GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - JULY 18: A general view during the pre-season friendly match between Rangers and Newcastle at Ibrox Stadium on July 18, 2023 in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)
Rangers are forced to face the harsh truth of a widening financial imbalance when Celtic announce their most recent financial reports.
Rangers supporters find it depressing to see that our Old Firm opponents had a pre-tax profit of £40.7 million, $119.9 million in revenue, and $72.3 million in cash on hand for the most recent fiscal year.
Football is a game where money talks, and Celtic are shouting at the top table of Scottish football as much as we seem to be muttering quietly to ourselves.
Despite the fact that our own financial results are anticipated to be favorable, the Ibrox club’s qualification for the Champions League, and high profile player sales are acknowledged, Rangers’ situation is dire.
Particularly in light of the fact that these most recent financial figures for Celtic do not take into account either their repeated qualification for the Champions League or the reportedly £25 million sale of Jota to Saudi Arabia.
Celtic’s financial figures demonstrate Rangers’ enormous opportunity squandered.
Celtic struggled to enter the land of milk and honey before Rangers’ comeback to the continental stage, but thanks to the Ibrox team’s recent successes, they have been given two lucky years of group stage qualification.
Rangers’ post-55 incompetence has reopened a financial gap that took the better part of a decade to close, but you must (grudgingly) give credit to Celtic for the steadiness they displayed under Ange Postecoglou.
Rangers had the prize of automatic Champions League qualifying in their sights by competently defending the title against a Celtic team that, let’s be honest, was all over the place after the club’s successful title tilt and our ongoing coefficient success. Rangers, simply put
Reaching the Champions League through this route seemed implausible, and, at the very least, they’d have to accomplish so on their own European merit, given the Parkhead side’s dismal qualification record.
The failure of Rangers to fully support Gerrard after match 55 must be a cause of eternal regret for the club. Gerrard left for Villa faster than Douglas Park could close the Ibrox biscuit tin.
Ibrox is a mountain that the new Rangers Board must overcome.
Rangers’ goal is sustainability, but the two windows that followed their title run may have set us back a generation due to poor leadership and underfunding.
There is absolutely no justification for Rangers tossing that 21/22 championship, and in hindsight, the entire club’s leadership that produced 55 seemed to risk everything we’d been fighting at only to lose it in a matter of months.
The people who have been brought in to take their place now have an enormous mountain to climb.
After a brief lull, Celtic, now in a position of dominance and strength, encountered weak resistance from a Rangers squad, whose management and boardroom were so famished of success they did not know what to do.
On the field, the optimism of a reconstruction has been tempered by wobbly performances, a lack of identity, and callous displays that have failed to even beat a disjointed Parkhead squad.
Rangers could have avoided the financial imbalance we’ve been struggling with for more than ten years if those two consecutive championship wins and Champions League qualification had occurred. Certainly not in the current form. According to their most recent figures, inefficiency across the board has given Celtic a new financial advantage that, somewhat unsettlingly, may now be too wide to close.
