It’s the classic Rangers headache just now: you can see the solution on paper, but the route to get there is full of traps. We all talk about a “player trading model” like it’s a switch you flip. Truth is, it’s a lot harder to pull off when you’re operating in Scotland, with financial limits, and a squad that already feels bloated.

The money gap shapes everything

Whatever anyone thinks about recruitment, the starting point is turnover. That’s your ceiling. If you’re sitting tens of millions behind Celtic, you’re automatically shopping in a different aisle, and it ripples through everything: wages, fees, agent pull, even the calibre of loan you can attract.

And that’s before you even get into the wider reality of the SPFL. It’s not the top table in Europe, and that matters because the “best” young talent with resale value usually has options. They can go to similar clubs in bigger leagues, or academies with clearer pathways, and Scotland becomes a harder sell unless you’re winning and showcasing players regularly in Europe.

Player trading isn’t the golden ticket people think

The uncomfortable part is this: football transfers don’t reliably make you money. Plenty of players leave for free, plenty go for the same fee or less, and only a chunk actually move on for profit. So if your whole strategy is “buy cheap, sell big”, you need volume, good judgement, and time. You also need room in the squad to actually develop and showcase the ones you want to sell.

That’s where the current squad picture becomes a real problem. If you’ve effectively got a huge group of “first-team” bodies on the books, it limits flexibility. It’s harder to bring in quality, harder to give minutes to the right profiles, and harder to keep the wage bill under control. You end up with a jam at the door: too many players, not enough genuine value being created.

So what’s the way out?

This is where the chicken-and-egg point lands. To build a proper trading model, you need to attract good talent. To attract good talent to Scotland, you need to be successful. To be successful consistently, you need resources. To get those resources without success, you need trading. Round it goes.

Honestly, the idea of an “ugly reset” might be closer to reality than folk want to hear. Less romance, more grind. A team built to win domestic matches first, even if it’s not pretty. Get hard to beat, get results in the league and cups, and create a base where recruitment can actually be planned rather than firefighting.

It’s not glamorous. But Rangers have had plenty of “project” chat over the years. Maybe what we need now is just a proper, ruthless return to basics.

Written by EHL2020: 2 January 2026

Tags: transfers spfl tactics