Caixinha won’t get financial boost until winter transfer window

DAVE KING has admitted that the dissolution of the club’s retail deal with Mike Ashley will have no immediate effect on Pedro Caixinha’s transfer budget.

The Portuguese coach has already signed eight players this summer and seen bids for Graham Dorrans and Jamie Walker rejected by Norwich City and Hearts respectively.

Although the club now stands to make a tidy profit from kit sales after brokering an end to a punitive arrangement with Ashley’s Sports Direct firm, the cash will not automatically be poured into the manager’s transfer fund.

‘The plan Pedro has in place, we’ve agreed to fund in any event,’ said King. ‘What this will do would give him more flexibility in January. To say: “Okay, we’ve now built up a surplus”.

‘We’ve been running the club on the basis we’ll get no income from retail, which meant any shortfall had to come from soft loans and the various manners in which we funded the club.

‘What this does is bring in a very quick and immediate revenue stream which will give Stewart (Robertson, Rangers’ managing director) and the director of football some flexibility in the January transfer window, to ask if we want to accelerate any move in advance of next season.

‘It also means I don’t have to go knocking on Douglas Park’s door for him to write out another cheque!’ The news on the retail deal dwarfed the announcement that Rangers had finally secured their director of football last week in the shape of former Manchester City operative Mark Allen. While Caixinha has been given the same free hand afforded to his predecessor Mark Warburton in transfer dealings this summer, he will now work with Allen (left) as he seeks to add to the eight new faces already recruited. King added: ‘Pedro is supportive of a director of football. He understands. He gets it. ‘If we’d brought one in over Mark with his personality, it wouldn’t have worked. ‘Pedro recognised that someone would come in as part of our

long-term plan if we could get the right appointment. Pedro’s job was to come in early, assess the quality of the squad for a different style of football and then come up with his recommendations in the knowledge we didn’t have a director of football yet.

‘His mandate was to target his acquisitions early because of the Europa League qualifiers.

‘We said to Pedro to come in and do what he had to do, knowing the director wasn’t going to be in position.’

‘European football is absolutely vital,’ added King. ‘It would have been tougher to have got someone like Pedro, and tougher to get the type of player he’s bringing in, without that.

‘I couldn’t have imagined someone like Bruno Alves coming in if we weren’t at least in the Europa League.’