Carlos Bocanegra last night expressed his desire to stay with Rangers but will wait to discover their fate before making a decision.

The USA defender will be promoted to Ibrox captain if he refuses to walk away from Rangers newco but accepts the loss of Champions League football is a huge blow to his ambitions.

"I want to stay at Rangers, I love that place," he said. "I've really grown to enjoy the atmosphere going into training every day, the city, the culture and the lifestyle there.

"I think there's a ruling coming up whether we stay in the SPL or not and after that I will really have to do some thinking and speak to the coaching staff and the other players and see what's going on and then I'll know more. I'd like to stay if everything works out. The biggest thing for me with Rangers and the biggest draw for me was Champions League football because I'd never been able to play that in my career and that was the one club competition I'd never been a part of, so the lure of playing in the Champions League with Rangers was a huge attraction."

The former Fulham defender then criticised Craig Whyte for killing the old Rangers. "It was kind of sad to see that the actions of one guy can affect so many people and can affect a nation really because Rangers are such a big institution in Scotland. So it's too bad that someone's greed can ruin so many people's lives."

Bocanegra is convinced, however, that Rangers are simply too big to die and may even have forgotten about this summer's tribulations in a few years time.

"I think the newco they went into it is called something like The Rangers PLC instead of just Rangers PLC, but the brand is so big globally and especially in Europe, it's never going to go away. The fanbase of 50,000 just doesn't go away from a name change. It's a technicality The Rangers brand will be there for ever."