Nuclear Option: Cavenagh Steps In

Friday’s daydream looks like Rangers will realign a £70m move from a new director of football to big-money signings, while weighing up UEFA restrictions, squad quotas and the harsh reality of Govan’s wages.

Nuclear option: What if Cavenagh walked in this morning and ripped everyone a new one?

Friday was a bit of escapism. We were knocked out of the Europa League with just one point from two games and the atmosphere was somewhere between a funeral and a riot. So let’s imagine the president has had enough. The recruitment team were sacked before breakfast, a suitable director of football was hired at lunchtime and £50m was put on the table with the words “solve it and I’ll deal with UEFA later”.

Here’s what it actually buys, why it’s not as spiritual as it sounds (it’s still spiritual, but welcome to the madhouse), and the one thing that ruins it every time.

nuclear budget

Cavenagh £50m
plus Ruskin’s approximately £20m
Around £70m spent before 3 September

First, the good news: this has been done before.

In 2014, UEFA found that Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain were overspending. Punishments include a €60 million fine, an increase in the Champions League squad limit from 25 to 21, a wage freeze and hard limits on transfer spending. City secured the license for £49m that summer, plus the proceeds they received from the sale.

That number is pretty much the budget we’re talking about here.

Both clubs accepted the penalties, implemented them, met compliance targets and had restrictions lifted. One of them won more or less everything over the next decade. Chelsea later found their own angle, signing eight- and nine-year contracts, spreading the transfer fee across accounts until UEFA closed the door on that too.

The fine has been paid. No one was kicked out of football.

Rules, in a paragraph.

There is no FFP in Scotland. The SPFL just wants us to pay players and taxes on time. The only real cap, which only matters when we’re in Europe, is UEFA’s cap, which limits team spending to 70% of football revenue. If we lose the Division One play-offs we’re out of the running, meaning no one is watching us this season. The bill arrived later and included fines and a cap on team size.

So: spend money now, get the hammer later, and make sure the team is still working when the cap hits.

The first signing was not a player.

Before we spend a penny, we have to trust someone to spend it. We fired Thelwell and then decided not to replace him, which is why we ended up putting his son in charge of recruiting. No matter how you look at the individual, an athletic director is not a structure, but a hole. Do we associate it with Stig, Del, Cavenagh and Gillespie?

That’s the name Paul Mitchell. He left Newcastle by mutual consent and has not looked for work since.

Look at the resume: MK Towns, Southampton, Tottenham, RB Leipzig, Monaco, Newcastle. He has built his career almost entirely on finding players no one else has found and selling them for four times the price. Interestingly, this is exactly what we have historically been afraid of.

Sven Mislintat is the romantic choice. At Dortmund, they called him “Diamond Eyes” because he came on the scene before others like Aubameyang and Dembélé. His performance at Ajax was a complete disaster, mind you, so pick your poison.

Then there’s Ross Wilson, who’s been here for four years and is now Newcastle’s sporting director. He won’t be back and half the crowd won’t take him, but it’s worth noting that his resume at Ibrox is enough to land him one of the biggest jobs in England.

Marquee: Lewis Ferguson.

Bologna want around £25m and it’s been reported we could get up to £15m and he has approved the move. The Scotland international and Rangers supporter will be walking into our midfield tomorrow.

Ruskin went to Bologna (or someone else) for around £20m, Ferguson went the other way for £25m. The £5m shortfall came from Cavenagh’s money. He is also considered to have received training from the association.

Defense: Sign an adult to be Scots, or better than us.

Two centre-backs and at least one has to be left-footed because both Fernandes and Mahagna are right-backs and you can see that every time we try to play out from the back.

Scott McKenna is a smart guy. Twenty-nine years old, left-footed, Dinamo Zagreb, he represented Scotland in the World Cup this summer. Aberdeen, Nottingham Forest, Copenhagen are now regulars in European football. Stable on the ball, strong in the air and worth around £5m. It’s a difficult deal, but that’s what this article is about.

Grant Hanley is the less literate version. The left-footed player, who is in the World Cup squad, is currently at Hibs which would make him a proper legend. He’s 34 and it will take some doing to get him away from Easter Road, but imagine the hubbub between Shankland and Devlin.

Sead Kolasinac, from Atlanta, worth £4m. Thirty-three years old, left-footed, it’s scary to play against in a way we haven’t faced in years. That’s about £42,000 a week that we can actually afford.

Then there’s Tyrone Mings, which is fantasy meets pAyroll. His contract with Villa expires in June 2027, he is not first choice and they want to offload him, so the fee is next to nothing. But he earns £110,000-a-week and has been in poor form since picking up a cruciate injury. Nathan Ake is a bigger name with wages of £160,000-a-week, which in itself amounts to nearly a third of our first-team wage bill. Neither is possible, but might Mings be worth trying to convince that he can retire here as a Rangers legend? It’s a hard sell to him and the fans.

This is the real ceiling here. It was never a transfer fee. It’s just that we can’t afford Govan’s Premier League wages.

Plus AEK’s James Penrice looks close anyway. Scotsman, from Livingston, trained by the Association.

Wings: One inside the door, one for signatures, and one for backup.

Right wing. Yokota has come and covered it. The signing was Vaclav Cerny from Besiktas, worth £8 million, left-footed and playing on the right, exactly what we missed. He scored 18 goals and provided nine assists in 52 games during his loan spell, so no one needed an explanation. Salary in Türkiye is a barrier, not an expense. Should that scenario fail, Brighton’s Amarario Cozier-Dewberry is the backup. A loan spell at Bolton Wanderers saw him score 20 goals in 21 quick games in 41 games, and for a fraction of the money.

Left wing. Curtis is already in the building and deserves to be on the team. This signing is a blockbuster: Noah Long from Naples, costing 13 million pounds. Twenty-seven years old, Dutch international, playing on the left with his right foot. Napoli value him at close to £16m, so we’ll take a chance, which is entirely in the spirit of this article. If Napoli laughs at us, Abdallah Simma is back and no one is complaining. Tottenham’s Wilson Odobert is a sensible middle option, 21 years old and playing right-footed on the left, but he is not that attractive.

There’s also Frosinone’s Fares Ghedjemis, priced at around £8m, with Celtic having their bid rejected in January and now looking for him again. It’s worth beating them out for the noise alone. Maybe closer to £12/13m?

Gassama moved on, making space.

Then, just for laughs, Jadon Sancho became a free agent when his Manchester United contract expired on July 1st. There was zero transfer fee and his weekly salary was reported to have reached £250,000. Now he’s making a fraction of that, and that’s where the problem lies: There’s a reason a 26-year-old winger with a resume is still in limbo in August. Anyone who has watched him play recently knows why no one is in a hurry. It’s fun to type, and that’s where it should stay.

Rest of the forward line:

Kevin Kelsy from Portland Timbers, around £8m, Bulaga as backup. Cermiti’s nine-month absence made this a necessity rather than an indulgence. Vardy is a Defoe-type option, but without European football he may need a guaranteed start, which shouldn’t be a problem.

The clever thing no one talks about.

If UEFA cut our European squad from 25 to 21, we would need to include eight locally trained players among those 21, four of whom were trained at the club.

Signing the Scot costs double here.

Team-trained: McCrory, Kelly, Curtis, McCausland.
Association trained: Shankland, Ferguson, Penrith and McKenna.

Eight points is a no-brainer and if Hanley comes out on top we’ll have the edge.

This quietly settles another argument. Many hope Barron and Cameron move on. As things stand we have to keep one of those players to get a quota as Rice is on loan at Killie, leaving four club-trained players depending on his development. Sign McKenna, or McKenna and Hanley, and the problem goes away. If there is a better option, go for either.

Then there’s list B, which is infinite and completely outside the upper limit. Those under 21 who have been here long enough to continue taking part are not counted in the 21 and can register after the deadline. Moon, Glasgow, Scully, McAllion, Adamson, Wiley, Gentles, Smith, Burnside.

None of the nine corpses touched the bottle cap.

That’s why academies suddenly become even more important. A 26-year-old import occupies a rare position. Player A List B does not. It also means we should think more carefully about how long we loan them out, as going too long could undermine their eligibility. Compliance and development are now the same topic.

European Night Eleven, 4-2-3-1

GK-Pandur
RB – Sterling CB – McKenna CB – Fernandez LB – Penrith
CM – Neil CM – Ferguson
RW – Cerny AM – Asgard LW – Lang
FW-Kelsey

Substitutes: Kelly, Kolasinac, Markania, McCrory, Devlin, Dragojevic, Chukwani, Yokota, Curtis, Shankland, Naderi, Miovski.

Next to the B list: Munn, Glasgow, Skally, McCallion, Adamson, Wyllie, Gentles, Smith, Burnside.

Ferguson is worth 25 million pounds, Long is worth 13 million pounds, Cerny is worth 8 million pounds, Kelsey is worth 8 million pounds, McKenna is worth 5 million pounds, Kolasinac is worth 4 million pounds, and Penrith is worth 1 million pounds. This equates to £64m of the £70m, with £6m still outstanding.

That team might get us past the Jagiellonian defense.

There is also a room for the boardroom.

If we’re spending like this, the revenue side has to come into play.

Game day is the only lever we have complete control over. Hospitality people actually want to buy the right security products, better pre-match service at Edmiston Towers, stadium tours seven days a week. None of these change the account itself, but they all fall on the income side of the ratio, with every pound buying another pound in team spending. Maybe they need to consider backing out of the Castore deal and see if their friends in the 49ers can help us get a decent deal with Nike. That’s not to say it’s going to be much of a boost, but it could mean a boost in global sales. Hopefully Yokota will also open up some important Asian markets for us.

In summary:

Does this happen? Of course not. It’s not UEFA that’s stopping it, it’s salaries. The fees add up very well. The same cannot be said for paying Ake £160,000 a week in Govan.

No domestic rules can stop us. Leaving Europe means no one is paying attention to us this season. This kind of punishment is survivable and two of the biggest clubs on the planet have taken it and come out the other side. We’re not one of those clubs, but Friday was fun!

The only real limit is whether we spend our money well. On the evidence this summer, this should worry us more than anything UEFA does. Ten signings and £24.65m saw us take a point from two games and be eliminated by Jagiellonia.

Maybe the problem was never the size of the budget.

Anyway. Sunday, St. Mirren. After these fights, I felt better, and I will feel better now.

Published accounts, reported costs and public salary estimates up to June 2025. Everything about this season is an estimate, everything above is a pipe dream, and that’s all we can ask for in a nightmare start to the season.

Written by AK7 August 14, 2026 14:24:29

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