Rangers have lurched from one crisis to the next off the pitch over the last decade and there is another ominous dark cloud hanging over the club.
After posting a £17.2m operating loss, it is easy to see why Philippe Clement had to cut costs in the summer at a time when he was looking to rebuild the squad – the delayed return to Ibrox only throwing another spanner into the works.
Fans aren’t happy with the Rangers board and a worrying statement from chief financial officer James Taylor won’t do their mood any favours at all.
Why Rangers could lose £20m European cash boost
When asked about how important Rangers player trading model is for the club moving forwards, Taylor couldn’t have made it any clearer when he said:
“Very is the short answer to that. I think for us as a football club I’ve mentioned before that we are in the market that we’re in, in the structural market that we’re in, we’re really over-reliant and over-leveraged towards success in Europe so again the recent result against FCSB was extremely promising and again European performance for us is super important to be able to continue to invest in the squad, to continue to invest in the campus and to continue to invest in the football club in various different aspects.
“In terms of the commercial revenues again we’ve had a number of strong commercial renewals and indeed new partners into the ecosystem.”
Being reliant on European football is not ideal in terms of forward planning given its volatile nature.
Rangers need to get player trading right to lessen European reliance
European football is a great boost for Rangers finances, but what if that well ran dry?
A high club coefficient ranking means nothing if the league that a team is playing in is ranked low and this is what the Light Blues face.
According to the excellent Scotland’s Coefficient page on X – @scotlandscoeff1 – this season is locked in for the 2025/26 season, however, Scotland currently sit 16th, just 0.3 points behind 13th placed Greece.
Making the top 15 is the key factor and having Rangers, Hearts, and Celtic, pick up points for the rest of the European season could be worth £20m.
If Scotland don’t make the top 15 and Rangers finish second (in 2025/26), there will be no Europa League football the following year – unless they win the Scottish Cup – instead, three qualifying rounds will need to be played just to make the Europa Conference League.
Failure at any stage and Rangers lose circa £20m. It doesn’t take a maths genius to work out why, on top of a £17.2m loss, this would be bad news.
