Charles Green has offered Walter Smith a leading role in his newco at Rangers after he failed with a rival bid to take over the club.
Former manager's rival bid backed by supporters
Charles Green has offered Walter Smith a leading role in his newco at Rangers after the former Ibrox boss launched a last-gasp - but ultimately failed - rival bid to take over the club.
Green completed his £5.5million purchase of Rangers' assets hours after the 140-year-old club was officially consigned to liquidation.
The rejection of a Company Voluntary Arrangement at a creditors' meeting was a formality given Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs had already confirmed their opposition.
But events before and after proved significantly less predictable.
Green's fragile relationship with Ally McCoist was exposed amid reports the manager was set to quit before Smith urged Green to step aside.
Under pressure from all sides, Green called an impromptu media conference at Ibrox to appeal for unity and deny reports he was planning to replace McCoist.
"If Walter Smith wants to be chairman of the football club board, I'll appoint him at nine o'clock tomorrow morning," said Green. "The issues that I read in newspapers today about Ally, it's all rubbish.
"The reality is Walter and Ally are big pals. I'm nothing to Ally, don't expect to be.
No Benefit
"If there is a chance that Walter is going to put a bid together, Ally would support Walter and that's what I would expect.
"But the reality is there is no benefit to Rangers now to having these groups.
"If Walter, Jim McColl, Douglas Park, Uncle Tom Cobley want to be an investor in this club, this man [Imran Ahmad] will take cheques off them and put it in Rangers' bank account.
"What we're not going to do is sit around and wait because if we hadn't come along, this club would have closed.
"The administrator couldn't run it forever and no-one put money on the table like we did."
Green also revealed that Smith was not the only person to register an interest in investing in the club.
However, Imran Ahmad, warned that they were "professional investors" who "would want to see a substantial return."
Ahmad also played down any talk of a quick profit, insisting that any offer "would have to be a multiple of what we paid," in order for them to consider a sale.
Public appeal
He also revealed that they had already spent £10million with operating costs and advisory fees included.
"We bought the club on 11th May, we paid our money and we are now going to run the club and move on," said Ahmad.
"If Walter Smith really cares about this club and cares about the fans, then the door is open to him to lead the football club board.
"If these guys really care about the club, why would they use a tactic to try to put off fans from coming to what's a great institution?
"My view is that they should be embracing us and encouraging the fans."
But one of the members of the Smith-led consortium, Jim McColl, earlier issued a public appeal to Green to sell Rangers to their group.
"I would like to issue a public appeal to Charles Green to strongly consider selling the club to the Walter Smith consortium," he said.
"This would be in the best interests of Rangers FC, the Rangers fans and all of Scottish football."
