In the late 80s and early 90s, Rangers were attracting some of the best players in Britain to Ibrox. After Graeme Souness arrived as player-manager in 1986, he signed Terry Butcher from Ipswich, and Chris Woods from Norwich, and in the following years, other England internationals such as Trevor Steven, Trevor Francis and Ray Wilkins also came to play in Scotland as Rangers would go on to win nine league titles in a row. After Souness left the club to manage Liverpool, Walter Smith continued to spend big money, attracting top class players like Brian Laudrup and Paul Gascoigne to Scottish football.
After an unsuccessful attempt to win a 10th consecutive title, Smith was replaced by Dick Advocaat, who brought with him Dutch internationals like Arthur Numan and Giovanni Van Bronckhorst, and also smashed the Scottish transfer record when Rangers signed Tore Andre Flo from Chelsea for £12million.
Although money became tighter when Alex McLeish replaced Advocaat, he was still able to field a team that included both Frank and Ronald De Boer. But in recent seasons, Rangers have had financial problems, and with the general lack of money in the Scottish game, have found it more and more difficult to attract top quality players to the club, as they cannot compete with the wages that Premier League teams can offer, as well as other leagues across Europe.
Since Craig Whyte’s takeover of the club, they have attempted to re-vamp their scouting network, and now appear to be looking to previously untapped markets for players. In the last week the club has announced their intentions to give trials to India internationals Sunil Chhetri and Jeje Lalpekhlua and Nepalese defender Chand. Asia in general is a continent that seems to be starting to produce more and more players capable of playing at higher levels, with Japan, South Korea and China in particular seeing internationals playing in European football.
With transfer budgets getting tighter and tighter in Scotland, Rangers will have to continue to look where other clubs aren’t for players. But even that may be difficult, as clubs in the more wealthy European leagues are able to plough more money into scouting, and can send scouts all over the world looking for new talent. Another problem for Rangers may be persuading fans to buy into this.
It’s less than a decade since Rangers could afford to spend big money on top class players on a regular basis, and it may be difficult for some fans to accept that the club now has to look elsewhere for talent, and that Rangers now have to look at themselves as a selling club, bringing younger players to the club and through the youth system, and then selling them for a profit after a few years of service.
As Rangers start to expand their scouting network, the club is also looking at other ways to increase revenue. Leaving Scotland to join the English league system is a non-starter, and TV money will continue to be relatively low, compared with the best leagues across Europe. Craig Whyte has admitted that the naming rights for Ibrox could be considered as a way of bringing new money into the club. While he could only dream of the kind of money Manchester City are making from their deal with Etihad, renaming Ibrox would certainly bring millions of pounds to the club.
With the long-term future of the club still under threat, Rangers have to adapt to survive. With much-needed changes to the structure of Scottish football still no closer to reality, it’s up to the club to find new ways of generating finance, whether it’s through the sale of players, or the sale of merchandise in the native countries of new signings.
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blah blah blah. Business as usual at rangers. Smoke and mirrors from a club that is soon going to the wall.
P.S. The india internationionals knew nothing about Rangers’ interest.
i hope its a debt collecting agency the stadium gets named after because lets face it craig whyte the mega billionaire is disputing every bill being sent to ibrox, hes being dragged to court every week more often than a buckfast ned standing at govan cross,who in their right mind would pay whyte anything, he cant wait to put the club into administration.
just read fyffe and ireland are in court tomorrow along with rangers over a bill of just over a thousand pounds,im sure youll read about it at breakfast tomorrow or maybe not you may read about a meeting with mccoist and whyte no players will be sold in january and a couple will be signed.dignity f.c aye ready aye right.
Money became tighter when McLeish replaced Advocaat? They never had any money in the first place, hence the tax bills and lawsuits for debt recovery now!! Should remove at least one of the stars from the jersey, but hey..that would show some humility and acknowledge that you cheated your way to the titles HH
It is less than a decade since Rangers could spend big money? When did Rangers buy Jelavic for £4m? He cost more than the whole Celtic team facing him one derby day last season.
The grief the media gave Celtic got for signing Asian players such as Nakamura (who proved himself time and again a top player), Ki (an outstanding young prospect who has won Celtic plenty of games) and the captain of China (Zheng Zhi who had been playing at Charlton for a few seasons) for being some sort of marketing ploy was ridiulous – and now we see this type of puffery marketed as insight…
South Korea and Japan have hosted the World Cup and have strong professional leagues – Nepal are 144 in the World Ranking, India 160. Japan is to 20 in the world and South Korea at #31 is a full 20 places above Scotland.
I have been to India – all the kids in the streets are playing cricket not football. There is very little appetite for the game there. It’d be like the Rajasthan Royals signing a lad from Freuchie and expecting the money to come rolling in from Scotland! Good luck with that.