One Rangers player has cost/lost the club a staggering £11M and it isn’t Chermiti | OneFootball

If there is one thing Rangers are guilty of over the last 10 years, especially over the past 5, it has been an abundant waste of resources. This boils down to two massive things, wages and transfer fees. It is absolutely clear Rangers have completely overspent on value received and overspent on wages. When we compare the fees spent on transfers for the likes of Sam Lammers and others, the amount of money lost over the years is almost beyond painful. In fact, there is no almost about it. The excruciating agony of seeing that wasted cash flowing away has been endemic in our club.

Wages and the shrinking appeal

But furthermore, there has been the problem of those wages. Not just the fee that we have shelled out on players nowhere near worthy of it, but the wages that we have pumped in their direction as well. We did discuss on Ibrox Noise the problem of attracting players this January. Danny Rohl has a heck of a task attracting players to this club where there is no European carrot and there is no major football icon that can attract players. No personal heroes like Steven Gerrard, for example, who attracted John Lundstram back in the day. Unfortunately, the time has changed and there are no major carrots of that nature at the club and the SPL itself certainly is not exactly bewitching to would be Rangers players.

What Rangers can still offer

So there has to be something else. Wages? The Old Firm match? These two are about the only thing that Rangers have right now. However, there is a main point to this article regarding wages and indeed fees and that is the topic of Danilo.

Danilo and the original deal

The Brazilian striker signed from a reasonably respectable Feyenoord in Holland in the sense that he had done pretty well there without being spectacular. If one looks at his stats from his time in Holland, they are okay, reasonable. There was about 10 goals and 34 appearances in the league, one in three, at a fairly high level league, which is not bad, but not what you expect for a player you are about to shell six million pounds on. Thanks Michael Beale for that one.

The real cost

But the real problem here with Danilo is not just the injuries or lack of return from him, it is the wages that we have spent. Ibrox Noise mentioned in an earlier article the numbers surrounding Danilo, but we are going into them in a bit more depth. In order to attract this guy from Feyenoord to Rangers, Michael Beale gave him an astonishing fee, a staggering amount of £40,000 a week. So Rangers paid up front £6 million pure, there were no clauses here, it was a pure £6 million up front, and then made him the highest paid player in Rangers history at £40,000 a week.

Time and money wasted

Those numbers were flabbergasting at the time, but they are even worse now when we consider the lack of return on them. But the biggest problem here is that Danilo has been at Ibrox for two and a half years. Signed in the summer of 2023 under Beale, he has remained here ever since. Consequently, that is two and a half years of barely modest service from the former Dutch based striker.

The financial reality

Now when we look at this in monetary terms, it gets worse. His fee, his wages, are around £40,000 a week as said. Multiplied by four, that is £160,000 a month. Multiplied by twelve, we are now at £1.8 million. Multiply that by two and a half, it is almost £5 million. This is absurd.

No return on investment

Rangers have shelled out an absolute fortune on a guy who has cost around about £11 million so far, for absolutely no return. £11 million down the drain, and he is being allowed to leave this winter, if a buyer can be found. This would not be a loan. Rangers want to cut him loose for good.

Fan frustration

Fans have even ironically joked that Danilo’s da has done more work and worked harder for Rangers than his son has. And it is absolutely true. It is depressing how little Danilo has given back.

A warning for the future

The fact is he is a talented striker, reasonably. We saw some absolutely staggering open goal misses from the boy in recent times. But to pay £40,000 a week, over all this time, plus that £6 million up front, and overall to have wasted £11 million on him, really is a staggering use of resources, which at the time Rangers were not exactly abundant in.

Final reckoning

Now with the 49ers Enterprises in control and Cavenagh at the seams, Rangers do have a bit more in the way of resources. But there is no question that we cannot just go around wasting £11 million on absolutely no return. So yes, Danilo really has been a bit of a crime against football when it comes down to it. We cannot say it is all his fault, but at the end of the day, his agent did a heck of a number on our club.