As Ibrox Starts To Sweat The Wage Bill, A Player And His Agent Dig In Their Heels.

Ibrox has told five of its fringe player that they have to – note that; have to – find new clubs this summer, as though that was something that they can be forced to do.

One of them is Katic, who cost them a tidy sum and is on good wages.

Now, we have players at Parkhead we’d like to move on, but the reality is that unless clubs are willing to take them on that’s not going to happen. Players can’t be manfully ejected from the stadium and the training ground; they have rights. They are on good salaries, and the average footballer is not going to take a wage cut.

Katic’s agents have told Ibrox exactly that. Their player will go only when an acceptable offer is made for him. And not before. This is reality raising its head again, and you know how much Ibrox dislikes it when that happens. All five players have that right, and none of them five is going to relinquish it. At least a couple of them will be there a whole yet.

There are signs that some financial realism is setting in over there.

They might have signed some players, and they are talking about giving Morelos a new deal; we’ll see if it stays just talk. But they can’t keep running the wage bill up ever higher due to those new UEFA regulations.

Even the SFA cannot obfuscate as much as they’d like, with checks become more routine and the requirements for paperwork to be up to snuff greater than ever.

So they do need to cut that wage bill as much as possible, and over the last few weeks they have been steadily trimming the fat.

Just as we are. This never gets headlines, but their very leaking of the ultimatum to the five players did, as they intended … but one of those players, and his reps immediately refused to play ball, which the club certainly didn’t intend.

This is not something unique to them. If we could simply push Ajeti into the nearest passing car I know people at Celtic would be all for it. But Ange was relaxed about all this when he spoke to the media the other day, and so the club obviously is as well.

Still it’s a reminder of how much power players have … and the number of them still on the books across the city whose only contribution to the cause is to suck on that small cash pile, and to keep on doing it until it runs down to nothing.

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