On Friday, Dave King swept into Ibrox and took control of Rangers.

After an hour and half watching his club held to a 0-0 stalemate with Cowdenbeath at Central Park, King must have been convinced that investment was needed to improve the first team.

In fairness, King knew as much during his press conference last week when he stated that at least £10m would go towards rebuilding the Gers squad.

Wages will be freed up in the summer, when you’d expect players like Kris Boyd, Kenny Miller, Stevie Smith and Richard Foster to depart.

Now King, Paul Murray and John Gilligan also stated that they wished to see Rangers back in Scotland’s top flight asap and become Scotland’s second force.

Now we can all talk the talk but for that to happen this new Rangers regime need to start backing up their words with hard cash.

A way to do that is by looking around Scotland and trying to snap up the better players that don’t play for Celtic.

That brings me to Dundee United.

Yesterday the ‘Arabs’ came close to dumping Celtic out of the Scottish Cup. Their football is a joy to watch and manager Jackie McNamara has instilled a lot of confidence in his Tannadice squad.

In the last two transfer windows, United have sold Ryan Gauld to Sporting Lisbon (£3m), Andrew Robertson to Hull (£3m) plus Gary Mackay-Steven and Stuart Armstrong to Celtic (combined fee of just over £2m). All four have done extremely well at their new employers.

That shows you that things are being done properly at Tannadice. The club are still in fourth spot in the Scottish Premiership, are competing in the Scottish Cup and face Celtic in the League Cup final next weekend.

Scouts seem to be turing their attention to Dundee Utd’s Turkish striker Nadir Ciftci with Charlton, Norwich and Celtic being linked with the twenty-three year old in recent months.

Ciftci is the type of striker that gets in the faces of the opposition and a player that home fans love and the opposing fans love to hate. He’s a strong forward, who can be quite direct and skilful too. Dundee Utd’s number seven is an attacker that reminds me a lot of former Gers warrior Dado Prso.

Only Aberdeen’s Adam Rooney and Dundee’s Greg Stewart have scored more than Nadir’s ten strikes this season in the Scottish Premiership.

It’s this type of player that Rangers need to go out and try and buy this summer.

Now a few stumbling blocks may need to be hurdled before any deal could take place.

Dave King needs to get the Rangers company back off the floor. He needs to bring in a new management team and prove to the stock exchange and the SFA that he’s a fit and proper person to run the football club.

Plus you’d need to see if interest in the player from other teams develops into firm bids. If Celtic or an English Championship side really wants Nadir then you’d imagine the Turkish forward would want to try his luck with one of them.

King and his new regime would also need to convince United chairman Stephen Thompson to sell the forward to Rangers. The two clubs have a recent past of mistrust and bitterness. It could take a lot to persuade Thompson to deal with the blue side of the Old Firm.

In one of Dave King’s statements, last week, he made it clear that Rangers as an institution had to build bridges with the rest of Scottish football. This could be the start to that.

Thompson said before the recent transfer window that he values Ciftci at the same price as Gauld and Robertson, so around £3m. Rangers would baulk at that fee but come the summer the forward will only have twelve months remaining on his current deal, so maybe a compromise fee of £2m could be reached.

The United owner is a canny operator in the transfer market and will always work to get the best deal for his club. Now for Thompson to trust Rangers, I can only imagine that most of the fee would be demanded up-front plus a few add-ons to be placed in the contract too. If King is serious about building bridges then doing business with Stephen Thompson and Dundee United could go along way in proving that.

Then there is the player himself, would Nadir want to join Rangers?

Well only if richer sides aren’t enquiring about his services. If the Gers manage to gain promotion that would certainly make them a much more attractive proposition (They aren’t out of the promotion hunt just yet, although they need to vastly improve and quickly).

Money can always be a deciding factor and if Rangers can substantially improve Ciftci’s wage then maybe that can persuade the player to move to Govan. Rangers still have a big name abroad and the hitman could possibly see his chances of getting into the Turkish national squad boosted by a move to Glasgow.

Nadir Ciftci is a younger player, who has a burgeoning reputation. His powerful and aggressive style would make him a star with the Ibrox faithful. He’s certainly the type of player that Rangers should be looking towards rather than has-beens who have nothing left to prove.

Another player at Tannadice worth taking a look at is Radosław Cierzniak.

Back in the day, Ibrox would have two great goalkeepers vying for the number one spot. They’ve had Goram versus Niemi, Klos against Charbonnier plus McGregor and Alexander.

For me, Cammy Bell could be a very good goalie but still needs to prove that at Rangers. Back-ups Steve Simonsen and Lee Robinson aren’t good enough for regular stints in the first team.

The Pole in goal at Tannadice would offer Bell stiff competition and that can only be a good thing.

Cierzniak is a superb shot-stopper and has proven against Celtic this season that he is capable of performing in the top games. He has also shown that he has a fantastic knack of saving penalties, a great commodity for any keeper.

The goalie must have something about him as he has a cap for Poland, who’ve had the likes of Artur Boruc, Wojciech Szczęsny, Jerzy Dudek, Łukasz Fabiański and Łukasz Skorupski to call upon in recent times.

Strengthening in the goalkeeping department is a must if Rangers are going to be challenging for trophies in the near future.

The Glasgow club could learn a lot from how United, Aberdeen, Hearts and Hibs are run. Bring in exciting youth players, develop them,  sell for the right price and then replace them with hungry young stars who are chomping at the bit to prove themselves.

Another part of Dave King’s acceptance speech stood out and that was when he said Rangers would look to the past as away of securing a better future.

Well once upon a time Rangers would raid Scottish competitors and snap up the best of the rest. To become successful again, then maybe they will have to try and go down that former well trodden path.

Posted on March 10th, 2015 by scott
Filed under: Article