Andy Halliday: Rangers fans are now bored with lower leagues

Andy Halliday signed a new contract this week which ties him to Rangers until 2020 when he expects the club to be title challengers. Picture: SNS

The boyhood supporter of the Ibrox club was rewarded for his impressive first six months as a key member of Mark Warburton’s squad with an extension to his initial deal which will run for the next four and a half years.

Halliday’s primary target with Rangers remains securing automatic promotion to the top flight of Scottish football by winning the Championship title this season.

But the 24-year-old is already nurturing far loftier ambitions which he believes are credible under Warburton’s management.

“The most important thing for the club is to be back in the Premiership next season,” said Halliday.

“But I would like to think that over the next four years we would be back in Europe and challenging for Premiership titles because at the end of the day those are the demands at this football club.

“You will never settle for second. We have got to strive to win the title in the next four years and be back in Europe. It means a lot to the fans because of the journey they’ve been on over the last few years.

“I know certain Rangers fans that I’m friends with who try to look at the positives of what happened to the club.

“They’d never seen Rangers play at Annan, they’d never seen Rangers play in Berwick and places like that – so they wanted to tick them off their list.

“But let’s be honest, they’ll be getting bored with this after four or five years of it. So we just want to get back where we belong – and that first Premiership title we win is going to be all the sweeter.

“We are on our own little journey at the moment and hopefully we continue to get better and better. But I see a lot of potential in our squad.

“I might be wrong but I think it’s the youngest squad in Scotland. For the next four and a half years, I’ll enjoy seeing everyone around me getting better and better.

“Mark is probably the first manager that I have played under who plays a style of football that every single young football player in the world wants to play. We think it is the right way to play.

“People might think that some things that we do are not quite right, in terms of maybe the number of short corners we take or not going more direct if it is 2-2 going into the last ten minutes. But that is the way we see that we are going to get the best out of the team.

“The confidence Mark instils in his players is second to none. I hope the club gives him the financial backing to get the players that he wants because I think the players who came in the summer have all done not too bad. He has got a pretty good record.”

Rangers face Halliday’s former club Livingston at Ibrox this afternoon with the opportunity to open up a six-point lead at the top of the Championship over title rivals Falkirk and Hibs who face each other tomorrow.

“Neither of them have been dropping many points recently but at least one of them has to drop something this weekend,” he said. “Hopefully, if we do our job on Saturday, that will create a bit of an extra gap between us. But I can’t give enough credit to both Falkirk and Hibs. They’ve both won a lot of games this year.

“Falkirk beat us a couple of weeks ago, they’re obviously going to be tough. Fair play to Hibs, they’re obviously playing well. But they’re the ones who have to worry about us, because they’re playing catch-up. If we keep picking up enough points, we will look after ourselves.”