Transfer strategy? Old Firm are winging it
MARK ALLEN, never backward in coming forward when there’s a bit of hollering to do, did the tour of the London-based media outlets to hail the vision and prudence of the new, sustainable Rangers and its thoroughly sensible approach to all things business.
Like spending £7million on Ryan Kent on deadline day, having already brought in five other wide players during the window and taken the total number of them in the squad to seven with a further two punted out on loan.
It was a statement of intent all right. They’ve now got even more wingers than Celtic, looking positively threadbare on the flanks with just the eight guys hoping to fill two positions at best.
There are so many of them at the Old Firm that it might be time to invent a new collective term. A money pit of wide men, perhaps. A sinkhole of sand-dancers?
Scott Sinclair could maybe canvass opinion while he sits in the house waiting for his missus to return to Coronation Street and counting his new deal worth £2m-a-season or whatever it is. Maryan Shved and Eros Grezda can help him out with the ring-round.
It is, of course, understandable that Ibrox director of football Allen wanted to spend some time in the spotlight after his late dealings.
He’d been denied one of his now-traditional victory salutes in the technical area thanks to a dreadful Glasgow derby performance that not even Clark Kent would have been capable of rescuing.
In the aftermath of serious money being splurged ahead of the window closing, it is important to give the impression you know what you are doing.
Over at Lennoxtown, Neil Lennon praised the work of his summer intern Nicky Hammond, who surely now ought to be going travelling in Indonesia before landing a bar job, and reported himself happy at coming out of the window with a squad almost as bloated in numbers — if not exactly wages — as anything Brendan Rodgers’ scattergun approach could muster.
In fairness Lennon and Hammond, stand-in head of somethingorother, were not the men responsible for running up a £60m salary bill on a cast of thousands that couldn’t get through last term’s Champions League qualifiers. Of those still present at the scene of the crime, culpability rests with chief executive Peter Lawwell and his board.
However, it is worth mentioning that Lennon’s new-look team blew it at the very same stage with £10m of summer signings in Christopher Jullien and Boli Bolingoli deemed unworthy of a start in the 4-3 home loss to Cluj.
Greg Taylor’s late £2.2m arrival from Kilmarnock was described by Lennon as the ‘icing on the cake’. Rather a pricey old cake, it has to be said. With a costly tower of players capable of playing at left-back. Taylor and Bolingoli cost £5.2m between them with £1.5m Jonny Hayes also capable of filling in. That’s the guts of £7m in fees alone before we even consider the long-forgotten Andrew Gutman, sent out on loan to America until some time next year rather like the unkempt aunt in the asylum that no one likes to talk about. Manny Perez is over there too, of course. Those who have actually seen him play, lesser in number than those graced by visitations from the Virgin Mary, say he is a right-back. Shame Celtic have already signed another three of those this summer alone. Of course, Celtic can get away with all this. For now. They have oodles of money in the bank to cover a first-team squad containing well in excess of 30 bodies. There also, at least, appears to be some kind of interesting, longer-term plan emerging through the signing of teenage talents from English clubs such as Luca Connell, Jonathan Afolabi, Lee O’Connor, Jeremie Frimpong and Tobi Oluwasemi. Celtic still have players capable of raising big money too. Odsonne Edouard, now he’s scoring for France Under-21s, can be expected to follow Moussa Dembele and Kieran Tierney in costing £20m in time.
Kristoffer Ajer, Olivier Ntcham, Callum McGregor, James Forrest and Ryan Christie are other strong assets.
This disguises the general wastefulness and lack of strategy that ended all those ambitions of Celtic becoming a last-16 Champions League side, but it also raises big questions over where Rangers are with their squad and even bigger doubts over the job Allen is really doing.
By my rough calculations, just short of 40 players have been signed since Allen was appointed on June 20, 2017. We’ll forgive him the first two, Carlos Pena and Eduardo Herrera, who is somehow still under contract, and put that down to a certain Portuguese with a penchant for Luxembourgish horticulture.
After that, though, he’s het. And there is a clear issue to be addressed: How many of those left from his recruitment drive could currently be sold on for a profit?
Alfredo Morelos and James Tavernier are the products of past regimes. Nikola Katic will probably bring in more than £1.5m unless Steven Gerrard dumps him on the sidelines and destroys his confidence like last season.
Would you get over £3.5m for Connor Goldson, though? Or more than £2.2m for Borna Barisic? Joe Aribo has evident potential, but plenty still to prove.
For all the noise made about the window just gone at Ibrox, Aribo was the only summer signing to start the Old Firm defeat. There wasn’t one single player raised in the youth academy, other than 37year-old Allan McGregor, in the 18.
George Edmundson and Filip Helander took up £4.2m of the budget with neither getting into the defence. Last season, £5.5m was spent on Grezda, Barisic and Kyle Lafferty. In Scotland, this kind of cash simply cannot be squandered on people who don’t play.
In addition to that surfeit of wide attackers, there are nine central midfielders on the books with a further three out on loan.
Meanwhile, at centre-forward, Rangers are one injury away from having Morelos or 36-year-old Jermain Defoe having to juggle domestic and European commitments on their own unless you believe Greg Stewart, two failed spells at Aberdeen behind him, is going to cut it.
Rangers don’t have a proper left-back they can trust either. Steven Gerrard doubts Barisic’s ability to handle Scottish football while Jon Flanagan and Andy Halliday are both out of position there.
The less said about some of Allen’s other signings — Aaron Nemane, Umar Sadiq, Lassana Coulibaly, Declan John, Joe Worrall, Sean Goss, Jason Cummings, Ovie Ejaria — the better.
Gerrard has to take his fair share of the blame for all this, too, and it will be his neck on the block should the current squad fail to deliver. Allen (left) can’t escape, though.
Both Celtic and Rangers aspire to compete in Europe and have to wring every last ounce of value out of their budgets to do that. That is particularly true of Rangers given their lower turnover, lower spending power and business model still reliant on shareholder loans.
Yet, they are both failing on that score. At Ibrox, the squad is ridiculously overmanned in some areas and short in others.
It is hardly the embodiment of long-term vision and prudence. Another year of Celtic winning the title and you wouldn’t say it looks terribly sustainable either.
Blowing all that cash on Kent looks more like a last roll of the dice.