A £2.7m profit converted to a £14.8m loss after player trading and that’s just one of the alarm bells ringing for one financial expert
09:12, 24 Mar 2026Updated 09:16, 24 Mar 2026
Rangers chairman Andrew Cavenagh (right) and interim CEO Fraser Thornton (Image: PA)
New CEO Jim Gillespie faces two main challenges at Rangers – and one of them is fixing a broken player trading model that cost the club millions in their last set of accounts.
That’s the view of a former Man City financial adviser who also believes Scotland’s sinking coefficient is ringing alarm bells for the club’s coffers.
Rangers announced the arrival of former St Mirren chief Gillespie in January and he’s part of the second phase of the 49ers revolution, replacing axed chief exec Patrick Stewart who alongside Kevin Thelwell paid the price for the disastrous appointment of Russell Martin.
One of his tasks will be working with a yet-to-be-announced sporting director to improve the club’s floundering transfer record. Their failings on that front cost them massively in their accounts to year end June 2025; a £2.7m profit before player trading converted into an overall £14.8m loss after a year which saw them raise just £800,000 for five sold players due largely to soaring amortisation costs.
Their most recent set of accounts didn’t factor in the sales of Hamza Igamane, Jefte or Cyriel Dessers, nor did it account for their summer recruitment which saw hefty fees splashed on Youssef Chermiti, Thelo Aasgaard and Bojan Miovski among others. The exact impact of the summer window will become clear in the next financial figures.
In any case though, former City financial adviser Stefan Borson reckons offsetting the recent losses will be high on the in-tray of new CEO Gillespie.
He also believes the damage done to the coefficient, which has seen Scotland fall out of Europe’s top 15 and with that set to lose a European spot from 2027/28, will be felt in the years ahead, although Rangers could yet qualify automatically for UEFA’s elite competition next season.
“Jim Gillespie will have a lot of the same priorities that the previous CEO had,” Borson told Football Insider.
“I think there are two main areas that Rangers need to focus on. One is making more money from player trading and two now is dealing with mitigating this change in the European competition situation, which I consider to be a very serious change to the financial viability of the biggest Scottish clubs.
“They need to find a way around it in terms of generating more money, probably from youth and the trading of players. But look, it’s not easy to do. Everybody’s trying to do it.
“That seems to me to be the way they’re going to have to fill this hole that’s going to be left by the change in UEFA competition rules.
“I think net-net, the Scottish clubs are going to generate less money from UEFA competitions going forward.
“It becomes even more important that you win the league, and it becomes even more important that you’re generating through player trading.”