Rangers’s Lee Wallace fears damage of not going up

Rangers' Lee Wallace trains ahead of his team's next game. Picture: SNS

The left-back said: “It would feel like a lost season but it would also feel like it has been a wasted three years.

“We always felt we had the ability and we were going to make the steps and make it a seamless transition straight to the Premiership.

“It would be a massive disappointment and not many of us could contemplate staying and playing another year in the Championship.

“It’s going to be a difficult one for the mind. The mental strain over the last three years has been more difficult than anyone can imagine.”

Rangers will stay third in the table regardless of their result at Hibernian tomorrow but have won only once in nine games, with Queen of the South and Falkirk just five and six points behind with nine matches left.

Wallace committed himself to Rangers when others left in the aftermath of liquidation. He added: “I’ve definitely got to stand by my decision but I’m not going to lie and say I’ve never re-thought it, more so this season with how bad it has been.

“Although this season has been a major disappointment for us all, it will become a small speck in the club’s history in a few years. If we’re still here [at Rangers] in four or five years’ time, we’ll look back at that when there’s a possibility of playing Champions League football again. We can look back and say: ‘That was just a period of time when it wasn’t great but look where we are now’.”

Wallace won’t be joining the Scotland squad after the Hibs match and now believes his international career is over.

He said: “It’s probably a bit too late for me now. I was in and out of squads and what have I got, six caps? It didn’t really feel like I was a Scotland player.”