DAVE KING believes the Rangers youth ranks can become one of the top Academy structures in Europe as Auchenhowie chiefs look to develop the next generation of stars.

The Ibrox chairman has spent recent days providing an update to supporters on a range of issues right across the club and has now turned his attentions to Murray Park.

Light Blue legend Ian Durrant recently left his role as Under-20 boss and chairman King is confident the new appointment will become part of a successful team at youth level.

He said: “Moving away from traditional football recruitment methods, we decided to advertise to ensure that we get the best individual for the post.

“Each candidate will be put through a rigorous series of interviews, presentations and checks to ensure we get the correct person who will fit into our culture and who has the necessary skill set to help our players make the jump from the Academy to the first team. It is important that we develop our staff as well as our players and that we have experts in all of the disciplines.

“We are creating a ‘best v best’ culture whereby we maximise the challenge for our Academy players. This may be via top tournaments abroad, fixtures in England, playing against older players and putting players on loan to best prepare them for the first team.

“Each player is an individual project. We must ensure that the challenges our players face are at the correct level at the correct time in order to change the normal pathway experienced by young Scottish players.

“By making decisions in the interests of the player we may negatively impact on the results of some of our Academy teams.

“That does not matter – producing players for the first team is the only objective of the Academy. The only team that must win is the first team.

“We have the ambition to become one of the top 15 Academies in Europe and are creating an environment with our coaches sports scientists, medical, welfare and education, operations and analyst teams within the Academy to achieve this goal.”