PAUL Murray last night stated Scottish football’s top clubs need Rangers back in the Premiership to ease their financial plight – but insisted they must win a place in the top flight on the park this season.

Peter Houston, the Falkirk manager, this week predicted there would be league reconstruction in the summer if Rangers and Hibs fail to secure promotion.

Mark Warburton’s side currently has a three point advantage at the top of the Championship table – but they have been unable to win three of their last five league outings.

However, Murray, the Rangers director, has dismissed the prospect of the Ibrox club being fast-tracked into the Premiership if they are unable to get there on merit this term.

“Big clubs such as ourselves, Hibs and, to an extent, Falkirk, we’ve got to win promotion on the pitch,” he said.

“On merit. We can’t got on pitch and, just because we are Rangers, expect to win. We have to go and win them.There should be no question of us being shoe-horned into the top league, that just shouldn’t happen.

“Whether that is the right thing commercially for the game, it probably is, but we have to win it on merit. And that applies to Hibs as well. We need to be successful on the pitch. There is only one place to get us promotion and that is on the pitch.”

Rangers were placed into the bottom tier of Scottish football back in 2012 and have spent much of the the last three and a half seasons playing against part-time opponents in the lower leagues.

They won the Third Division and League One – when they went all season undefeated – comfortably but were unable to complete a hat-trick of promotions in the Championship in the 2014/15 campaign.

Their failure to clinch a place alongside the likes of Aberdeen, Celtic, Dundee United and Hearts has had serious financial repercussions for a club which continues to wrestle with a plethora of off-field issues after years of unrest despite a change of regime at an EGM in March.

Rangers have needed to secure further loans totalling £2.5 million from Dave King and the members of the so-called Three Bears consortium – George Letham, Douglas Park – in order to see them through to the end of this season.

King admitted at the Rangers AGM in the Clyde Auditorium last month that business model – wealthy benefactors offsetting their losses - was unsustainable in the long-term.

Murray, though, reckons Rangers being put in the Premiership as a result of a hastily-arranged league reconstruction would be unacceptable to their fans - as well as the club directors and shareholders.

He said: “I think if you spoke to most Rangers supporters they wouldn’t want to get in through the back door. Even speaking as a Rangers director there should be a backlash.

“After everything we have been through in the past three or four years, we don’t want so league reconstruction or some artificial structure to make this thing work.”

Stewart Milne, the Aberdeen owner, this week admitted that Scotland’s top flight clubs have suffered financially due to the absence of the likes of Hearts, Hibs and Rangers in recent seasons.

Peter Lawwell, the Celtic chief executive, last year estimated the Scottish champions had to sell players in order to make up for an annual shortfall of £10 million caused by not competing regularly against their traditional city rivals.

Milne would like to see all of the top clubs in the country involved in the Premiership once again in order to increase revenue from broadcasting - and expressed a desire for the game here to move on from the events of the last few years.

Murray welcomed those comments, but conceded that Rangers, who take on third-placed Falkirk in an important league match at Westfield this afternoon, must work hard to foster better associations with Scottish football’s other clubs.

“The subject has been battered to death obviously, but we believe that we should move on and we think that most clubs in Scotland want to do that,” he said.

“Maybe some don’t, but we think it’s important to move on. I do welcome Stewart’s comments, but whether that’s the views of all the clubs I’m not sure.

“I think we have to do our bit as well. It’s not a one-way street. I think we have to engage in Scottish football and we have to engage with others.

“I said at the very outset when I got back on the board that we had to get Rangers back into mainstream society.

“Doing things like the coaching workshop at Gala Fairydean Rovers the other night is what football clubs do. That was normal business. We didn’t do that kind of stuff before. It is important to do things the right way.”

Dave King, the Rangers major shareholder and chairman, has met with SPFL office bearers and has also contacted his counterparts at the Premiership clubs looking to arrange “meetings/lunch/dinner” in the hope of “repairing and improving” relationships.

Murray, who revealed that he was annoyed that correspondence had been made public, believes it is important for Rangers build bridges with other Scottish clubs as they seek to recover from years of turmoil.

“We are disappointed that was obviously leaked by someone to one website,” he said. “I think that was actually pretty poor and not very professional. But, yeah, I think Dave did do that and I think it’s the right thing to do.”