GRAEME SOUNESS, the former Rangers manager, believes his old club must invest heavily in the transfer market if they are to compete again with Celtic on a level playing field.

Sunday’s 1-0 loss in the Betfred Cup semi-final at Hampden was the second time the Ibrox side have been beaten by their biggest rivals this season, and Souness felt that the gap between the two clubs could only be bridged by spending more money on better players. The former Scotland midfielder believes Celtic are currently “five years ahead” of Rangers and hoped chairman Dave King or someone else would find the money needed to make Rangers genuine title challengers once more.

He said: “They need to get better players and that will take money. The owner [King] needs to find some money for the manager because he's operating with one hand tied behind his back at the moment.

"You can't come out and say you're going to spend this and spend that if you haven't got it. If you end up not spending it, that is a mistake because it raised the expectations of the support. Rangers supporters have proven themselves over the last few years, turning up in the numbers they have done to home and away games. They expect, and now the owner's got to support the manager.

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“In the next three or four transfer windows Rangers can be lucky and find some money from somewhere. Because that's what it's going to take. There's no magician out there who could come in and do things any differently. There's no super coach who could do things any differently. It needs better players, simple as that.

“As a Rangers supporter, we can feel disappointed about losing to Celtic again but I think it's to be expected. They're five years ahead of us. That doesn't mean it'll be like this for the next five years but certainly in the last five years they've had far more opportunity to strengthen than we have. We're playing catch-up, we'll need some clever buying, we'll need some money and we’ll need some luck.

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"I'd give the manager more time, certainly. It borders on being mission impossible for him. Celtic get 30 million quid from their Champions League this year. What do Rangers get from TV rights? A couple of million. And that's not just this year, that's previous years as well. You've got the unbelievable expectation from the Rangers supporters but anyone with any common sense must look at it and see the reasons why they're better than Rangers right now.”

Souness felt it would be unrealistic to expect Rangers to be challenging for the title this season. He added: “With Hearts and Aberdeen - the expectation isn't there. But Mark is having to put up with the history that's gone back over 100 years. That's what he's having to deal with, that and the expectation from the Rangers supporters, “Oh, we're back, we're going to win it”. That was never going to happen. But with the passion that's there in home games, they could go on a roll easily. If that happens they could finish second.”