Glasgow Rangers have enjoyed some moderate success in the transfer market over the previous couple of years, particularly in terms of moving players on for vast profits.
Since January 2022, the Gers have managed to sell Nathan Patterson (£16m), Joe Aribo (£10m) and Calvin Bassey (£23m) for fees much higher than what they signed for. Such events have allowed the club to establish a solid player trading model which enables them to reinvest transfer fees earned back into recruitment.
These sorts of deals won’t occur every window, but Michael Beale will know that the vast majority of players who join the club see Rangers as a stepping stone to either the Premier League or to a team performing consistently in the Champions League.
The key is to sign prospective talent at a low price and develop them, before moving the player on for a vast profit. Although this method looks like it is coming back to the fore at the Ibrox side in recent seasons, it hasn’t always been like this.
Following promotion to the Premiership in 2016, the Light Blues endured some woeful decisions in the transfer market, with managers such as Mark Warburton and Pedro Caixinha wasting money on a collection of expensive flops who rather rinsed the club dry.
One such example is Carlos Pena and his 18-month stint as a Rangers' player will surely go down as one of the worst deals in their recent history.
How much did Carlos Pena cost Rangers?
Caixinha went into his first transfer window as manager of the Gers with an ambition to build a side which could finally end Celtic’s hegemony of Scottish football. While he could be praised for his adventurous proposal, it ultimately failed.
He signed players such as Fabio Cardoso, Dalcio and Eduardo Herrera in a bid to topple Celtic, yet they all failed to settle in Scottish football, departing within two years of arriving in Glasgow.
Pena was the most expensive signing that summer however, costing the club a fee in the region of £2.2m from Guadalajara and even after just a few matches, it was clear that the Mexican was miles off the pace. He struggled to adapt to the physicality of Scottish football as Caixinha’s reign turned into a nightmare of epic proportions.
How much did Carlos Pena earn at Rangers?
It was reported that Pena was earning around £26k-per-week upon signing for the Light Blues and this was a staggering amount considering they had spent just one season back in the top flight, finishing third behind Celtic and Aberdeen.
This money would have been better off going towards a player who was slightly younger and may have had a brighter future ahead of them, or indeed, someone with plenty of experience in European football who could have adapted much faster than Pena.
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Not only did it turn out to be Caixinha's worst-ever signing, but it is arguably the biggest waste of money since Rangers returned to the Premiership seven years ago, and his performances on the field didn’t exactly warrant the massive weekly outgoing either.
How did Carlos Pena perform at Rangers?
The short answer is indeed a hard no, yet it is perhaps more beneficial to take a deeper look into just how poor he really was at the club.
Having won 19 caps for Mexico, which included appearances at the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Copa America, first impressions of the attacking midfielder seemed promising, yet that swiftly changed when he took to the field wearing a Rangers shirt.
Across his first nine matches for the Gers, he did manage to score five goals, including a double against St Johnstone, yet his overall performances were disappointing, with the player really struggling to adjust to the game in Scotland, and he looked a shadow of the player that had registered 62 goal contributions – 50 goals and 12 assists – over 192 matches for Club Leon in the years prior to him arriving in the Premiership.
Having cost £2.2m in June 2017, Pena ended up costing Rangers a staggering £440k per goal, having made only 14 appearances in total before moving on from the Glasgow side at the beginning of 2018.
What happened to Carlos Pena next?
He agreed to join Mexican side Cruz Azul on loan in January 2018 as his Gers nightmare was coming to an end, and it was Caixinha who signed him, having been sacked from the Ibrox side in October the previous year after just six months in charge.
Their sporting director Eduardo de la Torre praised Pena, saying: “We have been in talks with Carlos and Rangers for ten days.
“He is a player our coach knows very well and he told us to get him. Pedro knows what Carlos can give the team.”
He obviously didn’t watch him in a Rangers jersey. Another loan spell at Necaxa for the 2018/19 season was agreed, yet this was cut short and Steven Gerrard finally terminated his contract in February 2019, a full 85 weeks after he joined the Gers.
Rangers Review journalist Derek Clark didn’t hold back when criticising the player, saying: “Disastrous transfer in what was an equally disastrous spell for the club.”
This was said last year after the Court of Arbitration of Sport justified the reasons behind the Light Blues cutting Pena’s stay in Glasgow short, and it ended a near three-year look into the matter.
Rangers are in a far better place now than they were back in the summer of 2017, and while there will be the odd transfer blunder here and there, it doesn’t happen nearly as frequently as it did in the first few years following promotion.
Pena was an abysmal signing during an abysmal period for the club and it's one which arguably set the Gers back further when they really needed to settle down and build a proper side capable of challenging for honours.
£2.2m was an awful lot of money in 2017, especially with the club not in European competition and following the recent success stories of Aribo, Bassey and Patterson, Beale could look forward to developing his players well with a view to securing lavish transfer fees once some of them are ready to report the club.