GROUNDED IN DESIRE FOR A FLYING START

AMERICAN owners, sporting director Kevin Thelwell and boss Russell Martin have all touched down at Ibrox but it won’t be long before the squad will be up, up and away.

- By Andy Newport

With the first of three European qualifiers only six weeks off, the new regime in charge at Ibrox find themselves flying by the seat of their pants.

With new signings to be recruited, players to be shipped out and a new radical possession-based style of play to be drilled into the team, there’s not a second to be wasted if Martin’s new side aren’t to crash and burn upon take-off.

It may seem like they are operating on a wing and a prayer with so much work to be done in such a short period of time. But Patrick Stewart is confident Rangers can soar at the same time as they set about constructing the runway it’s hoped will at long last have the Light Blues pointing in the right direction.

The Ibrox CEO said: "I fully appreciate it’s very different and the expectation is success now whilst developing. So we’ve got to build the plane while we're flying the plane.

"Everyone recognises that. Russell recognises it, Kevin recognises it. It is hard, it is really hard, but we’re all used to working in hard conditions.

"The people at the club now are used to big challenges but we see that as a positive, we enjoy the challenge.

"You come to a club of the stature of Rangers and if you don’t come with your eyes open you probably wouldn’t get through the door in the first place. We love the challenge, we want to take on the challenge and we’re confident we’ll succeed.”

Rangers’ recent trajectory has been a spiralling decent. One league title in 14 years tells a story of failures stacked on failures. Dragging the club out of that nosedive won’t be easy but Stewart is prepared to make the alterations he believes can soon have things looking up for the Ibrox legions.

He said: “We've been second for a long time, obviously 55 aside, and if we don’t change something we’re going to continue finishing second.