Rangers best player has declared his career is over due to…

Rangers best player has declared his career is over due to…

Rangers fans have grown painfully accustomed to retail chaos in the background of the club for the best part of the last decade.

 

Between the tumultuous influence of Sports Direct and Mike Ashley, to the calamitous handling of the Elite/Hummel deal, there have been some truly monumental hurdles to clear in recent seasons.

But as Rangers finally settle the last of their retail wrangles, and the five-year deal with Castore prepares to run out this summer, it really is a new era of retail at Ibrox.

 

And one the Rangers board are under increasing pressure to finally get right.you might’ve been fooled into thinking it was a clean break for the Gers.

 

Rangers had been embroiled in a retail dispute with Sports Direct ever since the Dave King and Three Bears takeover of the club in 2015.

 

The new regime had tried to wrestle back control of the Ibrox side’s merchandising with the Gers famously receiving only 7p to every £1 spent under Ashley’s influence.

Amid boycotts, PR disasters and a public dispute with Dave King, the club settled with Big Mike seven years later.

 

The annual accounts showed that Rangers had paid out £6m in compensation to draw a line under the saga.

 

It’s a big fee for a Rangers still in post-2012 recovery, but it’s a small price to pay to rid the club of the toxicity associated with the Sports Direct era.

 

That said, the court wrangles did not finish there. Far from it.

During the fight with Sports Direct, Rangers famously signed a deal with Hummel and Elite in 2018 which was supposed to kickstart the club’s stuttering retail operations.

 

Rangers fans, who’d boycotted paying for new kits for years, were delighted to be able to buy themselves and their children replica jerseys.

 

But that too proved to be a poisoned chalice as only a year later Rangers were found to be in breach of the original Sports Direct agreement when they signed with the Danes.

 

It meant the club had to once again recognise Sports Direct as their official retail partner, with a court ruling Rangers couldn’t wear Hummel jerseys from the 20/21 season.