Porkies! the Daily Record confesses over their fantasy Ibrox transfer fees

The Daily Record has owned up to lying to their Army of Readers over the transfer fees received during the summer for the Ibrox flops.

After five players ran down their contracts the clear out was expected to continue as the Phil Clement Revolution cranked through the gears.

Every day the Record provided updates on the anticipated moves of James Tavernier and Connor Goldson to join up with Steven Gerrard in the Saudi Pro League.

To the surprise of no-one with any grasp of reality no bids came in for either player, since leaving Ibrox in October 2021 Gerrard hasn’t done a Souness by returning to buy players from his old club.

With the highly paid stars sitting tight no offers came in, eventually the club decided to cut their losses, players could leave for free with the shortfall on wages at their new clubs made up from Ibrox.

Utrecht struck a deal for Sam Lammers, the Record told their readers that £2.5m was paid for the Dutch dud, £2.5m more than the real fee with Lammers weighed in for taking a massive pay cut at the Eredivisie club.

Connor Goldson’s move to ARIS Limassol was even more bizarre. The Cypriot club are run like St Mirren, Kilmarnock or Motherwell. They sign up free agents by the dozen, maybe once every five years they will pay out £200,000 on a player.

A deal was struck, the Record told their readers of a £1.7m transfer fee plus a saving of £40,000 a week on the remaining two years of Goldson’s contract!

The accounts for the year to 30 June 2024 revealed losses of £17.2m, it also carried a note on player trading since that date.

Covering the published accounts, the Record reported:

Rangers’ annual accounts say they have only received £800,000 in transfer fees in the period since June 30 – a curiously low figure considering the sales of Sam Lammers, Todd Cantwell and Connor Goldson were among those accounted for in that time.

The annual financial figures were headlined by the eyebrow-raising pre-tax loss of £17.2m which occurred despite record revenue of £88.3m. Their monumental wage bill, which has since been slashed dramatically, played a big part in that, as did transfer fees in the Michael Beale era which saw them register a £7.9m player trading deficit.

Since then they’ve cut the cloth where the playing squad is concerned with big earners like John Lundstram and Kemar Roofe replaced by younger talent on lower wages, such as Connor Barron and Jefte who they hope will have resale value and stimulate the trading model in future. For now, however, the club are having to eat the cost after previous sellable assets dried up.

A curious note further down in the accounts covers ‘post balance sheet’ events – transactions that occurred between the end of the accounting period (June 30, 2024) and the time of publishing (October 29, 2024). Rangers say that in that time, they ‘disposed of five player registrations on a permanent basis,’ for a total of £800,000.

Only Scott Wright is likely to have brought in a fee, there could be a sell-on clause on the Ross McCrorie transfer to Kilmarnock

The costs of the Clement Revolution! Will be detailed in the 30 June 2025 Accounts, in the meantime the Record will be hyping up January transfer activity, incoming and outgoing, in trademark style.