Whoever takes control, Rangers must be rebuilt

News of Dave King’s potential return to Rangers has been encouraging for a number of reasons.

Make no mistake, this is crunch time for the Ibrox club. The directors have been under fire since the announcement of £14.4-million losses in the annual financial results. There are obvious factions within the Board, and fans have been vociferous in their protests ahead of the AGM on Thursday week.

Against this backdrop, the re-emergence of King is intriguing to say the least.

The fact Chief Executive Craig Mather and Finance Director Brian Stockbridge saw fit to fly out to South Africa is significant. The two men have been the target of much of the criticism of the support. They could clearly do with an ally. And King fits the bill perfectly.

Well-known to be a Rangers man, he would be a popular figure with the dissenters, not least because he has already been given the backing of current boss, Ally McCoist. As someone who has already lost £20million in the club yet is prepared to invest more in the pursuit of a long-term solution, his commitment is clear.

It is King’s vision of how that should be achieved which particularly interests me.

Put simply, he wants to identify promising, young, unheralded talent, sign them up then develop them at Rangers before selling them on to England or abroad for a profit. It is a business model that has served Celtic very well in recent years. Victor Wanyama, Gary Hooper and Kelvin Wilson are just the most recent examples.

Two years ago, while Director of Football at Rangers, I wrote a strategy paper advocating the club follow this very path. I didn’t want to copy Celtic. Don’t forget that back in 2005, Rangers sold Jean Alain Boumsong to Newcastle for £8million just months after picking him up on a Bosman.

I simply felt this was an avenue the club should pursue more vigorously because, like their rivals across the city, Rangers were right on England’s doorstep and, at the time, could count on regular European football.

It is Celtic’s participation in the Group stages of the Champions League that has helped bring in the big fees.

In previous years, reports linking Barcelona with a move for Georgios Samaras would have been dismissed as fanciful. Now, when we know the player scored against them in competitive action last season and was outstanding against them this year, it makes good sense.

Obviously Rangers are years away from being at this level. Nevertheless, I would argue it is essential that the rebuilding process is done the right way. You have to identify the direction you want to move in and then plan accordingly.

Of course, fans will always want to see good players at their club. They are intelligent enough, though, to appreciate that wages and transfer spends must be kept under control.

With King at the helm that will be the way ahead.