The Scotsman

Wilson does not have to sell to fund new signings

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summer of 2017, the 23-yearold is set to make Rangers a healthy profit whenever he does move on.

But, despite the club posting a loss of over £11 million in their most recent annual accounts, Wilson has been assured by chairman Dave King’s board that he does not have to sell in order to fund fresh investment in manager Steven Gerrard’s squad.

“The board are continuing to invest in the club to get us back to where we want to get to,” said Wilson in his first media conference since joining Rangers from Southampto­n

earlier this month. “Clearly, like in most clubs, part of that will be transfers out as well as transfers in to reinvest in the club.

“But I have not been asked to make sure we sell players to make sure we can reinvest in the team. The board have committed that they will continue to invest in the club going forward.

“Alfredo looks exciting, there is no doubt about that. He is scoring goals at an incredible rate and is a player who, at this moment in time, looks like he could play in any league.

“We are not planning on selling [in January]. We do plan to reduce the squad. We think the squad is too big and plan to reduce that slightly.

“We are not planning any significan­t incoming work, but if there is an opportunit­y that Steven or myself and the coaches think will enhance us, we will look at it.”

Wilson, who replaces Mark Allen in leading the recruitmen­t strategy at Rangers, is confident contingenc­y plans will be made to replace Morelos when the time does come for him to be sold.

“That’s a conversati­on that’s ongoing with the scouts all the time,” added Wilson. “One of the aims of the scouting and recruitmen­t department is to make sure that in every position 2 Ross Wilson rebuffed Rangers’ approach in 2017 but felt now was the right time to leave Southampto­n and take up the sporting director role at Ibrox. He says he and manager Steven Gerrard, inset below, are on the same page and already have a very good working relationsh­ip despite only being two weeks into the job. we always have a strong list of where we might go in a ‘what-if’ scenario. That’s something we’ve got and it’s something that will build and evolve and develop all the time.

“The scouting network here has started to be developed strongly across the last couple of years and I’ve had a lot of chats with Head of Scouting Andy Scoulding as to how we continue to develop that.

“The task is to make that scouting structure bigger and more robust, tap into the networks we’ve all got inside the club, to find as many opportunit­ies as we can, whether that’s from England, Scotland or into Europe.”

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