Inside Rangers owners’ recruitment strategy as ‘sub metric levels’ explain how summer signings were identified

MANY of Russell Martin’s summer signings have come under major scrutiny after a slow start to the season.

But Rangers’ new American owners are clearly confident their recruitment strategy will pay off in the long run – with a similar plan taking shape at Elland Road too.

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49ers Enterprises, part of a US-based consortium that holds a 51 per cent stake in the club, also owns Leeds United.

They are keen to bring in further investment at Elland Road as they recently sent out a 50-slide presentation to interested parties with all of the club’s missions and plans for the coming years.

Player recruitment is a huge part of the process and it’s since been revealed that they are planning to bring in over £300million worth of players to the English Premier League side.

The pitch deck was leaked to The Athletic and it makes for interesting reading for Rangers fans.

It’s stated as part of the plans for the future, the American owners want to raise £120m to ‘fund business operations, carry out the stadium expansion project and enable the club to bring in £300m worth of players over the next three years’.

It’s also suggested they are aiming to almost double the club’s value from £527.45m to £1billion by 2030.

But arguably the most fascinating element of the leaked plans for Rangers fans is their recruitment strategy at Elland Road.

It says that ‘the owner group sets a budget, the football leadership establishes ‘non-negotiable’ technical and physical criteria, and the data team refines the search for the scouts to do the eye test’.

It further adds that they state: “We never fall in love with one player and are strict in our process — all inbound players will have a projected exit value.”

And in terms of the signings made at Ibrox, certain parallels can be drawn between the 49ers objectives and the big transfers at Rangers during the summer transfer window.

It’s said potential Leeds signings are based on multiple ‘sub metric levels’, one of which includes having players who can score headers from set-pieces.

And that could explain a number of Martin’s signings throughout the window.

Rangers splashed out £8m on 6ft 5in frontman Youssef Chermiti on deadline day, while Nasser Djiga, Bojan Miovski, Emmanuel Fernandez, Oliver Antman and Thelo Aasgaard are all above 6ft as well.

Aside from that, in terms of the relationship between Rangers and Leeds, the report suggests the owners hope the Light Blues can help the Elland Road side become a stable Premier League side.

Addressing the links between both clubs in June, Rangers chief executive officer Patrick Stewart said: “Paraag Marathe is the chairman of Leeds and the vice-chair of Rangers. We have a couple of other individuals that have interests or roles in both clubs.

“There’s commonality, but there’s not any control from one club to the other. I see it as there could be opportunities, but the directors of Rangers are always going to operate in the best interests of Rangers.

“The Scottish FA is part of that process. They made very clear, for example, which we are grateful for, that Rangers’ participation in Uefa competitions cannot be harmed by any of this overlap.

“I just see opportunity, and now having experienced working with Parag and 49ers, I think that opportunity is real.”

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