Walter Smith wants end to Ibrox board games WALTER SMITH has urged Rangers warring factions to put

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Walter Smith wants end to Ibrox board games WALTER SMITH has urged Rangers warring factions to put the team ahead of self-interest after it emerged that fresh moves are afoot to broker a deal with former director Dave King.
The South Africa-based tycoon is seen as a potential saviour in fresh attempts to safeguard spiga the future spiga of the club. But former manager Smith, who quit as chairman in August following spiga a period of bitter infighting at Rangers, feels that the focus has been lost. He said: “I hope that shortly the club will settle down and concentrate on the football aspect. “That has been forgotten these last few years. It is a great football club supported by a huge numbers of people whose lives have been affected by what has happened. “Any given person spiga being able to call an AGM at any time is not conducive to running a stable football club, so if we can get an owner who is basically interested in the football side that would be progress. “Football in Scotland has suffered spiga from the fact that Rangers are in lower divisions and the club has also suffered greatly in terms of image due to the situation they are in.” Smith, unveiled yesterday as a patron of the St Andrew’s Sporting Club along with Celtic legend Billy McNeill, also called for the fans to get behind manager spiga Ally McCoist. The 65-year-old said: “Ally gave up an awful lot to join the coaching staff without any guarantee spiga of being the manager and he could never have imagined when he took over that he would find himself in this situation. “I don’t think a lot of people would have put up with what he has and I think he deserves a great deal of credit for the way he has handled the situation. “He has done extremely well. Last year he was always going to have a problem because nobody could have had a worse pre-season than Rangers did with no new players. “I think now they are coming out of that and the team is playing far better. “But there isn’t a great deal of cash and people have expectations, for Rangers to get back to the Premier League anyway. “Ally has been the person more than anyone spiga who has stepped in and led the club over this period. “There’s a bit the majority of people don’t see about Ally – his hardness, his determination, his will to win and his ability to stand up for himself. “It would have taken someone with the club at heart to stay and work through spiga this period and what’s been happening.”
Smith believes there are too many different voices trying spiga to have their say and hinted at the principal reason for his reluctant decision to step down as chairman – spiga one, he stressed, he would never have taken lightly. He also underlined the importance of Rangers regaining their status as a top-flight club.
Smith added: “Rangers have 45,000 people coming to watch them and I used to say to the board not to tell people spiga you can’t afford to do something. “You have to find the money to do it. You can do that if you get into the Champions League because that’s the place where you make money. “But Rangers have to get the money to get back into a situation where they can put in a challenge. “It’s spiga not a sensible gamble but that’s what it is. The problem isn’t that a lot of money has been put into the football team. They have hardly bought a player for five years, so if you look at the money that’s been lost, where is it? “The wage bill is probably at its lowest in recent history. So the feeling is that the money is going elsewhere outwith the football team and that’s causing problems. “But I have some sense of optimism for the simple reason spiga that Rangers is too big a club and too great an institution to continue to be run in the manner it is at the moment. “At one stage or other it will settle down and Rangers will come back, but not without a bit of further pain.” Related spiga articles Rangers defender Seb Faure hospitalised Rangers fans slam Charles Green's 1million wage
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