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Green suggests Rangers quit Scottish football

Charles Green will look at Belgium and the Netherlands © Getty Images

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Rangers chief executive Charles Green will recommend the club quit Scottish football before plans to reconstruct the league system are pushed through.

Green, who has made regular remarks about Rangers' place in Scottish football, talked up their candidacy for a place in a European super league structure as well as heavily criticising their demotion to the fourth tier.

The new plans to merge the Scottish Football League and the Scottish Premier League have been greeted with disdain by Green, who claims the plan is driven purely by cash.

He told the club's official website: "If this does happen, what is the point of us finishing the season? Why should we send players out to get broken noses - like Ross Perry last week - or have players getting surgery when no-one can get promoted and no-one can get relegated?

"We might as well have a winter break now till next August. I can't see any point in carrying on with meaningless matches. In what league do you win a division and then end up playing the same teams again the following season? There is no meaning to it, in reality.

"I haven't read anything other than what is in the press and if that is what we have sat here eagerly awaiting to transform Scottish football, my advice to the board of Rangers is the quicker we can leave Scottish football the better. I can't see anything that is going to transform the finances, the status or the excitement."

Green concedes that there isn't a clear alternative option as to where Rangers would go if they quit Scottish football, but that will not stop him looking, citing plans to form a 'Beneliga' between Dutch Eredivisie sides and the Belgian Jupiler Pro League - and Standard Liege's appetite for it - as an example of the need for change.

"On first glance, of course, there is nowhere for us to go because FIFA have made their feelings known on cross-border leagues," he added. "However, we have noted the comments of Standard Liege recently and what [Celtic chief executive] Peter Lawwell said at his AGM a few weeks ago when he discussed the changes in Europe.

"Hand on heart, today there isn't an option, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't start looking for an option. If all we have to look forward to over the next four years is more madness then we would be failing as directors not to explore the alternatives."

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