Cuellar Million For Gers

Aug 17 2008 By Gavin Berry

RANGERS banked s1million more than they expected from the sale of Carlos Cuellar - thanks to the currency exchange rate.

The Spaniard insisted on a 10million euro buy-out clause when he joined Gers from Osasuna last summer.

And that was triggered by Aston Villa in midweek when they snapped up Cuellar for s7.8m.

But the fee is just over s1m MORE than it would have been a year ago because the pound has crashed a whopping 15 per cent against the euro in that time. When Cuellar moved to Scotland on July 5, 2007 the exchange rate was 1.48 euros to the pound which means Gers would only have received s6.75m.

But the poor performance of the pound since - it's now worth just 1.28 euros - has given the Ibrox club an unexpected extra windfall.

A Rangers insider said: "If you sign someone for two million euros, plus 500,000 if he plays so many games, and someone says you will get 10 million euros in a year then regardless of the exchange rate it's not bad business."

Meanwhile, Ibrox boss Smith admitted Cuellar would never have signed without the clause - but revealed no other Gers player has a similar escape route.

Smith said: "I don't do the contracts but when we went to sign Carlos we had to have a discussion about whether we put the clause in or not and if it was acceptable to us.

"The transfer wouldn't have happened if we hadn't.

"Would we go down that road again? Of course but we would make the fee bigger!

"I thought we were making it quite big at the time.

"The clause was there and we knew the circumstances.

"If Carlos had been playing as well for Osasuna as he did for us last season we wouldn't have got him for the fee we did.

"It's a fairly basic clause in Spain. It happens in most cases. We've all heard of the big ridiculous clauses some players have to frighten off other clubs.

"We just have to accept the consequence. We take an upside financially but the downside is we are losing a terrific player.

"As far as I know none of the other players has similar clauses."