Everyone in football who watches these things knows that key Ibrox players are out of contract next summer. Everyone knows who they are too; Ryan Jack, Joe Aribo, Filip Helander, Ryan Kent and Alfredo Morelos.
Five players who would start every week for their club when fit, go into the last year of their contracts. Their club will be easy to deal with.
Aside from these guys, they’ve advertised Bassey as available for sale and even named their price, as ridiculous as every single one of us thinks that it is. They would take bids for Barisic. They talk up their right back Tavernier so often and so loudly you just know that they would accept a bid for him if they thought that it was all they could get.
Aside from one promising youth player for a fee that the Scottish media went out of its way to majorly inflate, Ibrox has not sold a single player for a sizeable fee since the current club crawled out of the one in which Rangers was interred.
We have no way of knowing what they got for Patterson, but it was nowhere near the one they advertised. We know this because Club 1872 confirmed that the club had deliberately misled them over that.
This summer is the one they hope will be different. In truth, they need it to be. They need this to be the window in which they ship out key players or they are going to have to explain to their fans why they aren’t able to spend money.
They will watch as Celtic does … indeed, Celtic already has. The fee we paid for Carter Vickers might well be more, combined, than every other club in Scotland will spend put together. Their fans won’t accept that.
The media stories tonight about “interest in Morelos is high” in spite of their having received not one bid for him is typical. The headlines were screaming just the other day about how Sevilla were now “favourites” to get him, as if clubs were falling all over themselves and fighting the Ibrox club for his signature. Nothing of the sort is going on.
This is the old story during a summer window. They have done this every year since Morelos and Kent’s first at the club, and let’s remember that it has never generated a genuine offer. Forget the media’s fantasy bids, we’re talking about real ones.
The difference is, this year they need to sell … because if they don’t these guys are going to walk away for free. The absence of bids is a disaster for them … which is why the smell of panic is thick in the air over there, and amongst the hacks.
The season just past was outstanding … but how well do you know it? Take the quiz, go up against your mates, and see who gets the highest score on Celtic’s 2021-22 campaign.