Chris Sutton has made a bold prediction about the Rangers after Neil Lennon admitted that Celtic could be forced to make pay cuts in the near future.
The suspension of the season due to the outbreak of the coronavirus has left many of the Scottish clubs staring at a bleak future. Even Celtic, a club in a much better financial position than any other in the country, could be forced to take measures in order to keep the ship steady if football remains suspended for much longer. As a result, one can only wonder what the Rangers will do.
Rangers have continued to post huge losses over the last decade. A huge amount of money has been invested into the club in order to make them formidable once again following their liquidation in 2012. Unfortunately the results on the pitch have not justified their bills, as their resurrected version has never won a trophy.
Earlier, it was revealed that the Ibrox club needed a £10 million investment just to make it to the end of the season. So while Rangers fans made a lot out of Neil Lennon’s admission, in reality they will be doing the same thing as well. Probably even way before Celtic decide to do so.
Big clubs like Aberdeen and Hibernian have already held talks regarding it, and it should not be too long before the Rangers followed suit. Chris Sutton even described it as “inconceivable bordering on reckless” if the club were not considering the possibility of cutting back on wages.
The former Celtic striker wrote in his column in the Daily Record:
"“Now, I don’t profess to have any clever line into the finances of Rangers. I don’t know the exact figures of what they have and what they don’t.“But in November last year the club announced losses of £11.3million in their annual accounts, revealed they needed a fresh cash injection of more than £10m to get to the end of the season and confirmed Dave King and Douglas Park had converted a staggering £35m in soft loans into shares over the past 18 months.“So I think I can safely assume they simply do not have enough cash in the bank to just ride this out for six months as if it a couple of matches lost due to a waterlogged pitch.“It is not that long ago that Rangers had a financial meltdown and ended up down the leagues.“That came about through blatant mismanagement and not doing things properly when situations arose."
Rangers find himself in a very complicated situation right now following the departure of Dave King, while their alleged £20 million investor also appears to have deserted them. Their fans already know how it feels to see the club get liquidated and right now they are very close to witnessing that a second time.