PAUL Murray, the Rangers director, has revealed the Ibrox club hope to appoint a new manager later this week as bookmakers suspended betting on Mark Warburton, the former Brentford coach, taking charge.
With chairman and major shareholder Dave King based in South Africa, Murray and his fellow director John Gilligan have been heading up the search for a new manager in recent weeks.
Warburton, who lead Brentford into the English Championship play-offs this season before being replaced, is now the overriding favourite to land the position.
He would take Davie Weir, the former Rangers centre half and captain who worked alongside him at Griffin Park during the 2014/15 campaign, back to Ibrox as his assistant.
McBookie.com made the 52-year-old Englishman 1-5 to take over yesterday after a flurry of bets on him over the weekend. PaddyPower, meanwhile, suspended betting on him.
King, who was cleared to take up a place on theRangers board after being passed as "fit and proper" by the SFA last month, has arrived back in the UK fuelling speculation he has returned to speak to the new manager.
Speaking at the North American Rangers Supporters Association annual convention in California, Murray suggested an announcement could be made on Friday. He said: "Our plan is to make an appointment next week."
Stuart McCall, who succeeded temporary manager Kenny McDowall on an interim basis in March, is thought to have damaged his chances of being appointed full-time.
McCall managed to get Rangers into the SPFL Premiership play-offs, but, after wins over Queen of the South and Hibs in the quarter-final and semi-final respectively, his side was thrashed 6-1 over two legs by Motherwell in the final.
Vitor Periera, the Portuguese coach who lead Olympiacos to the Greek title this season, had held talks with Rangers, but their failure to win promotion to the top flight is believed to have ended his interest in moving to Scotland.
Elsewhere, Ian Cathro, the one-time Dundee United youth coach with is assistant manager at Valencia, Derek McInnes, the ex-Rangers midfielder who is currently in charge of Aberdeen and Alex McLeish, the former Rangers manager, are also being touted for the post.
However, Warburton, the former city trader who made millions in finance before becoming a coach and founding the NextGen Series along with a business associate, is now the red-hot favourite to become just the 15th manager of the club.
He has spoken fondly of Rangers since being linked with the job and has admitted his ambition would be to take them into the top flight and challenge Celtic for the Scottish title.
He said: "Any manager looks to add value to a project. If people are looking at a short-term, six to nine months, that's the wrong approach to take.
"Rangers and Celtic are the two big teams, known globally. Whoever goes into that job, it must be to compete with Celtic and push on from there.
"I'd be doing myself and Davie Weir a disservice if I said we didn't have the attributes. You must have confidence and self-belief in what you can do.
"I'm very respectful of the fact that Rangers are undoubtedly looking at a number of candidates.
"Whoever the candidate is, he must appreciate the size of the club, the history and where they have to be. It's about making significant progress."
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