Rangers’ highest paid player is not delivering on his ridiculous wage | OneFootball

If something else is slightly concerning about Rangers today, it’s something that actually doesn’t have anything to do with Russell Martin per se at all. It is in fact about Michael Beale, in a manner of speaking, back in 2023 when Rangers had the summer window of Michael Beale and his, shall we say, high spending levels of outlay and Danilo’s incredible Rangers wage.

This was when the ex-manager shipped out around about £16M on just three players in the form of Danilo, Dessers, and Lammers. Those were back in the good old days when we were spending quite frankly the same amounts that we are today on the same kind of rubbish that we are today.

Danilo

The pet key point here is Danilo though. The Brazilian striker who to this very day still has not in any way vindicated the £6 million spent on him and was hapless again yesterday, boasts a quite extraordinary honour in the history of Rangers FC which Ibrox Noise have never discussed before. Danilo’s incredible Rangers wage….

Back in the infamous EBT days, yes we’re going there, Rangers spent big money on wages. Players were regularly on the late £20,000pws, the late 30,000s, and they scraped towards the £40k mark. We all remember those days of all the expensive players that Dick Advocaat signed and the wages that were on. De Boer, Ferguson… all got a pretty penny.

The staggering thing today is that Danilo is actually Rangers’ all-time highest wage ever, even including the nine-in-a-row Walter second era and Advocaat days. Danilo’s on an eye-watering £40,000 a week.

Now Connor Goldson was also quite close to this. He was around £38K and James Tavernier is around £37K. Still a lot of cash. So Rangers do have multiple players who are being paid in the mid-30s but Danilo at the 40k? He saw those pound signs and came running.

It’s extraordinary to think that Rangers, in cutting the cloth, are doing the exact opposite a lot of the time and paying players pretty much the rate that we always used to. The ironic thing is the wage bill compared with Celtic’s. Celtic’s is far leaner. They pay much less. They pay far smaller amounts to their key players than Rangers do. And get a tonne more for their money.

Celtic

The reason probably being that Celtic, sadly, are a more attractive prospect. Because they win everything and they’re in the Champions League more often than not. Rangers really don’t have much to offer these days. Europa League is no carrot.

But the point here is the £40,000 on Danilo’s incredible Rangers wage. It is far beyond a) what he should be getting given what he’s contributed and b) what we should be paying any player these days.

Back in the day former chairman Dave King said one thing that we did agree with because regulars will know we’re not big fans of his. He said one thing that we did agree with which was that Rangers would live within our means. That we would only pay players at the level that filled our financial scrutiny.

Well that was completely untrue because even under him the wages went high. But then after that, when Douglas Park took over in around about April 2020 preceding 55, the wages have absolutely skyrocketed and Danilo is the quintessential symptom of this.

It’s not his fault. Of course he’s being paid. He’s quite happy to be paid and he did do quite well at his previous club in Feyenoord in that final season to potentially justify some of the wage. He was a reasonable asset to the Dutch side at that time.

But nevertheless the notion he’s worth £40,000 given what he’s contributed to Rangers in the last two to three, is laughable. But that’s where we’re at and for once it’s not Russell Martin’s fault.