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Darren McGregor joins Hibs - also Zaliukas released


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I am disgusted we let McGregor go to Hibs for free, especially after the way their blind hatred of our club manifested itself in the Allan affair. It would have been a victory if we even got £50K for him. Look at McGeoch - celtic didnt want him, they knew that Hibs did, and got a fee for him despite him having one year left on his deal. Really bad business by us here and as one of the first proper bits of transfer dealings that our new CEO (from Motherwell, forgot his name already!) has overseen I must say I am bitterly disappointed, nay raging, that this was allowed to happen.

 

We better sharpen up our ideas in our dealings, and fast, if we are to properly compete with our enemy, who seem to be miles ahead in this department.

 

As an aside as this thread is also bringing Allan into it, I find it highly amusing and pretty ironic that in a celtic side that made 9 changes and rested all their main players for the walkover at Tannadice, that Allan still couldn't get a game for the virtually second 11. When I heard they made 9 changes I assumed he played, checked it last night to find he was an unused sub. Hilarious.

 

I can understand the anger at McGregor joining them, especially after they treated us like shit in the Allan saga.

 

However, I try to remain pragmatic on it. McGregor was reportedly on 5k a week, so would have cost us 250k for the season, plus employers NIC. If he walked away without a pay off (I don't know if he did or not) then we have just saved 250k. Sure, we may have lost a small fee for him, but if we had demanded a fee we may not have got him off the wage bill. If he isn't in the managers plans then that would be 250k wasted this year.

 

So from a financial perspective (without knowing all the details) I can see the sense in it.

 

Because it was Hibs and given recent (non) dealings with them I can see why this is an emotive subject that people are angered about.

 

Once we released him we had no control over where he went. Did Robertson (that is the CEO's name) know that Hibs wanted him ? And, if so, could he have prevented it ? Could only have prevented it by retaining McGregor and forcing Hibs to bid, which might have resulted in no bids, and us being 250k out of pocket.

 

A sensitive one this....

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He did get on during the second half.

 

OK thanks BD, it seems the BBC got their stats wrong. Not for the first time!

 

So he is about 23rd in line for a starting slot instead of further down, still funny! Even more so when added to the info in the thread above about bonuses.

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Mutually agreeing to end a contract is the very definition of allowing him to leave on a free! While I agree we have acted very decently, this decent behaviour has cost us money, and allowed a hated rival to gain a player at our expense for free. I have no concern this will cost us in terms of league points or placing, just that we have again been shafted over a bit when it comes to exiting players at worst, or missed a trick for a fee at best.

 

Agreed on the mutual consent and a free, basically the same thing. But it has only cost us money if the lost transfer fee would have more than compensated for the saved wages.

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I can understand the anger at McGregor joining them, especially after they treated us like shit in the Allan saga.

 

However, I try to remain pragmatic on it. McGregor was reportedly on 5k a week, so would have cost us 250k for the season, plus employers NIC. If he walked away without a pay off (I don't know if he did or not) then we have just saved 250k. Sure, we may have lost a small fee for him, but if we had demanded a fee we may not have got him off the wage bill. If he isn't in the managers plans then that would be 250k wasted this year.

 

So from a financial perspective (without knowing all the details) I can see the sense in it.

 

Because it was Hibs and given recent (non) dealings with them I can see why this is an emotive subject that people are angered about.

 

Once we released him we had no control over where he went. Did Robertson (that is the CEO's name) know that Hibs wanted him ? And, if so, could he have prevented it ? Could only have prevented it by retaining McGregor and forcing Hibs to bid, which might have resulted in no bids, and us being 250k out of pocket.

 

A sensitive one this....

 

As i said, it is not cut and dried with the information publicly available. I understand what you are saying completely, but as it is late August it was not too long to wait to see if a bid was forthcoming, and if not and we released the player to get his wages off the books (with absolutely no pay-off) on 1 September and Hibs snapped him up, I wouldn't have criticised. For the sake of a week we have allowed ourselves to be duped by an agent and I was hoping those days were over.

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I would love to believe you are right, and I have a lot more faith in the current board than any board of the last 30 years, but that is not to say I don't expect them to make mistakes. Of course, the likelihood is that there is a lot more info not disclosed about the facts surrounding this, but on the face of it it looks like McGregor's agent has done us up a cracker. We think we are doing the guy a favour and letting him go to a non-rival, and instead he goes to our biggest rival (as anticipated at time of writing!) for this title. We should have allowed him to transfer to St Johnstone for no fee, not released him at this stage and allow him to go to Hibs. If it got to deadline night and no bids were forthcoming, we can make the option to release him at that time, not now.

 

He could have refused to sign for St Johnstone though.

 

As you say, lots of variables of this which we are unlikely to find out. I do get the anger as it was Hibs. But like Warburton continually tells us.... "I am only concerned about Rangers" - in this instance I am hoping that the wages saved outweigh the fee we could have received - and it probably does.

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OK thanks BD, it seems the BBC got their stats wrong. Not for the first time!

 

So he is about 23rd in line for a starting slot instead of further down, still funny! Even more so when added to the info in the thread above about bonuses.

 

And if the contract structure as stewarty posted is correct then the lad is making a mistake by signing for them - he would definitely have played more games for us than he would for them. I actually think he would have enjoyed his football more too. Then you have the added element of manager - Warburton has only just joined us and wanted Allan, thus Allan would be one of "his" players. Warburton has us playing Allan's type of football. Warburton is likely to be here for a few years (here's hoping none of the "bigs" down south don't come knocking) - whereas I can see Deila being on a shoogly peg, and where does that then leave Allan.

 

Add to that the fact that the lad will now never play for us, or certainly he wont sign directly for us from them..... and I think that he has made a monumental mistake (or taken incredibly bad advice) all for the sake of 30 pieces of silver, which wasn't that much in fairness.

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As i said, it is not cut and dried with the information publicly available. I understand what you are saying completely, but as it is late August it was not too long to wait to see if a bid was forthcoming, and if not and we released the player to get his wages off the books (with absolutely no pay-off) on 1 September and Hibs snapped him up, I wouldn't have criticised. For the sake of a week we have allowed ourselves to be duped by an agent and I was hoping those days were over.

 

True regarding waiting a week. One other way to look at this, though, is that I find it refreshing that Rangers are taking a moral high ground and treating our players with dignity and respect, something our great institution has ALWAYS (until recently) been famous for. I am glad, in a sense, we have let the lad leave to further his career with no hard feelings and without waiting till the last minute to force him somewhere he may not wish to be.

 

I just wish it wasn't Hibs he joined.

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there is no way he'd have left without his contract being fully paid up. Why should he?

 

We don't know either way for sure - but McGregor certainly came across to me as an honest pro. If he can get 2k a week at Hibs vs the 5k a week we were paying him then over his 2 yr deal at Hibs he basically gets the same income - the difference being he will play over 70 games with them but would rarely have featured for us.

 

McGregor also struck me as being a fairly intelligent type.

 

He may have received a pay off, but I doubt it would have been for the full value of his contract.

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