Rangers administrator tells takeover bidders to get serious

Paul Clark ‘wants only serious bidders by the end of the week (PA)

The Rangers administrator Paul Clark has revealed takeover interest from America and the Far East and called for all potential buyers to "put their money where their mouth is".

Mass redundancies were prevented at Ibrox on Friday when players accepted wage cuts of up to 75 per cent for the rest of the season and Mervan Celik and Gregg Wylde left voluntarily. Bids are being invited in an effort to save the Scottish champions and Clark is eager to identify "serious" suitors as soon as possible.

Clark said: "What we want is to have only serious bidders left by the end of the week. So anybody who has just been talking – and there are a few out there who have done a lot of talking – we want to seek them out and, as it were, [them to] put their money where their mouth is.

"Let's get them round a table so we know how many parties we've got. I don't care how many bidders we end up with but I want to know who they are, what they are and what their worth is, so then we can have more serious conversations about achieving the end goal which is to get Rangers under new ownership."

Former Rangers director Paul Murray is reported to be putting together a proposal with his Blue Knights consortium, and expects to finalise an offer for the club by the end of the week.

Current Rangers director Dave King is also involved with that group, while Brian Kennedy, the Scottish businessman who owns Sale Sharks rugby club, has previously indicated that he made an enquiry to the administrator.

Clark also revealed that Rangers would have lost 20 players if the first-team squad had not agreed to pay cuts. The administrator said the squad would have been "decimated" to save £1m a month. "If those cuts hadn't been made, and I couldn't do the sums until now, we would have been looking at cuts of up to 20 players in total," he said.