Rangers will need to match Celtic's £24million wage spend to challenge...

[calscot 0]

I think it is food for thought that we're not as effective as Hearts were last year in what was arguably a harder league - with us in it despite our meltdown. However, our recruitment for the SP will hopefully be dramatically different than their's was. It still suggests there might be a significant gap, despite Celtic's suppressed standards.

 

Third place will not be acceptable to Rangers fans who won't be happy with second either, but would grudgingly probably put up with a close second with a good fight - after all we've had to cope with not winning the title in a bit more than half the campaigns in our history.

 

I don't see a Souness style spending revolution in the summer, so it will be all about MW and his judicious signings, and how he gets the team playing.

[Bearman 9]

MW's words remind me of the time Martin O'Neill took over a shambles of a team that had finished 21 points behind us the previous season. He came out with "Rangers are the benchmark" or something like that...look what happened!

 

I have every hope we can win the league next season with 3 or 4 decisive signings.

[Bluedell 5,627]

I think it is food for thought that we're not as effective as Hearts were last year in what was arguably a harder league - with us in it despite our meltdown. .

 

We could end up having a better season than Hearts did.

[compo 7,048]

Let's just pay what the club can afford .

[Uilleam 5,948]

Rasellik has an overblown, overpaid, and over rated squad of players. I read recently that there were 16 midfield players alone on the books at Porkheid.

Small wonder that the wage bill is astronomic.

Mark Warburton has said, consistently, that he favours a lean squad, so even if Rangers paid wages commensurate

with those on offer at the Piggery, it is unlikely that the total bill would approach that of the Green Dahlia's squad.

 

Let us look forward to The Magic Hat's lean, mean, football machine leaving the bloated green and grey carcass somewhere in its wake next season........

[der Berliner 3,747]

Regarding Derk Boerrigter, we would rather not check out the money we spent on Templeton (fee and wages) compared to his game-time. Dunno what happened to the Yahoo, i.e. whether injury stopped him from playing. Don't mind that he squeezed money out of them though, TBH.

[ian1964 10,724]

The fact that winning promotion I would expect even more ST to be sold for next season!,I would love for the Rangers fans who have not got a ST to buy one,obviously if they can't afford to then they can't,but it can only help the club drive forward.

[calscot 0]

Trouble with season tickets is they don't really add up to much - another 5000 is merely two million quid, although the more fans the better obviously.

 

It's the commercial side we need to be exploiting - German clubs are bringing in £100-200m in that department, and I can't see why we'd have less than a tenth of that market penetration than one club out of twenty in Germany.

 

I think our biggest problem there is the same thing everyone says makes us special - the polarisation of the population between two clubs, and mostly for unsavoury reasons. Companies don't want to alienate half the population.

 

Another part of the trouble I think might be the collective marketing of the SPFL, along with our losses on the kit front. When you consider our paltry TV money and nothing from Europe, you can see why our turnover is currently mostly based on ticket sales which will max out at something like the £25m mark. We need to get back to the top and have reasonable runs in Europe to get us back to the £50m turnovers of old. Then we can spend up to £24m on wages, which was about where we were in 2011, IIRC.

[ian1964 10,724]

Trouble with season tickets is they don't really add up to much - another 5000 is merely two million quid, although the more fans the better obviously.

 

It's the commercial side we need to be exploiting - German clubs are bringing in £100-200m in that department, and I can't see why we'd have less than a tenth of that market penetration than one club out of twenty in Germany.

 

I think our biggest problem there is the same thing everyone says makes us special - the polarisation of the population between two clubs, and mostly for unsavoury reasons. Companies don't want to alienate half the population.

 

Another part of the trouble I think might be the collective marketing of the SPFL, along with our losses on the kit front. When you consider our paltry TV money and nothing from Europe, you can see why our turnover is currently mostly based on ticket sales which will max out at something like the £25m mark. We need to get back to the top and have reasonable runs in Europe to get us back to the £50m turnovers of old. Then we can spend up to £24m on wages, which was about where we were in 2011, IIRC.[/QUO

A decent signing for that!

[calscot 0]

Agree, could pay the wages of 5 players for that but it's not exactly closing the gap by enough. Actually, it would be more like two or three if you consider wages as 50% of turnover.

 

I can see league sponsorship, prize money and TV increasing by about £4m also, so perhaps we could go from £6m in wages to £9m... But much of that will be taken up by automatic pay and bonus rises to our current squad, so we need to find more money from somewhere.

 

It all looks depressing when you consider the £90m from TV that the likes of Watford rake in.