ALFIE WON’T GO FOR £40m
FROM BACK PAGE circumstance where we will sell Alfredo.
“I’ve said to the manager, if you get offered £25m for him, £30m, I wouldn’t sell him. You make your decision.
“I don’t want money in the bank. We’re here to win league titles.
“I made the point – we’re not like a mid-tier Premier League club who can trade players, make good money but are not under any pressure to win the league.
“The most important thing for us this year is to have the best shot at winning the league.
“I would rather keep Alfredo. If they offered £40m and the manager came to me, I’d be saying my instinct would be to keep him.
“We know he’s going to score goals. My view is not to sell him under any circumstances.
“And there would be no financial pressure whatsoever to sell Alfredo.
“So I think I can safely say Alfredo will not be going anywhere in January.”
Morelos might be going nowhere but King will leave Ibrox after the turn of the year after confirming at the club’s AGM in Glasgow yesterday he intends to stand down following almost five years as chairman.
The South Africa-based businessman insisted his job has been done in stabilising the club and the cash raised at the planned share issue will clear any losses and leave Rangers on a firm footing.
King said: “The crisis is finally behind us and normal activities can resume. I would not step down if the club continued to need my services and support. But it doesn’t.
“We’ll do one more major fundraise now. That squares everything away.
“The team then have to do what they do, win games. The only difference between us and Celtic at the moment, if you take where we were five years ago and where their commercial revenues were – remember we were in the Championship – right now we are exactly there.
“I’m not going to go into the maths but we are going to raise more than we we need.”
King will remain the majority shareholder but will end his day-to-day involvement with the running of the club.
Vice-chairman Douglas Park has been tipped to step up but the outgoing chairman won’t cut all ties.
King has vowed to continue the fight with Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct empire as Gers bid to free themselves from their prohibitive retail agreement.
He added: “I will continue in my role until the March boardroom meeting next year.
“Douglas will continue in his role as deputy chairman until then.
“After that the board will have to decide and Douglas, of course, will have to decide whether he wants to step up.
“I have told him it’s a great honour to be chairman of Rangers but it’s not a lot of fun.
“The board will elect a new chairman.
“I look forward to paying more attention to my South African and international businesses, and to having the time to work with my children in the manner I had intended before my duty to Rangers put that on the back burner.
“The South African economy is very tough at the moment and it is time that I redirected much more of my attention to my private affairs.”