STUART McCALL, the Rangers manager, has stated that he would look to retain a strong say on player recruitment should he be asked to work with a Director of Football.
The Ibrox board are considering their options with regards to structure as well as personnel in the footballing department for next season with board member Paul Murray revealing earlier this week that there is interest in bringing in someone above the head coach such a technical or sporting director.
McCall understands there are no guarantees that he will be kept at the club beyond the summer, even if he does mastermind a return to the top flight through the Play-Offs, and has made it clear that he believes the man in charge of the team must be responsible for the final say on signings.
"I think Paul was putting it out that they were looking at everything," said McCall, who met the new chairman, Dave King, over breakfast yesterday morning.
"In fact, I think it was me that actually mentioned to Paul a few weeks ago that I had spoken to Craig Levein about the Hearts model.
"Over the years, people would have said the most important relationship at a football club is between a manager and a chairman.
"Nowadays, you can have a have a Director of Football or a Sporting Director or whatever it may be.
"All I would say on the Director of Football thing is that I'm sure if you asked 99 per cent of managers, they would want to bring their own players to the club. That could even be going to a Sporting Director and saying: "These are the positions I need" - and they come back with three right-backs or whatever, almost like a head scout.
"Where it can fall down, and where it has fallen down a couple of times in England and certainly abroad, is when a manager turns up and there are three players there that he doesn't know.
"Certainly, having a Director of Football is the way things are going in Europe and maybe at some of the bigger clubs. As long as the manager, whoever it is, has a say on the players coming into the football club, it could work.
"It depends how it is structured."
One of McCall's recognised strengths is that he is capable of sourcing players on a shoestring budget and making them strong assets that will attract interest from clubs with greater spending power.
"Along with loads of weaknesses, I'd probably say my strengths at Motherwell were bringing players into the club and, hopefully, improving them before moving them on," he said.
"We brought in Henrik Ojamaa on 300 quid a week and sold him for £350,000.
"There were also a lot of players who left Motherwell because of the finances. You can't give them a three-year deal and offer them a bit more money to stay, so we lost Darren Randolph, Nicky Law and Shaun Hutchinson for nothing. They'd have all commanded decent transfer fees if under contract.
"We rebuilt the Motherwell team, if you like, but that's not really for me to say.
"I think there's a great opportunity here for whoever gets the job and whatever league Rangers are in.
"There are 11 players out of contract, but that creates an opportunity."
Meanwhile, Darren McGregor has urged the Scottish Football Association to change their disciplinary rules after discovering that a booking picked up against Queen of the South in the quarter-final of the SPFL Premiership Play-Off will rule him out of the second leg of the final should Rangers negotiate today's trip to Hibernian.
"It's disappointing," said the defender. "I didn't know the stance from whoever puts the rules in place. I'm not sure if they've taken into account that these play-offs are now here.
"That's me played almost 50 games and the Queen of the South game was just my sixth booking.
"I think it's a bit harsh that there's not a structure put in place where, if they get to a certain month, they could maybe review it and say: 'He's on five bookings and it's maybe a bit harsh that he might have to play another six games in the Play-Offs'.
"I'm not sure if that's something in the future they could maybe look at.
"I can definitely understand how a straight red needs to be carried over because, otherwise, you could just go out and do what you wanted."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article