Celtic or Rangers top? Ranking the biggest spending sprees in Scottish football history

Top 10 listed 

Both Celtic and Rangers have more than enough reasons to be active in the January transfer window. The reigning Scottish champions recently parted ways with their second manager in just three months and have turned to club legend Martin O’Neill to guide them back to success in the second half of the season. And just across the city Rangers are hard at work trying to build a team to not only take advantage of their rival’s demise on and off the pitch, but to also catch unexpected league leaders Hearts in the Scottish Premiership. As such, both clubs have spent a combined €53 million on new players this season. But how does that stack up with the biggest spending sprees in Scottish football history?

When we dig through the Transfermarkt database to see which Scottish clubs have spent the most money in a single season on new players, there are rather predictably just two clubs that dominate the top 10. As we can see in the graph below, Celtic take up six spots and Rangers take up the remaining four. But, nonetheless, it’s an interesting breakdown of how each club’s appetite to spend money in the transfer market has risen and fallen through the years.

For example, Rangers’ dominance of Scottish football in the 90s – when the Ibrox club won nine consecutive league titles between 1988 and 1997 – led to record fees being paid in the 98/99 and 00/01 seasons. Those spending sprees saw the club pick up huge stars like Arthur Numan, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Andrey Kanchelskis, Ronald de Boer, alongside the now infamous €18m signing of Tore André Flo from Chelsea. As we can see, over the course of those two seasons, Rangers spent a combined €90.3m, and each spending spree taking second and third place on the list. Curiously, Rangers’ current spending spree in this season currently ranks fifth in all of Scottish football history and could even make a push for top spot if the Ibrox club completes more signings this month.

As we all know, the power dynamics in Scottish football have shifted entirely since then and it is now Celtic that dominate the Scottish top-flight, having won 13 of the last 14 Scottish Premiership titles. And, to no great surprise, the Parkhead club’s spending in recent years also ranks high on the list. As we can see, since 2022 Celtic have routinely spent sums of money that had previously been unthinkable for the Glasgow club, with each of the last four seasons ranking in the top 10. And, most notably, last season’s outlay of €45.5m on new players was the most a Scottish club have ever spent on new players. Consequently, aside from the aforementioned Norwegian striker that joined Rangers in 2000 and Michael Ball’s €9.9m move to Ibrox in 2001, the rest of the top 10 biggest transfers in Scottish football are Celtic signings and five of them took place in the last seven seasons.

So what about the clubs outside of Glasgow? Well, the biggest spending spree for a Scottish club that isn’t Celtic or Rangers is none other than Hearts in this very season, with the Edinburgh giants spending no less than €4.17m on new signings. That surpassed the €3.3m Aberdeen spent in the 24/25 season. After that, you have to go back to the 88/89 season, when Hearts spent €2.9m on new signings. The rest of the top five is then made up by Dundee United spending €2.83m in the 95/96 season and then Hearts again spending €2.6m in 05/06.