Rangers’ Ibrox mess has impacted summer transfer strategy | OneFootball

Ibrox Noise earlier touched on Rangers’ exit from any negotiations with Norwich City’s Kenny McLean, with Sheffield United now in pole position to secure a £1.5M deal with the 32-year-old Scotland international.

There is, however, disturbingly, a sinister undertone to this story, and that’s the Ibrox shambles this summer, which has led to colossal implications in its wake.

The base problem here is the failure to get Ibrox ready for the start of the season has cost the club an untold fortune in wasted expenses.

From paying workers who have no work to do, to losing out on matchday revenue, to the rent cost that likely temporary home venue Hampden will cost, Rangers are bleeding a tonne of money on this one, and the knock-on effect is how it’s affected the kitty.

Rangers’ Ibrox chaos has led to hundreds of thousands to millions being wasted on something that should have been ready in the next week or so.

Ibrox was supposed to be sorted for the start of the competitive season – Rangers knew it wouldn’t be ready for preseason, hence securing Murrayfield (which itself cost a tonne of cash) for the Manchester United friendly, but the work was supposed to be done by the time August appeared.

Instead there is no ETA, and the effects on the transfer budget, and indeed Rangers’ appeal to prospective players who will know in advance that the club won’t be playing at home for the early portion of the season if not longer are borderline immeasurable.

The Kenny McLean angle? Rangers could have afforded to up their bid on the 32-year-old to compete with Sheffield. Whether Rangers fans wanted McLean or not or thought he was or wasn’t worth the money is beside the point, the going rate that Norwich expected was over £1M and United matched that. Rangers couldn’t afford to.

And that’s because the stadium shambles has bled into the transfer budget with Philippe Clement starting to look extremely jaded, aware that he cannot buy any players without selling some first.

Even then, any big sales’ profits will likely go partially into stadium nonsense, and it won’t all be for Clement.

This stadium mess has impacted Rangers’ preseason and transfer window enormously, and we do not have any ETA on ‘normalisation’.

Grim.