Kenny Miller asked to make decision on future

The 31-year-old Scotland striker, whose contract with Rangers expires at the end of the season, is currently considering offers from both Fiorentina and Birmingham City. Rangers have accepted a 700,000 offer from Birmingham but Miller is believed to favour the prospect of a fresh challenge in Italian football with Fiorentina. But Birmingham manager Alex McLeish, who yesterday saw a 2.5 million bid for Blackpool captain and former Rangers midfielder Charlie Adam turned down, has not given up hope of Miller opting for a return to English football.

The player is entitled to sign a pre-contract agreement with either club and wait until the summer before he moves on but Smith hinted strongly last night that he would prefer Miller to be sold during the current transfer window. "It would be a difficult issue for everybody, including Kenny," said Smith. "It is an awkward situation if a player signs a lucrative contract elsewhere and remains at your club. It's a difficult thing to then ask him to throw himself in front of an ugly centre half every week.

"Regardless of how it goes, I don't want it to drag on. I want a decision to be made. He is currently in negotiations with Birmingham and Fiorentina and we await the outcome of those talks. At the moment, we don't know if he is going to leave Rangers or not. I spoke to Kenny today and I didn't think it was right for him to be involved in tonight's game with so much going on around him. It used to be the clubs who dictated what happens in situations like this, but now it is down to the players. Hopefully we will find out in the next few days what he is going to do."

In Miller's absence, Rangers cruised to a 3-0 win over Kilmarnock to book their place in today's fifth round draw but were watched by just 13,215, the lowest attendance at Ibrox for a competitive first team fixture for 25 years. It was the smallest crowd since 12,731 watched a league game against Clydebank in January 1986. Despite the empty seats in the stadium, Smith was satisfied with events on the pitch as Rangers responded as positively as he could have hoped to their Old Firm defeat at Ibrox eight days earlier. First half goals from Lee McCulloch and Kyle Lafferty put the SPL champions in control of the before Steven Whittaker's penalty kick put a suitably convincing gloss on the final scoreline.

"We were expecting a tough cup tie tonight," said Smith. "We knew we would have to play well and we did. We started the game very well, especially the first half hour when we created a number of opportunities.

We were pleased we managed to get two goals before half-time. The game became more stretched in the second half, with Kilmarnock having to push more players forward, and we had quite a number of opportunities to score more goals. In the end, we are delighted with the victory."

In the event of Miller's departure, Smith is optimistic other players can fill the void left by the man who has scored 22 goals for Rangers this season."We would hope the boys would take up that challenge," added Smith. "It was good to see Lee McCulloch and Steven Whittaker score their first goals of the season tonight, while Kyle Lafferty produced a terrific finish. We also have Nikica Jelavic coming back from injury soon, but we will have to wait and see what happens. Kenny has not gone yet."

Kilmarnock manager Mixu Paatelainen was left to lament an off-key performance from his team who failed to reproduce their recent impressive form. He also left with concerns over captain Craig Bryson who suffered a potentially serious ankle injury in a challenge from Whittaker.

"We are hoping nothing is broken," said Paatelainen. "We don't know the full extent of it yet, we will find out after he has a scan tomorrow. It was a disappointing night for us, there were certain things we didn't do well.

"But Rangers played well and showed their class tonight."