McCoist: Nobody told me to stop signing players!

Ally McCoist has defended his policy of signing top-flight players for Rangers.

The Ibrox manager has loaded his League One squad with big-earners, who have played at the highest level in Scotland.

Dean Shiels, Ian Black and David Templeton were all recruited during their Third Division campaign, with Cammy Bell, Jon Daly, Nicky Law, Richard Foster and Stevie Smith added in the summer.

In the past few days, Chief Executive Graham Wallace unsuccessfully tried to implement a 15% wage reduction on playing staff as the club’s financial problems begin to bite again.

Questions are now being asked about the wisdom behind such lavish spending on players in the lower leagues, but McCoist insists he was never suspicious of the numbers not adding up.

In fact, he says he compared the money coming into the club season ticket sales and a share issue to the reduced playing budget, and expected the club’s finances to be in order.

When asked if he was suspicious and wondering how the club could sustain such spending, McCoist said: “Not really.

“Not being an accountant, maybe I have it totally wrong. But with the player budget coming down, I was looking at wrongly, obviously season tickets and costs.

“Doing it on the back of a fag packet, it kind of fits. We had a lot of money in from an IPO (Initial Public Offering) of shares and we had two amounts of season ticket money. But I was obviously wrong and I obviously AM wrong.”

While his budget is clearly far too extravagant for the divisions they have been competing in, the Rangers manager points out the footballing budget is less than 35% of the overall turnover.

And he is adamant he was never ONCE told to stop trying to sign new players by the club’s moneymen. Did anyone ever stop and tell him he was signing too many players?

“No,” replied McCoist. “I asked where the money went. Graham said to me that some decisions that were made, in hindsight, possibly should not have been made.

“The Chief Executive at the moment is aware that some of the problems are there because of the decisions that were made for the short-term, maybe a year ago.”

That is McCoist’s way of pointing the finger of blame as previous Chief Executives Charles Green and Craig Mather, and he nodded his head when it was put to him the decisions were made then for other people’s benefit.

McCoist is still in the dark as to how the necessary cuts can be implemented after the players immediately rejected a proposed wage cut.

“That’s a question only Graham can answer,” said McCoist.

“I’m not clued up on all the intricacies of the business financially, but that’s a decision he’ll make.”

The Rangers manager could, however, gain more knowledge of Rangers’ current predicament at the club’s next Board meeting.

McCoist said: “I wasn’t at the last Board meeting, but I’ve been told I’ll be invited to the next one to discuss football matters. I’m not a Board member (meaning he’s unlikely to remain inside the Boardroom for the entire meeting).

“I’d need to think about whether or not I want to hear everything. If it benefited my relationship with the players and the staff, then yes. But, as you’re probably aware, in the current climate, sometimes some of the stuff I don’t know suits me as well!”