No quick way back to top flight for Rangers, says United chairman

Friday 26 October 2012

Stephen Thompson, the Dundee United chairman, last night denied there is any realistic prospect of Rangers making a short-cut return to the Scottish Premier League.

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Thompson, an SPL board member, is aware that talk of league reconstruction could be viewed as an opportunity for the Ibrox club to be promoted to the top flight from the third division of the Scottish Football League.

On the day his club posted a welcome profit of £1.5m for the period to June 2012, Thompson insisted that such a scenario is very unlikely."Unless we get the voting structure changed, I can't see anything happening at all," he said. "Rangers can't be voted back in. They've got to earn the right by coming back up through the leagues. I'm not saying it won't, but I can't see it happening. There's no way the leagues will be reconstructed for them."Ideally, you would like to see everything changed at once, but I just can't see how 11 clubs would agree on the size of leagues, money redistribution and voting. It's a very different league this year. We're no worse off than we would have been if Rangers were still in the league. If anything we've gained by Dundee being in the SPL. We've benefited more than most from having them up."United's sales of David Goodwillie to Blackburn Rovers for £2m and Scott Allan to West Bromwich Albion for £400,000 put the club in a much healthier financial position and Thompson has assured the supporters that there will be no further cuts to the squad next season. "We did sell Goodwillie and still ended up fourth in the league," he noted. "All credit for Peter for doing that. It's all about trying to get the balance between finance and showing ambition on the park."We're no different from any other club but we're in a good position at the moment. We need to make some sort of cuts. But we don't intend to cut the playing budget at all for next season."Thompson rejected a bid of £1.25m from Huddersfield Town for Johnny Russell and Gary Mackay-Steven during the August transfer window and insists they are under no pressure to sell their leading players on the cheap."Two or three other chairmen told me I was nuts when I knocked back the bid for Mackay-Steven and Russell but we believed they were worth more than that. I could have easily taken the money to take another £1m off the debt but we would have lost our two best players."The big difference from the Goodwillie deal 15 months ago was that we were under pressure from the bank. I held out for £2m which we got in the end. These are tough times but I believe we're going in the right direction."

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No quick way back to top flight for Rangers, says United chairman

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