Former striker Mark Hateley has said that he feels the Championship level will suit Rangers, and goalkeeper Cammy Bell has said he’s confident the team will up their standards further and continue our promotion runs of recent seasons.
Starting firstly with Hateley, he told the Official Site that with the club now set to face teams on a more similar footing to Rangers, both in terms of technical quality but also fitness, he feels that games will be far more open next season and our opponents won’t just sit back in games – they will come at us – and he feels matches being more open will help us to play a more attractive game whilst continuing to be success with results.
‘It’ll be a different sort of competition but in some way I think it will be an easier platform for Rangers to play football. Teams will not just come and park the bus and ask Rangers to break them down. You’ll be looking at teams on a similar sort of fitness level to Rangers and with that comes a more open pitch leaving more spaces to pick teams off.’
Hateley goes on to say that although it will definitely be a different challenge for the club now compared to the one we have faced so far, he feels manager Ally McCoist will be relishing it nontheless because he knows it will be an opportunity to give rise to football that has been completely different from the last two seasons.
‘I think it will be more expansive because teams will come to Ibrox and want to have a go and I think this is when you’ll see the guys who have come in over the last year excelling in next season’s Championship.’
As for Cammy Bell, he’s said that he feels the squad can and will raise their standards to really compete successfully in the Championship next season and he feels that the league could be the most exciting in Scottish football given the teams that will be taking part in it in 2014-15.
‘It’s always in the back of your head that you’ve got a new season to look forward to and it’s going to be a great league. Hibs could come down as well and you’ve already got us and Hearts in there too. It could be a great league it’ll be really competitive.’
For us specifically he goes on to say that everyone in the camp is aware that we’ll need to raise our game again and he has every confidence that we can do that, but the watchword for the campaign will be consistency again given how we dipped in the New Year really.
‘We’ve got good enough players here already and I’m sure the manager will add people to the squad who will make us stronger again. That will ensure we are all on our toes and that we’ll need to play our best football to stay in the side. We need to kick on again and I’ve no doubt that will happen.’
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