Dan Plumley believes Rangers have adopted a “very smart strategy” after announcing the free transfer arrivals of Connor Barron and Liam Kelly.
The club confirmed that midfielder Barron has penned a four-year deal at Ibrox, although they are set to go to tribunal for a final compensation fee [Daily Record, 25 June], while Kelly has signed a two-year deal, with Philippe Clement bolstering his squad with five new arrivals already.
Rangers are still in the market for more with some big fees mooted, and football finance expert Plumley believes this is part of their plan to strengthen different areas of the squad to bring in key players.
“That’s another element to the player recruitment model that the club’s got,” he exclusively told Ibrox News.
“Being again, in that context, in that particular league, in that particular country, you’ve got a few different rules about rules and regulations about certain players and certain ages that you can perhaps activate, and that might then lead to you being able to spend more money elsewhere.
“You’ve got to look at that as the bigger picture.
“You shouldn’t just be looking at one transfer, you’ve got to look at how that then interacts with your other plans for the whole squad and I think it’s a very realistic and potentially a very smart strategy for Rangers to go down that road at the minute.”
Rangers have plenty of transfer work to do still
Despite the arrivals of five players so far this summer, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Rangers fan who thinks the squad is now ready to compete with Celtic.
Bringing in players on free transfers allows them to spend less on those areas of the pitch, and that saves the budget for the top deals they want to complete.
It makes total sense, but the board simply have to deliver on those deals otherwise the club may find themselves short when the season begins against Hearts in August.