Rangers’ summer plans are being hampered by 56 fail | OneFootball

We haven’t actually spoken for a while, or should that be ‘whined’ for a while, about the epic and damaging fail that chucking the league away to Celtic was.

Rangers had 56 in their hands, Philippe Clement had it in his hands, and yet the manager and players conspired to throw away not only the glory of the silverware, but the £65M guaranteed kitty that the new format Champions League was about to reward us with.

Not winning 56 changed everything. By February our board was starting to make genuine plans about having the gigantic cash injection a title win would make, and Ibrox Noise wants to explain the difference, and the damage.

Simply put, winning 56 would have won the SPL prize money of around £4M. As it was we got £2.7M, but the big doozy was group stage of the Champions League for the title winners.

That is £3M per home match x 4 (one extra), basic prize money for being there at £17.5M, TV rev of £5M, and massively hiked coefficient payment of around £20M. Grand total inc. SPL prize cash of about £60M minimum, bare minimum.

Now Celtic will not get the same coefficient payment because the coefficient now rewards individual clubs and not country, so Rangers get rewarded now for what we did in the Europa League, and that’s unique to us.

But ultimately, we are now having to ‘pray’ we can negotiate two brutal Champions League qualifying rounds to then be able to guarantee that kitty come early August, which then does give us more muscle for the rest of the window.

But we cannot plan for it.

And that’s the difference and damage.

Without that massive cash Rangers are having to budget on our own means – sure, we’re well aware of FFP and that having £65M in the bank doesn’t mean we can just spend all of it, we know it doesn’t work that way.

But it is a speck better to budget yourself when you have a gigantic safety buffer in the bank, rather than having to pull the purse strings and be mega careful.

Celtic have a complete financial freedom this summer to buy and enhance, Rangers simply don’t.

Missing out on 56 last season was probably the most damaging failure in recent seasons – unless we can miraculously make the group stage after all.

That would be a turnaround all right.