Ibrox’s Gamble On Expensive Bling Already Looks Embarrassingly Short-Sighted.

Aaron Ramsey cost Ibrox £2 million.

That’s the conservative estimate. £2 million for fifteen games in the league.

He missed the first. He was named as a substitute in the second, and only came on when the game was clearly won. He will not start the third because he still isn’t fit. Is this looking like a good deal, or a piece of expensive folly?

By the time the Hibs game is finished, there will be twelve games left.

If he doesn’t have a significant impact in that game, then one fifth of the games he was signed for will have passed without his having a material effect on anything but the wage bill.

You have to marvel at that.

You have to marvel at the people who sanctioned the deal.

Is this guy going to be fully up to speed at any point?

There are already stories about Ibrox putting him on his own separate training regimen as he was at Juventus … the perception from others at the club will surely be that he is being treated differently than they.

Ramsey is 31.

Their midfield has players in it who are older than that, and the squad has even more.

Davis and Arfield are older. Balogun is. McGregor is.

Are they getting special training designed for them?

Why is this guy being “managed” when they are expected to just get on with it?

Between that and the suggestion that he’s been brought in to “save” their season, alongside talk that his wages are being paid in Italy to avoid UK income tax and NIC payments, and you wonder what their dressing room makes of this.

They have contract negotiations in progress, and others pending.

The “value” of this deal now sets the bar higher than ever; £2 million tax free for three months, at least part of which will be spent getting up to speed. Morelos has been hailed as the vital cog in the wheel by no-one less than the manager; isn’t he entitled to parity with that?

It’s madness, of course, but Ibrox is a club consumed by madness.

If would be fitting if this peculiar brand of madness is what swallowed up the remainder of their season, because whenever you elevate someone in a dressing room to a higher place than anyone else it creates resentment, and particularly in a title winning squad now being told it needs this guy.

When he’s on such a whopping wage and the club is covering that, it makes everyone else wonder just what their own negotiations are worth., and this is especially true if he’s not making a big, big contribution to the cause.

It will be interesting to see how this develops as we go on.