RANGERS players are more likely to be sold after they turned down a 15% pay cut.

That was the warning from Gers legend Derek Johnstone today after it emerged that the first-team squad had rejected the proposal.

Johnstone believes stars like Lee McCulloch, Lewis Macleod and Lee Wallace were quite entitled to knock back the offer. But he thinks doing so has increased the likelihood Ally McCoist's stars will be sold either this month or during the summer as the club struggles to cut costs.

Johnstone said: "To be fair to the players, when they signed these contracts Rangers had no debt and pretty soon they had over £20 million in the bank thanks to a share offering.

"The majority of them, too, could have signed for clubs which play at a far higher level.

"But they got offered more money to sign for Rangers and they grabbed it. They joined for the chance to play for a big club like Rangers for good money.

"Having said that, there will only be four or five players who are on decent money. The rest will not be on big wages."

But, Johnstone said: "If they do not want to take a pay cut that is down to the players themselves. They are entitled to turn it down. The situation the club is in is nothing to do with them. The fact all of this money has gone amiss is not down to them."

He added: "Now that they have taken this decision it will mean that a fair few of them will probably go. Boys who are out of contract in the summer, the young lads who are coming to the end of their deals, will probably not be offered a new deal either.

"The squad will have to be trimmed. The players who Ally has been carrying up until now, the ones who have not been getting a game, will have to be let go.

"If he can keep his main stars then that will be a huge bonus, but in the predicament the club is in nothing is certain."

Johnstone is astonished the club are in this situation and believes the club's former custodians are responsible.

"The fact the club is in this position once again just makes your blood boil. It beggars belief.

"But I feel sorry for Graham Wallace and many of the other people who are currently running the club. They are being painted as the bad guys by some, but, really, they have inherited this mess."