RANGERS

Uefa shake-up plans worry Warburton Manager calls for action, believing changes to the Champions League threaten the Scottish game. Graeme Macpherson reports

RANGERS manager Mark Warburton hopes Scottish football will continue to “fight its corner” in the face of Champions League proposals that would greatly reduce the prospects of the country’s title winners making it through to the group phase of the competition.

Uefa are considering revamping their flagship club tournament so the top four teams from England, Germany, Spain and Italy would all gain automatic entry each season. Currently, the top three from the leading three nations, plus the top two from the fourth-ranked country, gain direct access, with the next club from each league entering at the play-off round.

That change from 11 to 16 guaranteed places for Europe’s elite each season – possibly effective from 2018/19 – would have a huge impact on the smaller nations, as would another proposal to remove the champions qualifying route that pits the Scottish champions against title-winners from similar-sized nations.

Warburton believes it is vital that Champions League access remains available for clubs in this country and hopes those in charge of representing Scottish football’s interests will continue to fight against changes that could have an adverse effect.

“All we can do is keep pushing to try to help Scottish football as much as possible; co-efficients, whatever it may be, and getting teams in,” he said. “We have to push as best we can and hopefully we can fight our corner. There are huge decisions coming up in the next three to five years as to what’s going to happen. It sounds like places for smaller markets will be fewer, but that’s above my pay grade. Radical decisions will be made for club and international football.

“I think it’s important for the country to have Champions League representation and to keep pushing from there, and for other teams to perform, given the opportunity, in the Europa League. And it helps Gordon Strachan and the national team for obvious reasons so we have to keep pushing forward as a country.”

Warburton also revealed Rangers would continue to recruit players primarily from markets they are familiar with as they don’t have the luxury of giving overseas signings the time to adjust to Scottish football.

“Sometimes players that we know is where you go,” he said. “I knew [Rob] Kiernan, I knew [Harry] Forrester, and I knew [Lee] Hodson. It’s not negative towards European players, far from it.

“It’s just trying to give us the best chance of success as quickly as possible. With the expectation here, we don’t have the chance to bed ourselves in. There’s no two years, maybe it’s two weeks. We are not naïve about that fact. We know what the crowd and board, quite rightly, expect, so there’s no lack of understanding there. So we’ve had to move quickly and give ourselves the best chance.

“We took a boy, Jota [Jose Ramallo], at Brentford. What a tremendous player he is. But if you look back at the first three months we had to play him for no more than an hour, sometimes leave him on the bench, sometimes give him 15 minutes, just to get him used to the pace, tempo and intensity of the Championship. He’s now valued about £8 million and was £800,000 at the time. We can’t buy a player for £1m and leave him on the bench for three months here, that’s not going to happen. We don’t have that luxury.”

Meanwhile, Andy Halliday joked that Joey Barton “has a big mouth”, but said the former Burnley midfielder is one of the most demanding figures in the Rangers dressing room. Barton added to his list of controversial comments last week when he suggested that Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers was enduring “a mid-life crisis” but Halliday says there is a serious side to him, too.

“Joey’s a brilliant lad, I don’t have a bad word to say about him,” he said. “He’s very demanding but we all are. We’re a squad of winners. He demands an intensity every day. With some managers you know if you dip in a game you’ll get it from them at half time. But we now know we’ll get it from Joey as well! But that’s healthy and he’s been a huge signing for us. He’s a leader.

“He can be serious but he enjoys a laugh and a joke as well. He’s a top man off the pitch, but he knows when to get down to business. And he has got a big mouth – he’d admit that himself. But I get on well with him and he’s a vital part of the squad.”

We have to push as best we can and fight our corner. There are huge decisions coming up