McCall happy to work with director of football

STUART McCall has expressed his willingness to work with a director of football if he is retained as Rangers manager beyond the end of the season.

Rangers manager Stuart McCall. Picture: John Devlin

McCall held his first meeting with new Ibrox chairman Dave King yesterday and declared himself “content” with what he heard.

On Thursday, King’s fellow director Paul Murray confirmed that the new boardroom regime at Rangers are exploring the possibility of recruiting a director of football to operate in a revamped structure alongside a head coach.

McCall has been interim manager at the club since mid-March and today seeks to complete another step towards promotion to the Scottish Premiership as Rangers take a 2-0 lead into the second leg of their play-off semi-final tie against Hibernian at Easter Road.

The 50-year-old former Bradford City and Motherwell manager has revealed that he highlighted the director of football-head coach model currently being used at Hearts in previous talks with Murray.

McCall believes it can work in Scottish football but insists the manager or head coach in any set-up must have a full say in the signing of players.

“It was me who actually mentioned to Paul a few weeks ago that I’d spoken to Craig Levein about the Hearts model,” said McCall.

“Craig needed Robbie Neilson to succeed as head coach, because he brought him in. Where it can fall down, and has done in England a few times, is if a manager suddenly finds three players turning up on the training ground he doesn’t know.

“But as long as the manager, whoever it is, has a say on the players coming into the football club then it could work. It depends how it is structured.”

McCall is confident he could meet the criteria set out by Murray for a manager capable of identifying potential talent, developing it and eventually selling it on for a profit.

“I’m not one to say I’ve done this or that. I don’t like speaking about myself that way,” added McCall.

“But when you go for an interview, you have to say what you have done. Along with loads of weaknesses, I’d probably say my strengths at Motherwell were bringing players into the club and hopefully improving them. Then you move them on.

“We brought in someone like Henrik Ojamaa on 300 quid a week and then sold him for £350,000.

“There’s a great opportunity here for whoever gets the job and whatever league Rangers are in. There is no doubt there will be fresh faces brought in along with good quality players here already.”

McCall says he was not given a timescale on the managerial appointment process in his meeting with King.

“We had breakfast this morning and it was quite informal,” he said. “It wasn’t like an interview where I’ve gone in and said, ‘We need that and we don’t need that’.

“It was just more of an all-round chat. I was pleased when I came out of it – I thought everything went well, he’s a nice guy.

“I’m quite content with the situation, 100 per cent. I’m very content. I’ll reiterate, and I don’t mean this in any negative way, but as much as I’ve said the job isn’t automatically mine if we go up, I don’t think it’s not mine if we don’t. My mandate when I came in wasn’t to get promotion. It was to improve certain things. That’s what I was told and I believed it.”