Rangers director of football says they must take time over new manager

Allen has announced a new scouting department - featuring former Rangers player John Brown - almost three months after beginning his role.

Rangers director Alastair Johnston last week confirmed Allen would have a hands-on role in the recruitment of a successor to the sacked Pedro Caixinha and the former Manchester City academy director believes they must do their research.

The Ibrox club have been tipped to approach Aberdeen boss Derek McInnes but, after Caixinha's appointment seven months ago proved a very costly mistake, Rangers cannot afford another failure.

Allen told the club's website: "As you can imagine, it's something which has come up very quickly, but the one thing I would say is we need to do our due diligence and we need to be sure this process is given the right time to find the right person."

Allen has appointed Andy Scoulding as his head of scouting. Scoulding previously worked with England, where he was described as a video technician, and moved to Valencia with Gary Neville.

Allen said: "If you look at Andy's track record, he has been involved in forming high-level scouting networks and has over 15 years of footballing experience. He comes with a track record of working in high-performance arenas.

"He is multi-disciplined. He has worked in England at Fulham and Liverpool and he worked with the England national team where he was responsible for putting together their scouting network which looked at potential England players. More recently, he has worked in Spain with Valencia."

Brown, who has previously worked as a coach and scout for Rangers, will head up their UK department while Dave Swanick comes in as European scout having performed the same role for Aston Villa. Billy McLaren moves internally from an academy role to help recruit young players

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