ALLY McCoist reckons Rangers would have to think long and hard before accepting any invitation to join an SPL2 for next season.
Scottish Football League clubs decided on Thursday to delay league reconstruction plans until the start of the 2014/15 season, leaving the onus on the SPL to make an approach to interested clubs should they desire to move to their proposed two-division 24-team set-up any sooner than that.
A newly-promoted Rangers would be an obvious candidate for this second tier but McCoist said that he would be "very uneasy" about volunteering to rejoin the organisation which declined to readmit the newco-owned club last summer.
"I'd be very uneasy with it – stabbing the SFL in the back after they looked after us," said McCoist. "That's only my personal opinion. The SFL have given us a platform to play this season and then all of a sudden we get an opportunity to go? It wouldn't leave a good taste in my mouth, that's for sure."
The Rangers manager has already started making plans for next season, a pre-season itinerary which includes a proposed trip to the USA and Germany, on the assumption they will be playing in the third tier of a Scottish football scene based around the current 12-10-10-10 format.
But not knowing for sure, just a matter of weeks before the end of the season, doesn't exactly make the club's recruitment plans – already hit by a transfer embargo which doesn't end until September 1 – any easier.
He said: "Anything would be an improvement on our last pre-season. It was a shambles, through nobody's fault at the club. We couldn't play a game because we didn't have a licence to play. I'd be hopeful we won't be in that state next season.
"But it is unbelievable we're in this position six games from the end of the season," he added. "You still wouldn't put your money on the final outcome (of the proposed SPL2).
"At this moment I expect to be in SFL2 and I would expect Queen of the South to be promoted (to the First Division). I would expect us to be promoted – to whatever league that may be. I would think that would be SFL2."
While the club have been linked with Dundee United's Jon Daly, St Johnstone's Murray Davidson and Motherwell's Nicky Law and Tom Hateley, McCoist refused to rule out a move for ex-Rangers striker Kris Boyd, who is back with his first club Kilmarnock after an unhappy spell abroad in Turkey and the USA,
"We're not ruling anybody out," he said. "I think we need three centre-forwards. I wouldn't rule Boyd out, but I wouldn't count him in either. We have a wide range of forwards on free transfers that we are looking at."
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