FORMER Rangers striker Kris Boyd has hit back at criticism from Dave King and insisted that the Ibrox chairman should concentrate on ‘fixing all of the in-fighting’ at the club – rather than taking a swipe at former players.

Boyd was one of 11 players to leave Rangers after their failure to gain promotion to the Premiership and yesterday penned a two-year deal, with the option for a third, at Kilmarnock – his third spell with the Ayrshire club.

King described those 11 players as having ‘failed miserably’ after Rangers had been humiliated 6-1 on aggregate by Motherwell in the Premiership Play-Off Final, and that ‘no new manager would want to keep them.’

However, Boyd has responded by insisting that the Ibrox chairman should have appointed a new manager far sooner than he did and that too many people at Rangers were looking to stab each other in the back last season.

‘Dave King is entitled to his opinion,’ said the 31-year-old former Ibrox striker. ‘But he has got a lot bigger issues to fix at Rangers rather than to spend his time talking about former players.

‘If I had one criticism of him, then it would be that he should have got a manager far quicker that could have dealt with everything, rather than him trying to deal with it all himself.

‘There was so much in-fighting around the club. For instance, why did Dave King do that press conference, in which he had a go at some former players, when he was already due to announce a new manager the following week?

‘It was like two press conferences for nothing. I think whoever is advising Dave King really needs to have a look at themselves, rather than just looking after their own interests.

‘Rangers as a club need to be pulling in the same direction. There’s no point in someone working at the club saying they need to do x, y or z, and then another employee saying they need to do something entirely different.

‘It needs to be together – and that includes everyone who works on the media and press side of the club as well. There’s no point in stitching people up behind their back and holding press conferences at random.

‘At the end of the day, people just need to do their job at the club and speak about football. If you’re picking up a paper, you don’t want to read about all that nonsense. You want to read about football.

‘Rangers need to get back to doing what they do best – winning games of football and getting back to the top of Scottish football.’

Boyd, who scored 92 goals across two previous spells with Kilmarnock, has signed for the Ayrshire side for a third time and joins fellow summer recruits Kallum Higginbotham, Jamie MacDonald and Scott Robinson at Rugby Park.

His contract is a two-year deal, with the option for a third, and Boyd is keen to put the misery of the past year at Ibrox behind him and get back to scoring goals for Killie.

‘I can say quite honestly that I didn’t really enjoy last season as a whole at Rangers,’ he added. It wasn’t a good place or environment to be in.

‘I just want to focus on the new challenge I’ve got at Kilmarnock. Even when I was at Rangers, I was still doing some coaching at Kilmarnock in the evenings, helping out with the kids and with the Under-17s on a Thursday night.

‘I’m from the Kilmarnock area and I always knew what was going on, so it was pretty easy to settle in. There are some new faces but I’m looking forward to getting started and helping push Killie up the table.’