Naismith: Ibrox chiefs tried to bully us to sign

STEVEN NAISMITH has claimed the Rangers hierarchy tried to ‘bully’ players into signing new deals following the club’s slump into insolvency in 2012.

The former Ibrox star has opened up on the tumultuous time at Ibrox when players began to consider their futures at the club amid the financial turmoil which led to administration, liquidation and the prospect of playing in the bottom tier.

Naismith says the club, then under the ownership of Craig Whyte, attempted to force their hands during discussions.

‘It was surreal, at the start,’ Naismith told The Lockdown

Tactics podcast. ‘I had just had a bad knee injury in October and everything started to unravel in the January.

‘It was surreal that this club had been so successful. Yes, players had come and gone, but you never really expected it to be the way it was.

‘Then it got to the point where it was as if they knew what was happening. But they’d come in one morning and be like: “We need an answer right now, what’s happening (with contracts)?”.

‘So I personally didn’t like the position they were putting us in, in terms of trying to push you and bully you into giving an answer that you didn’t want to give.

‘There was a group of us, Greegsy (Allan McGregor), myself, Davo (Steven Davis), Jig (Lee McCulloch) that would kind of stand up and say: “That’s not good enough”.

‘You’re a footballer trying to play the game but for 80 per cent of each week we were talking to administrators and the board or whoever was employed by the club to talk about everything but football. It was a terrible time.’

Naismith also told how players would only work twice a week on the training pitch amid the off-field issues, with rivals Celtic ultimately overcoming a massive points difference to land the Premiership title.

He said: ‘In January, when it all kicked off, it was all: “We’re going to do X, Y and Z to get the club on a good footing. Nothing will change, we’ll move forward and everything will be plain sailing come the summer”.

‘We were 15 points clear at the top of the league at the time and after the administration, as soon as that happened, the boys would train twice a week.

‘Then you’d go to a Saturday game and the results nosedived. It just got worse and worse, honestly.’