Beattie signs on for two years and vows to repay Rangers with goals

• James Beattie shows off his new colours after signing a two-year deal with Rangers Picture: SNS

The 32-year-old striker signed a two-year contract, with a further one-year option, yesterday afternoon after moving from Stoke for an undisclosed fee.

Beattie put pen to paper on the eve of the new SPL season, which will see Rangers raise the championship flag over a full house Ibrox before they entertain Kilmarnock, after Celtic have played at Inverness Caledonian Thistle in the lunchtime fixture.

Well-documented financial worries had prevented Rangers manager Walter Smith from buying a new player since the arrival of Maurice Edu in August 2008. However, the veteran boss has cash to spend for what will be his final season as manager before retiring and Beattie is under no illusions about what will be expected of him.

"The expectation and the demands which are going to be made of me were outlined by the gaffer when he talked to me," he said.

"That's something I relish and something I'm looking forward to very much. I suppose being a striker and a goalscorer, there is always pressure on you to produce the goods.

"As I see it, there is no better stage than this, playing for the biggest club in Scotland and one of the biggest clubs in Europe."

The pressure to succeed will be even greater with Beattie expected to fill the void left by top goalscorer Kris Boyd, now at Middlesbrough - a challenge he is fully confident he can handle.

"I think so, yes," he said. "I've always been confident in my own ability so I'm not going to say no. We'll have to see but I'm confident I can.

"Hopefully I'll score goals and a big part of my game is working hard and making sure the defenders don't have much time to settle on the ball. I think I'm good in the air. As an older player, the amount of games I've played, I've learned to create a space for myself and for others and bring other people into the game a lot better."

Beattie featured sparingly for Stoke in the second half of last season following an altercation with manager Tony Pulis and he admits he jumped at the chance to move to Rangers. "It was an easy decision to leave Stoke as I wasn't required there any more," he said.

"When a club like Glasgow Rangers expresses an interest in you and you have a chat with someone like Walter Smith and you have a look around Ibrox and the training facilities, then it makes everything pretty easy."

Beattie has declared himself fit for today's opener against Kilmarnock and will go straight into the squad for the clash at Ibrox. He is likely to be handed a role at some stage in the game. He said: "The type of character I am, I think I can bed into a dressing room quite quickly.I would love to have trained with the boys and done a few weeks and maybe even have gone to Australia with the lads but that's not the case. It's just a situation I'm going to have to deal with and hopefully I can get a bit of the action."