Newco cannon fodder plans

While I was busy telling one of my first bosses how much money we were going to make in a year or two, he made a comment which has remained with me since, “If you don’t make some sales next month, we’ll not be around to find out if you’re right.”

Plans for 2022 don’t mean a fart to a company which is haemorrhaging cash, billionaire funders, nomads and auditors, all the consequence of a two year war of attrition as newco Rangers tried to fight off an insurrection.

There are literally thousands of metrics you can use to compare the prospects of football clubs but let me draw your eye to a couple, which will give you real insight into the future.

Last season Celtic had 475 “full time equivalents” in employment, 318 people in non-football roles and a further 157 in football operations (players, coaches etc.).  If the average pay of those 318 non-football full-time staff was £25k (I doubt it’s this low), their combined wage bill would be just below £8m.  Celtic’s total annual wage bill was £37.766m, total operating expenses were £59.885m.

If you want to win the Scottish Premiership, this is what you’re competing against.

Newco Rangers announced operating expenses (before amortisation) of £15.684m for the six months to 31 December, which included £6.7m wages, covering both football and non-football staff.  If the figures for the second half of the year are consistent with the first that would give them around £31m income and a £13.4m spend wages.  Income is around half Celtic’s expenses and wages a fraction of Celtic’s

What newco need is tens of millions of pounds of investor cash, the £50m Dave King spoke about ‘when in opposition’ is not an overestimate.

Anything they say before “Here is the £50m investment we need” is there to take attention away from the fact that they haven’t said “Here is the £50m investment we need”.  When they say that, they’re in the game, until then, they’re cannon fodder.  When they stop talking about the £50m needed, they know it’s not coming.