King reveals gratitude to Celtic

Dave King says Celtic have done Rangers "a favour'' by signing Scott Allan from Championship rivals Hibernian.

Hibs turned down three offers from the Light Blues for the playmaker earlier this summer as chief executive Leeann Dempster insisted she would not do business with Rangers.

With a move to Ibrox ruled out, the 23-year-old boyhood Rangers supporter sprang a surprise as he instead opted to make a £275,000 switch to the Hoops.

But Rangers chairman King says he only decided to make his move after receiving encouragement from senior Leith figures - a claim disputed by the Edinburgh club.

Rather than look on the saga with disappointment, King insisted he was happy to see Old Firm rivals Celtic weaken Rangers' main promotion challengers by signing their best player.

King said: "The way I viewed it differently from Hibs was that the initial approach came from Hibs. They said, 'We know you're interested. If you do want to do business with Scott Allan let's do it quite quickly so we know where we stand'.

"We proceeded to do it quite quickly so we were surprised with Hibs' official response that, 'We won't sell to Rangers under any circumstances whatsoever'.

"We initially took that as a negotiating position to increase the price and it was only after another couple rounds of negotiations that we knew they were serious. No matter what we did they were not going to sell to us.

Therefore I'm very grateful to Celtic from taking him away from Hibs. They did us a favour rather than leaving him behind.

"Clearly at a later stage someone within Hibs made the decision (not to sell to Rangers). I understand their position. We wouldn't be selling our top player to Hibs either. But unfortunately that wasn't the position that was communicated to us up front. As far as I'm concerned Rangers Football Club acted perfectly correctly in all aspects.''

However, in a statement, Dempster said: "I took the initial call from Rangers. I can confirm that Mr King's version of events is not correct.''

Even without Allan, Mark Warburton's new-look Rangers have made an impressive start to the campaign after netting 35 goals during a run of nine straight victories.

King is confident his team are on course for promotion but admits Warburton will need further fresh recruits if he is to eventually topple Celtic's dominance of the Scottish game.

King said: "Do I think what we have at the moment would compete for the Premiership title? No. I would say we need another five additions to the existing squad - a minimum of five - before we can compete.

"We understand the gap against Celtic but the ambition is not to come second.''