name.
It was great to see Hagi quick to dismiss his goal on Thursday though, talking instead about how the win was what was important and they failed to get that. He understands, at Rangers draws aren't celebrated. That lad is special.
It was also great to see Ryan Kent back on the field, and what a great assist for Hagi's goal. Hopefully the break will have set the fire in his belly and he'll be back to his best going forward because he's capable of singlehandedly turning a game on its head, but he needs to find some consistency.
Lastly, I imagine I'm not the only one delighted to hear Ryan Jack is finally on the road to recovery. Personally, I think we've missed him big time. The stats speak for themselves, we didn't concede a single goal when he played last season, and this season we're conceding far too many.
Walter Smith
I didn't want to write an article on The Gaffer following his passing as I didn't want to appear like I was looking for cheap clicks, but I will say he provided a lot of wonderful moments in both my childhood and my early twenties and for that, I will forever be grateful. He was a wonderful man and the world is poorer for his passing.
The Rambling Ger
Twitter - @GerRambling
IG - TheRamblingGer
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