THE first rumblings that something fairly significant was happening at East Fife began around a week ago.

Interest levels grew further during a meet-and-greet with supporters last Thursday, the regular updates on the club's Twitter page quickly carrying the news far beyond Methil and the Fife coast.

The club had been taken over by a consortium led by a wealthy local businessman and was going full time. Christian Nade, the burly former Hearts striker, would be signing. They were also pursuing internationalist players and had designs on taking the club up the divisions.

All of a sudden – and with social media things are rarely allowed to develop slowly – East Fife were being painted as the new Gretna, setting a course for the top regardless of the consequences.

By the Friday the story had grown arms and legs. Their next signing was going to be Nuno Gomes, the Portuguese internationalist striker now at Blackburn Rovers, and others of that ilk were going to follow. Rangers, it seemed, were suddenly going to have serious competition for the Irn-Bru Second Division championship.

Little wonder that Lee Murray, the club's new managing director and the aforementioned local businessman, felt somewhat frazzled come the weekend.

"It's been mental," he admitted, once the frenzy had finally died down a bit.

The full story was not quite as dramatic. Murray is the managing director of Flood Inns, a successful chain of pubs, hotels and restaurants, but he has neither the resources nor the inclination to be Fife's answer to the late Brooks Mileson, the man who funded Gretna's ascent to the very top only for the plummet to be just as spectacular once the money had run out.

East Fife are planning a steadier climb, the new board admitting that a town the size of Methil – population 11,000 – is unlikely to ever be the setting for top-flight football. The Irn-Bru First Division, however, they believe is not beyond them and could be achieved within the next three years if things unfold as they hope.

The business plan is fairly straightforward. Rather than investing vast sums of money, the focus will be on trying to do things more efficiently. Murray inherits a club in the black after years of careful management but believes there is scope to do much more in a commercial sense.

"There's not a big pot of cash, unfortunately," he said. "But, to be honest, throwing cash at it in a big way would just be a waste as there's not a lot of money to be made. We just want to make sure that the budget is spent well and to be clever with it. The club has virtually no corporate backing whatsoever, it's tiny compared to what it could be and what's required. In my mind that's a massive opportunity.

"I feel the club has been underperforming in recent years. Football-wise that is obvious, but as a business and a community-based organisation it's been left to dwindle. It had been run by old guys over 60 who just wanted to make sure the club did all right. That's absolutely fine, and they've done great in that respect. They've kept the club in the black, there's no debt and it's a good wee club, probably one of the smallest in the country. I'm not saying it's a sleeping giant but there's definitely potential there, maybe more than many people see. I see it better because I stay here."

That last point may ease the fears of any East Fife fans who may be viewing the club's new owners with a degree of suspicion. If things go wrong, and the consortium fails to deliver on its promises, there will be little prospect of Murray fleeing to a bolthole in Monaco. "I live in the town and I don't want to move, so that's why I need to do this right. I don't want to be chased down the street by angry fans. Plus my businesses – the pubs, restaurants and hotels – are in the town or thereabouts, so if I make an arse of things at East Fife then they will fairly quickly go quiet. There's plenty of motivation on my part to do things right. People don't forget it in a hurry if you mess with their football club."

Murray has appointed a new management team in Willie Aitchison, a former Hearts youth coach in his first managerial role, and Kevin Drinkell, the former Rangers player and one-time Stirling Albion manager. They will oversee a full-time squad of around 18, comprising 10 youth players and six to eight senior figures. "There was talk the other day that we were about to sign Nuno Gomes but I don't know where that came from," said Murray. "We're after a player called Gomes but it's not that one."

Murray is committed fully to East Fife, but it wasn't always so. He grew up a Rangers fan but will have no mixed emotions when he takes his place in the directors box at Ibrox next season.

"I've been a bluenose all my days but I'm an East Fife fan now and I want to beat them. East Fife have probably always been my second team and I think that's probably the same for a lot of people in this area who have Rangers or Celtic as their first team. We want to now make East Fife everybody's favourite second team."

As well as trying to get their own house in order, East Fife also have a role to play in sorting out Scottish football. Murray will join the rest of the Scottish Football League clubs at Hampden tomorrow to vote on league reconstruction, his thoughts on the process another example of the ambition coursing through the new owners.

"We discussed it at our board meeting the other day and made our decision on what we're going to do. What I've said to the board is that we need to start thinking more like a first division club and not a third division club. It doesn't matter what division you are in just now. If you have ambitions you need to think about where you want to be."