The millions aren’t there- van Bronckhorst drops truth bomb on Ibrox finances

Giovanni van Bronckhorst finally admitted that he has no money to spend to improve his squad.

Since last year’s AGM there has been a number of strange finance related pieces going around about the troubled club.

It seems to some that last season the club was poised to break even then got the unexpected boosts of income for Steven Gerrard, Nathan Patterson and a run to the final of the Europa League to put them £40m in profit.

Further fees of £30m for Calvin Bassey and Joe Aribo coupled with reaching the Champions League group phase apparently saw the club cash rich but there was no players signed during August after a brief flurry on stars like Ben Davies, Rabbi Matondo and Ridvan Yilmaz.

The reality is that the club posted a £23.5m loss for the year to 30 June 2021, during the 12 months that followed Sports Direct were compensated with Dave King having his loan repaid with interest.

Other investor loans may have been repaid but the net result is that van Bronckhorst generated a transfer profit of around £10 during the summer with little likelihood of much spending by the manager in January.

QUESTION: In retrospect, do you think the club should’ve done more to strengthen in that week before the transfer window closed?

GvB: Of course, I know that the club will do everything to try to build the strongest squad we have. I’ve read many stories that we struck gold with so many millions coming in. It’s not true.

It’s not true all the figures I see in papers. We don’t have that budget to spend so that’s another thing we saw in the beginning.

We play in the Champions League so we have £40m extra, that is not true and that creates an expectation that we can buy new players.

The way we bought the players this season is to qualify for the Champions League but I don’t think the club will spend millions if the millions aren’t there.