A September Ibrox start at the earliest for Rangers | OneFootball

As Ibrox Noise reported yesterday before the mainstream outlets picked it up, Rangers will be unable to play at Ibrox before September at the optimistic earliest, and some sources have claimed even more worrying projections of December.

We wouldn’t yet pin our masts to practically new year, but there’s no denying the material delay has caused absolute chaos in Govan and this morning the SPL fixtures confirmed Rangers travel to Tynecastle on the opening day, which is probably about as tough as it could have got.

So where will Rangers play, and how long for?

The SPFL expect Rangers to be ‘flexible’ and to ask others to be flexible – and it’s a rare time we actually have to agree with Neil Doncaster on this one.

This cock up is on Rangers, and specifically the project manager, now fired, who made the heinous error of cheaping out – so we can’t blame anyone else.

And now Rangers need to figure out how to negotiate the first potential few months of the season without any Ibrox.

Some have suggested Champions League/Europe will be played at Murrayfield while domestic matches will be at Hampden, but this is all very, very speculative at this point.

Rangers are urgently in talks with the SFA, with the SPFL, with Scottish Rugby, trying to negotiate relocation, because this stuff needs to be organised significantly in advance.

Cost?

Significant. Rangers will have to shell out a purported minimum of £700,000 per match for rent alone, paying to hire the venue, be it Hampden or Murrayfield.

To put some context in this number, Glasgow council had to spend nearly £100,000 just to hire out a heavily limited portion of Celtic Park and Hampden for some functions last year, and that was a lot less intense/expensive than hiring out the entire stadium for a match.

So Rangers will have to dig deep to fund this, and it’s going to cost a tonne.

Add that to the wasted wages and time right now on the (non) works going on in Ibrox, and clearly it’s a mess.

December?

Let’s seriously hope not.