KRIS BOYD, the former Rangers striker, has responded to criticism from Dave King by saying that the Ibrox chairman ought to concern himself more with putting an end to a culture of "in-fighting" at the club, rather than indulging in the condemnation of former players.
Boyd was one of 11 players to leave Rangers last month after their failure to gain promotion to the Premiership and yesterday signed a two-year deal, with the option for a third, at Kilmarnock, which marks his third spell with the Ayrshire club.
Earlier this month, King had lamented those 11 players by insisting that they had "failed miserably" in their attempts to gain promotion from the Championship, which ultimately ended with a catastrophic 6-1 defeat to Motherwell in the play-off final, and that "no new manager would want to keep them at the club".
However, Boyd has responded to that and explained that more could have been done to appoint a new manager at Ibrox last season. He also revealed that damaging internecine conflict had become prevalent, with various figures at the club too often looking to "stitch each other up".
"Dave King is entitled to his opinion," said the 31-year-old former Rangers striker. "In my opinion, however, he has got far bigger issues to fix at Rangers rather than to spend his time talking about former players.
"If I had one criticism of him, then it would be that he should have gone and got a manager far quicker that could have dealt with everything, rather than him trying to deal with it all himself.
"There was so much in-fighting around the club. For instance, why did Dave King do that press conference, in which he criticised some former players, when he was already due to announce a new manager the following week?
"It was like two press conferences for nothing. I think whoever is advising Dave King really needs to have a look at themselves, rather than just looking after their own interests.
"Rangers as a club need to be pulling in the same direction. There's no point in someone working at the club saying they need to do x, y or z, and then another employee saying they need to do something entirely different.
"It needs to be a collective effort - and that includes everyone who works on the media and press side of the club as well. There's no point in stitching people up behind their back and holding press conferences at random.
"At the end of the day, people just need to do their job at the club and speak about football. Rangers need to get back to doing what they do best - winning games of football and getting back to the top of Scottish football."
After a tumultuous season in which some sections of Rangers fans openly booed and jeered their own players, Boyd believes that certain members of the Ibrox playing staff were used as scapegoats for the wider failings of the team.
"I'm not having a go at anyone personally but the team collectively didn't perform as it should have done. Yeah, the strikers didn't score, but the midfielders also didn't create and our defenders didn't defend as well as they should have done. It was a collective problem," he said.
"It was easy for people to blame guys who have been at the club before, the likes of myself, Kenny Miller and Lee McCulloch. A lot of the reasons for our failure was pinned on us and we took a lot of criticism.
"When I look back, there were people who weren't doing enough. But there are also people still at the club who might well continue to not do enough and get away with it."
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