Huns Living In Never Never Land.(SHC)

[KerPlunk]

Rangers dig deep into biscuit tin to come up with £2m for Thomson

GLENN GIBBONS
JOHN Hughes received the news of Rangers' capture of Kevin Thomson on Tuesday night with a head-shaking bafflement that will not be uncommon among observers of the Ibrox club's curious financial practices.

To the Falkirk manager, the £2 million fee for the Hibernian midfielder was more relevant than a mere talking point. He had, after all, just recently refused an offer of £150,000 from Rangers for his striker, Alan Gow.

Hughes may have been slightly irked by the disparity in valuations between the respective players, but, more than anything, he was puzzled by the proposed manner of payment. Rangers, he confirmed, wanted Gow effectively on hire purchase.

"Well, you look at Rangers paying two million for Kevin Thomson," said Hughes, "and you think the last offer they made for Gow was £150,000, to be paid in instalments. The problem with paying on the never-never is that, as a manager, I never see the never-never money. If Rangers want Gow before the transfer window closes, they'll have to get real."

This carried echoes of the former Hibs manager Tony Mowbray's remarks precisely a year ago, when Rangers were in pursuit of Derek Riordan. Rangers missed out on Riordan for the sake of £75,000 - the difference between their offer and Hibs' price - and the fact that they also wanted to spread payment of the £225,000 they had bid over a period of time.

"The problem with that," said Mowbray, "is that I need the money now. It's no good to me a year down the line."

Also a year ago, Alex McLeish, then in charge at Ibrox and desperate for a prolific striker, had to tolerate a by-stander's role while Rangers and Kilmarnock went through a protracted period of haggling before arriving at a £200,000 fee for Kris Boyd.

Earlier, there had been the marked reluctance - or, probably more accurately, the inability - of Rangers to comply with the demand from Everton for the £500,000 the English Premiership club were owed from the sale of left-back Michael Ball.

The player had passed the total number of appearances which triggered the due sum, but Rangers - despite having shortly before completed a rights issue which raised more than £51 million of new money - fought desperately for a pay-by-instalment compromise that was eventually agreed by Everton.

More recently, there has been the wrangle with the SFA over compensation for luring Walter Smith out of the Scotland job. Rangers eventually had to meet the national association's demand for £400,000, having initially offered around £225,000.

In the cases of Gow, Riordan, Boyd, Everton and the SFA, the amounts involved are relatively paltry by today's standards, especially for a club of Rangers' stature. All of these examples tend to confirm the veracity of the comments of the Ibrox chairman, Sir David Murray, frequently uttered over the past couple of years, that Rangers' spendthrift image is now tarnished beyond recognition - and beyond restoration.

And, yet, contrast them with the deal that plucked Thomson from Easter Road. Rod Petrie, the Hibs chairman with a well-earned reputation as a tough, unflinching negotiator, secured an agreement that brings his club £1.75 million in cash, with the balance of £250,000 to fall due if Thomson achieves specific objectives, such as first-team appearances and, possibly, international caps.

On the day Smith was presented as successor to Paul Le Guen, Murray revealed that he had pledged £2 million to the Frenchman with which to try to strengthen his squad during January. When asked if Smith would be allowed more than that, he replied: "He'll have to be, as our need to strengthen is now obviously more urgent."

Queried over the source of the additional funds for his new manager, Murray simply said, "Well, we have some resources." In a candid overview of the club's spending power, he added: "Since Alex left last year, I think, one way or another, in fees and wages, we have spent almost eight million.

"That's a lot of money for Rangers these days. It's a lot of money for anybody in Scotland these days, and we have to continue to be prudent. We cannot return to the big-money transfers of earlier times."

It has been noticeable that, during the past couple of years of comparative parsimony at Ibrox, the words "biscuit" and "tin" have never appeared in the media in relation to Rangers' dealings in the market. The days of financial extravagance may be long gone, but it seems that no amount of pettifogging can interfere with their reputation as big players.


GIRFUY Huns.