DAVE KING might wish that he spent less time in Glasgow, but the Rangers chairman certainly makes the most of each trip from Johannesburg.

He returned this week to meet with Pedro Caixinha for the first time and hold talks with his board. In the coming weeks, the picture will become clearer as the Rangers rebuilding job continues on and off the park.

Here, King talks football, his investment, both emotional and financial, and what the future holds for Rangers and himself.

On the takeover front, what happens now with the appeals panel judgement?

Dave King: I think it is quite academic. They made their judgement. I might appeal it. What I want to do first is to discuss things with some of the supporters groups. One of the things I have committed to is that no one individual should own Rangers.

I still believe that. There are a number of ways I can handle it. I could go to supporters groups and say if I make an offer and can back some of the shares back to you guys could you come up with the money? Or I could appeal it. Would anyone accept an offer at 20p?

Could it have been sorted quicker? One of the things in the report is that there is an element of cooperation from you but an element where they criticise you for not cooperating.

DK: My view to them was a very simple one. There was a consortium. That consortium was myself and the supporters. I worked on a daily basis with Chris Graham running spreadsheets. I worked with a whole bunch of supporters. They were updating lists and sending me spreadsheets, sometimes 15 times a day. I worked with them.

It so happens that Douglas Park, George Letham – who I’d never met at the time – and George Taylor – who I’d also never met – came in as individual investors with more money. My argument was there was a consortium. But it was myself and the supporters really. It was certainly never myself and Douglas Park or George Letham.

So I argued technically that the real consortium was myself and the supporters. That remains my argument. Their findings are different and I have to decide whether to appeal it or not.

How does the club expand to the level where it can become a credible competitor to Celtic on and off the field?

DK: The same way we have been doing. We have spent far more than half of the £30 million already. I think £30 million is not enough. I think it is going to be more than £30 million. But what the figure is at the end of the day will depend on how well we do.

We are behind where I thought we would be on the field. Coming second or third makes no difference to the Europa League qualifiers so there is minimal financial impact on that side. But we have to move on and start competing in Europe. The sooner we start competing in Europe and start competing successfully with Celtic, the more chance normalized revenues would allow us to continue on that basis.

If we fail in Europe, we are going to have to put more money into to get us to that position. But it is pretty much a season by season basis.

It is changed by the new management team. At this point, I have no idea what Pedro’s assessment is going to be. He will look at the squad, decide on his player plan and we will have to back that.

What is the soft loan situation? Will it continue? Do you see that for the foreseeable future?

DK: When I made my original comments I certainly said it would cover three years. As we are pretty much two years into it, I would say it would be more than three years.

Resolution 11 failed at the AGM. Do you need to get a Resolution through to take the next step forward?

DK: It is not necessary. The advantage of the Resolution was that we could place shares with the shareholders we wanted to as opposed to a general rights issue. We can still have a rights issue but it means that Mike Ashley and all these other shareholders are going to participate in it as well. That wasn’t my preference.

Quite frankly, I am quite indifferent to it. If I put money in as an interest free loan it is the same as equity. It is not going to come back out of the club. I am indifferent as to whether it converts in one years’ time or two years’ time, it really doesn’t matter, as long as I know in the meantime that the club is getting the money. It is easier to get it, quite frankly, in soft loans from key investors than to go to the market each time and try and do a rights issue.

There is a perception that, as the figurehead of the club, you are not here enough. What would you say to that?

DK: I am not going to leave South Africa, that is for sure. I don’t think it is an issue. Personally I think it is an advantage. The only disadvantage of me not being available on a regular basis would be on the corporate hospitality side. Ideally, if you are the chairman, you meet people on a Saturday and talk to them and that would be a perfect world. But then you have to dial back and say ‘what is right to the club?’

Let’s imagine that I step down and I felt there was an issue, where would the club be in a years’ time if I wasn’t there? Part of regime change was that if there were local people willing to have done this, and you remember the interviews, I told you I did not want to get involved with Rangers and did not want to invest in Rangers, and my position remains the same. If anyone came in and could do the job any better, they could do it.

I am left in a situation that as a South African, despite the various attempts by other rescue operations, I was the one that had to come in and do it. Did I want to do it? No, I didn’t want to do it. I absolutely didn’t want to do it. Is the club better with a local chairman? Where would he come from?

Have there been times when you wished you hadn’t done it?

DK: No. No. Let me answer that slightly differently. Have I had any fun or enjoyment about being involved with Rangers in the last two years? Not much. If you add it all together, maybe it would come to ten hours, and it was probably all after the semi-final (against Celtic). Is it fun? Of course it is not fun. There is nothing fun about what I am doing. Litigation, being sued, people trying to put me in jail, I am being sued by Sports Direct. What is fun about that?

But I didn’t do it for fun. I did it because I felt, at a bad time, that I needed to step in, so I stepped in. I spend a huge amount of time on things like litigation. There is nothing fun about litigating with Mike Ashley. It is not enjoyable, there is nothing satisfying about it. But I have to do it.

I travel to Scotland more often that I like to. People say I am absent, I am here far more often than I would like to be. Sometimes I fly into London for one day to meet on litigation and fly home that same evening. It is taking up more of my time and it is not fun. But I signed up to do it.

You have never struck me as a man who is easily intimidated. The threats and legal action don’t get to you, do they?

DK: No. For me on a scale of one to ten it doesn’t get to one. The threat of going to jail, it’s quite amusing. My family say ‘we’ll see you at Christmas, which jail will we see you at?' We genuinely laugh about it. I do this for a living. This is what I do. I wouldn’t have taken it on at Rangers if I didn’t have the temperament and the personality. Obviously money was required as well and I had to meet that but if I didn’t have the temperament and I wasn’t up for the fight then I wouldn’t have done it and I certainly wouldn’t be here two years later doing what I’m doing now.

I am as determined now to see this through to the end as I was two years ago. I signed up to do it. And then I’ll make a decision. If Sports Direct is completely done and I think the club is back on a certain footing would it then make sense for me to say ‘I’m happy to step down and not be chairman, let’s have a local chairman’ that would be my preference frankly if I could find someone to do that, a good, independent non-executive chairman. You couldn’t invite an independent non-executive chairman on to the board: after about five minutes I would scare him away if I gave him top three fears.

But if we could get to that point I would be very, very happy to step down because I would still have shareholder influence, I don’t need to be chairman of the board to exert shareholder influence because my shareholding would still be there. But right now in my view the club still needs someone like me, whether it’s me or it’s not, to continue with the fights we have and the negotiations.