The Nuclear Option: Cavenagh Walks In

A Friday daydream imagines a £70m Rangers reset, from a new director of football to marquee signings, while weighing UEFA limits, squad quotas and the hard reality of wages in Govan.

The Nuclear Option: What If Cavenagh Walked In This Morning And Tore Everyone A New One?

A bit of Friday escapism. We are out of the Europa League, one point from two games, and the mood is somewhere between funeral and riot. So let us imagine the chairman has had enough. Recruitment team sacked before breakfast, a proper Director of Football hired by lunchtime, and £50M dropped on the table with a note saying "fix it, I will deal with UEFA later".

Here is what that actually buys, why it is less mental than it sounds (it's still mental, but welcome to the madhouse), and the one thing that ruins it every time.

The nuclear budget

£50M from Cavenagh
Plus about £20M for Raskin
Equals roughly £70M to spend by 3 September

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

In 2014 UEFA caught Manchester City and PSG overspending. The punishment was a €60M fine, a Champions League squad capped at 21 players instead of 25, a frozen wage bill, and a hard limit on transfer spending. City were allowed £49M that summer, plus whatever they recouped in sales.

That number is almost exactly the budget we are talking about here.

Both clubs took the punishment, served it, hit their compliance targets and had the restrictions lifted. One of them then won more or less everything for a decade. Chelsea later found their own angle, handing out eight and nine-year contracts to spread transfer fees thinner across the accounts, until UEFA shut that door too.

Fines were paid. Nobody got thrown out of football.

The rules, in one paragraph.

There is no FFP in Scotland. The SPFL just want us to pay our players and our tax on time. The only real cap is UEFA's, it only matters while we are in Europe, and it limits squad spending to 70% of football earnings. If we lose the Conference League play-off we are out altogether, which means nobody is monitoring us this season. The bill arrives later, as a fine and a squad-size cap.

So: spend now, take the hammer later, and make sure the squad still works when the cap lands.

The first signing is not a player.

Before we spend a penny, somebody has to be trusted to spend it. We sacked Thelwell, then decided not to replace him, which is how we ended up with his boy running recruitment. Whatever you make of the individuals, no sporting director is not a structure, it is a hole. Did we plug it with Stig, Del, Cavenagh and Gillespie?

Paul Mitchell is the name. He left Newcastle by mutual consent and has not taken another job since.

Look at the CV: MK Dons, Southampton, Spurs, RB Leipzig, Monaco, Newcastle. That is a career built almost entirely on finding players nobody else had spotted and selling them for four times what they cost. Which is, funnily enough, precisely the thing we have been historically dreadful at.

Sven Mislintat is the romantic pick. They called him Diamond Eye at Dortmund for turning up Aubameyang and Dembele before anyone else did. His spell at Ajax was an unmitigated disaster, mind, so pick your poison.

And then there is Ross Wilson, who did this job here for four years and is now sporting director at Newcastle. He is not coming back, half of you would not have him, but it is worth noticing that his Ibrox CV was good enough to land him one of the biggest jobs in England.

The marquee: Lewis Ferguson.

Bologna want around £25M, we can reportedly stretch to £15M, and he has already green-lit a move. Scotland international, Rangers supporter, walks into our midfield tomorrow.

Raskin goes to Bologna (or someone else) for about £20M, Ferguson comes the other way for £25M. The £5M gap comes out of Cavenagh's money. He also counts as association-trained.

The defence: sign a grown-up, and make him Scottish or better than we have.

Two centre-backs, and at least one has to be left-footed, because Fernandez and Makhanya are both right-sided and you can see it every time we try to play out from the back.

Scott McKenna is the smart one. Twenty-nine, left-footed, Dinamo Zagreb, and he played for Scotland at the World Cup this summer. Aberdeen, Nottingham Forest, Copenhagen, now regular European football. Composed on the ball, strong in the air, and around £5M. Difficult deal, but that's what this article is about.

Grant Hanley is the not so cultured version. Left-footed, World Cup squad, and currently at Hibs, which would make it a proper saga. He is 34, and prising him out of Easter Road would take some doing, but imagine the noise between that Shankland and Devlin.

Sead Kolasinac, £4M from Atalanta. Thirty-three, left-footed, and horrible to play against in a way we have not had in years. On about £42,000 a week, which we could actually pay.

Then there is Tyrone Mings, and this is where fantasy meets pAyroll. His Villa deal runs out in June 2027, he is not first choice and they want him sold, so the fee would be next to nothing. But he is on £110,000 a week and he has not been right since the cruciate injury. Nathan Ake is the bigger name at £160,000 a week, which on its own would swallow close to a third of our entire first-team wage bill. Both impossible, but Mings is maybe worth trying to convince he can retire here a Rangers legend? Difficult sell to him and the fans.

That is the real ceiling here. It was never the transfer fees. It is that we cannot pay Premier League wages in Govan.

Plus James Penrice from AEK, which looks close anyway. Scottish, came through Livingston, association-trained.

The wings: one in the door, one to sign, one in reserve.

Right wing. Yokota is already here and covers it. The signing is Vaclav Cerny from Besiktas, £8M, left-footed and playing on the right exactly how we have missed. Eighteen goals and nine assists in 52 games during his loan spell here, so nobody needs him explained. The wages in Turkey are the obstacle, not the fee. If that falls apart, Amario Cozier-Duberry at Brighton is the fallback. Twenty-one, rapid, 20 goal contributions in 41 games on loan at Bolton, and a fraction of the money.

Left wing. Curtis is already in the building and deserves to be in the squad. The signing is the blockbuster: Noa Lang from Napoli, £13M. Twenty-seven, Dutch international, right-footed on the left. Napoli value him nearer £16M so we would be chancing our arm, which is entirely the spirit of this article. If Napoli laugh at us, Abdallah Sima comes back and nobody complains. Wilson Odobert at Spurs is the sensible middle option, 21 and right-footed on the left, but he is not as much of a draw.

There is also Fares Ghedjemis at Frosinone, around £8M, who Celtic had a bid rejected for in January and are sniffing round again. Beating them to him would be worth it for the noise alone. Maybe that is closer to £12/13M?

Gassama moves on to make room.

And then, purely for a laugh, Jadon Sancho has been a free agent since his United contract expired on 1 July. Zero transfer fee, and he was reportedly on £250,000 a week at one point. He would be on a fraction of that now, and that is precisely the problem: there is a reason a 26-year-old winger with his CV is sitting unattached in August. Anybody who has watched him lately knows why nobody is rushing. Fun to type, and that is where it should stay.

The rest of the forward line:

Kevin Kelsy from Portland Timbers, around £8M, with Braga as the fallback. Chermiti out for nine months makes this essential rather than indulgent. With Vardy as a Defoe type option, but without European football, he might need guaranteed starts, which shouldn't be a problem.

The clever bit nobody talks about.

If UEFA cut our European squad from 25 to 21, we need eight locally trained players inside that 21, four of them club-trained.

Here is where signing Scottish pays twice.

Club-trained: McCrorie, Kelly, Curtis, McCausland.
Association-trained: Shankland, Ferguson, Penrice and McKenna.

That is eight without breaking sweat, and Hanley on top would give us margin.

Which quietly settles another argument. A lot of folk want Barron and Cameron moved on. As things stand we would have to keep one of them to make the quota, because Rice is out on loan at Killie and that leaves exactly four club-trained bodies depending on how he develops. Sign McKenna, or McKenna and Hanley, and the problem disappears. Both could go, if better options are coming the other way.

Then there is List B, which is unlimited and sits completely outside the cap. Under-21s who have been here long enough go on it, they do not count against the 21, and they can be registered after the deadline. Munn, Glasgow, Skally, McCallion, Adamson, Wyllie, Gentles, Smith, Burnside.

Nine bodies, none of them touching the cap.

Which is why the academy suddenly matters more. A 26-year-old import eats a scarce slot. A List B player does not. It also means we should think harder about how long we send them out on loan, because too long away can break their eligibility. Compliance and development are the same conversation now.

The European night XI, 4-2-3-1

GK - Pandur
RB - Sterling CB - McKenna CB - Fernandez LB - Penrice
CM - Neil CM - Ferguson
RW - Cerny AM - Aasgaard LW - Lang
FW - Kelsy

Bench: Kelly, Kolasinac, Makhanya, McCrorie, Devlin, Dragojevic, Chukwuani, Yokota, Curtis, Shankland, Naderi, Miovski.

List B alongside: Munn, Glasgow, Skally, McCallion, Adamson, Wyllie, Gentles, Smith, Burnside.

Ferguson £25M, Lang £13M, Cerny £8M, Kelsy £8M, McKenna £5M, Kolasinac £4M, Penrice £1M. That is £64M of the £70M, with £6M still in the tin.

That team might get us over the line against Jagiellonia.

And one for the boardroom.

If we are spending like this, the revenue side has to pull its weight.

Matchday is the one lever entirely in our control. Hospitality people actually want to buy, a proper safe-standing product, better pre-match at Edmiston House, stadium tours running seven days a week. None of it transforms the accounts on its own, but it all lands on the earnings side of the ratio, and every pound there buys another pound of squad spending. Maybe they need to look at getting out the Castore deal and seeing if any of their pals at the 49er's can help us strike a decent deal with Nike. Not that it would move the needle much, but it might mean a higher uptake in sales worldwide. Hopefully Yokota opens us some important Asian markets too.

In conclusion:

Is any of this happening? Of course not. And the thing that stops it is not UEFA, it is the pAyroll. The fees add up perfectly well. Paying Ake £160,000 a week in Govan does not.

No domestic rule stops us. Out of Europe means nobody is watching us this season. The punishment is survivable, and two of the biggest clubs on the planet already took it and came out the other side. We are not those clubs, but it's fun Friday!

The only genuine constraint is whether we would spend it well. And on this summer's evidence, that is what should worry us far more than anything UEFA does. Ten signings and £24.65M got us to one point from two games and knocked out by Jagiellonia.

Maybe the problem was never the size of the budget.

Anyway. St Mirren on Sunday. I feel marginally better for having typed all that, and I will take marginally better right now.

Figures from the published accounts to June 2025, reported fees and public wage estimates. Everything about this season is an estimate, and everything above is a daydream, which is about all we can ask for right now in this nightmare of a start to the season.

Written by AK7 August 14 2026 14:24:29