ALEX McLeish last night refused to rule out the possibility of making a return to the Rangers manager’s job following the departure of Mark Warburton.
McLeish, who won the Scottish title twice during a five-year spell at Ibrox between 2001 and 2006, was back at his former club yesterday working for Sky Sports at the William Hill Scottish Cup match against Morton at Ibrox – a match Rangers won 2-1 with Under-20s manager Graeme Murty in charge.
Former Scotland international McLeish has been out of work since parting company with Egyptian Premier League club Zamalek after just two months in charge in May last year, and has edged ahead of Billy Davies, Derek McInnes and Frank de Boer to become the bookmakers’ favourite to take over from Warburton.
Before helping with the Scottish Cup quarter-final draw, McLeish stressed that there had been no contact from Rangers about succeeding the Englishman on either a temporary or permanent basis, Asked if he would consider going back to the Glasgow club, he said: “You never know. Obviously there’s a lot of speculation, but at the moment there’s nothing that I can update you on.
“I’m a Rangers man so you have to keep that in consideration. When you get asked to come to a club like Rangers then it’s for sure a hard decision to turn that down. If they come and they want to speak to me then I can only take it from there.
“I can’t come out and say I defin- itely want this job. I need to wait and see if Rangers would want me first.”
Rangers announced late on Friday evening that they had accepted the resignations of manager Warburton, his assistant Davie Weir and head of recruitment Frank McParland.
However, the former Brentford boss has denied tendering his resignation and the trio look set to take the Ibrox club to court over compensation which is believed to be in the region of £1 million.
Murty, who steered the team into the last eight of the Scottish Cup where Rangers will host either Dunfermline or Hamilton, said post-match: “The last day or so has been a bit of a whirlwind. I stood on the sidelines and thoroughly enjoyed watching the team play. I wasn’t overly satisfied at times but I think that’s the same for any manager. I am happy to get through.”
On his being put in charge of the team, Murty added: “I was at a rugby match a couple of days ago watching the Warriors when I took a phone call 15 minutes in asking me to please, come to Ibrox.
“I did that and was asked if I would take the game and I don’t think you
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