Gio van Bronckhorst’s situation at Glasgow Rangers from a Board Member Point of View

I would like to try to explain Gio’s situation at Glasgow Rangers from a Board Member’s point of view; Not mine, not yours, from a Board Member.

Since Gio took over he’s played a huge role in our lucrative Europa run, won us the Scottish Cup, and qualified us for the even more lucrative group stages of the Champion’s League.

Gio has helped me and my Board Members get financially ahead of the curve. We have been prioritising balancing the books and setting the club up on a solid financial platform since the Warburton era when Dave King took the helm, post Charles Green, Craig Whyte etc.

Due to Gio’s work, we have repaid loans and investors (including ourselves) ahead of schedule. We had to withhold most of the income made from the sales of Paterson, Bassey and Aribo as well in order to clear debts.

We also see Edmiston House as a huge revenue stream for decades to come. The initial outlay was substantial, but it will eventually bring a considerable amount of profit to the Club in the long term. Again, thanks to Gio, we won’t be chasing our tails with this for as long and we initially planned.

Ross Wilson and Gio made moves in the transfer market to try and keep us as competitive with Celtic as possible. We can agree this has not gone to plan. We had to try and stretch the lean transfer budget to bring in bodies to cover for Aribo and Bassey as well as provide cover to areas of the pitch where we were short. Bringing in Colak, Lawrence, Matondo, Davies, Souttar and Yilmaz. Mostly bargain buys who we hope will improve under Gio’s development and become assets to the team either on a performance or financial level, hopefully both.

We understood that we were not matching the transfer ambition inline with Celtic, but in order to secure, stabilise and solidify the Club’s long term financial status, we had to cut back on transfer outlay. In order to help the new players and keep bodies for this season, we felt Arfield and McGregor would be a significant help on and off the Pitch in the short term.

Unfortunately, due to a mass of injuries to key players, Gio and his team have struggled to get any momentum going thus far. The Back Line and other positions needed to be chopped and changed, we have also had to play players out of position at times and to rely on a fairly inexperienced team through most of the campaign.

With players missing so far such as Helander, Goldson, Souttar, Davies, King, Yilmaz, Kamara, Jack, Hagi, Lawrence,…