Rangers 0 -1 AEK Athens: Rangers to lay down Welcome mat for Honduras front man

However, the Ibrox club's manager will have to do without Welcome in the forthcoming friendly matches against Clyde and Newcastle United because he does not have a work permit. Rangers travel to Broadwood on Wednesday evening and then host Newcastle United on Saturday in their final warm-up game ahead of the new SPL campaign.

Assistant manager Ally McCoist watched Welcome, 25, at this summer's World Cup Finals in South Africa, where he came on as substitute in all three of Honduras's matches, and now Smith will have a look for himself.

"Georgie Welcome will be coming to join us next week on trial," Smith said. "We can't play him in the games because of the work permit situation but we can look at him training, We will see what happens and then take it from there." Welcome plays for Deportivo Motagua in the Honduran League and he has scored three times in 17 international appearances.

Meanwhile, Rangers striker Kenny Miller believes the pre-season trip to Australia for the Sydney Festival of Football has served its purpose.

The Ibrox side had a mixed bag of results down under, beating Blackburn Rovers 2-1 and drawing with Sydney before losing 1-0 to AEK Athens on Saturday.

However, Miller is confident that the Scottish champions will be ready for the first Clydesdale Bank Premier League game against Kilmarnock on 14 August.

"With us having a small squad, the lads in the team have played a lot of minutes over the last week," he said. "That has helped to set us up for the league opener against Kilmarnock. We've been playing a new 4-1-4-1 system and everyone seems to have adapted to it really well. Steven Davis and Mo Edu have had a bit of freedom to get forward and support me, and Lee McCulloch has given them a safety net to do that. Things are coming together well for us and we've had three good games to test things out over here. We've played some nice football and the signs are definitely good in my eyes. "

Smith also believes his players can make a decent assault of their forthcoming Champions League campaign despite the loss to AEK.

"I think this match can serve as a dress rehearsal for what we will face in the Champions League," said Smith. "Obviously there are clubs who are a level above ourselves and AEK, like Real Madrid and Manchester United, but I think playing Athens has given us a good indication of what we will face. So the fact that we countered them so well and played to our strengths was encouraging. I thought we played very well. We had a slow start and didn't do so well in the first 15 minutes but after that, until we lost the goal when we had to chase the game, we restricted their opportunities. We had some really good chances ourselves and we had a very good penalty claim turned down when Steven Whittaker was taken down."

After missing a series of chances, a second-half goal from AEK's Australian substitute Nathan Burns separated the teams. However, Smith declared himself content with the trip.

He said: "Overall I was very pleased with the way we played. And that goes for the whole tournament. We did well in the Blackburn game, especially the first half. We played well for over an hour in this game and it was the conditions that affected us, and Sydney, in our game on Wednesday. So overall it was a good work out for us and the only disappointment is that we didn't win."

Rangers: McGregor, Whittaker, Weir, Bougherra, Broadfoot, McCulloch, Lafferty (Fleck 29), Davis, Edu, Naismith, Miller (Little 77). Subs not used: Alexander, McMillan, Wylde, Ness, Perry.