Rangers players agree to 75 per cent pay-cuts

Four Glasgow Rangers players have agreed to wage cuts of up to 75 per cent to keep the club in business.

Steven Davis, Steven Whittaker, Steven Naismith and Allan McGregor have all agreed to the cuts in an effort to ease the finance crisis at the club.

Costs

The club administrators need to bring costs down by £1million a month if the club is going to avoid liquidation. That’s a lot of money but it seems some of the top players are trying their best to avoid that happening.

Solution

Scotland international Steven Naismith told Sky Sports News: “We have done all we can to find a solution, there are a lot of Rangers fans in the squad and we just want to get this fixed so hopefully a deal will get done and the players will do it,”

“Everyone is trying to reach a good conclusion and get the best for the club, there are a lot of innocent people here who just want to get on with their lives and get a job at the end of the day.”

Exits

The cuts were seen as preferable to releasing the players from their contracts, as the quartet are seen as the four most saleable assets at the club. Rangers have already been forced into releasing youngsters Mervan Celik and Gregg Wylde.

Both players agreed to be released earlier this week in order to cut the wage bill at the club. Wylde is unlikely to be without a club for long though as he has already been linked with Premier League clubs Everton, Bolton and Aston Villa.

Clauses

One of the clubs administrators Paul Clark revealed that the players have exit clauses in their wage cut. He told Sky Sports: “ I don’t think that should be considered that any or all of the players are considering that they want to leave the club in the summer,”

“It’s just a safety mechanism from their point of view, in exchange for the very substantial amounts they’re giving up, to give them some flexibility depending on what the new ownership structure looks like when the club comes out of administration.”

Summer

If a buyer isn’t found before the summer then it’s likely that quartet will be sold to raise money. All four will probably already be on many Premier League clubs summer wish lists and Rangers maybe be forced to sell them at a knockdown price.

However for now the club has been able to retain their top players and stay at least competitive on the field. The administrators know that to attract buyers the team needs to be competitive but it looks highly unlikely that a buyer could be found who will service debts at the current reported level.

Refreshing

I have to say its refreshing to see players in this day and age actually thinking about other people. Football players are often regarded as mercenaries that don’t care about the clubs they represent.

However this gesture and that of Wylde and Celik to voluntarily leave the club shows that there are still players out there who care about their clubs. These players could have said they were not accepting the cuts and let the club get into deeper financial trouble.

Instead they showed that they do care about the other people at the club, not just themselves. I’m just glad that these players have shown us that footballers are human beings and they do have feelings.

I hope for their sake that they get the outcome that they want. Good luck boys you deserve credit for your actions and a satisfactory outcome for everybody involved.

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