Frank McParland targets 'exceptional players' to improve Mark Warburton's Rangers squad

The Light Blues’ new Head of Recruitment will be at the forefront of the search for reinforcements during the January transfer window as Mark Warburton’s side look to clinch a return to the Premiership sooner rather than later.

McParland will, the Gers hope, then have a key part to play in the summer as Warburton and assistant David Weir attempt to build a squad capable of competing for the top flight title at the first attempt.

The former Liverpool youth chief stepped down from his position of Sporting Director at Burnley to take up a role on Warburton’s staff and is relishing the challenge at Ibrox.

McParland said: “I’ve just come from Burnley, where we were looking at players to get us out of the Championship, players to help us stay in the Championship, and looking for players for if we were to be promoted.

“So you’ve got to have a few sets of eyes on different things that you want to do, but obviously we want players that can play in the Premiership next year.

“It is a blank canvas, and I am going to sit down and analyse it and get my head around everything we’ve got, and see where we can improve it.

“We need to analyse what is needed and see what money is available. The team are doing not bad at the moment, so it’s not a bad time to improve things, although it’s going to take some exceptional players to get guys out of the team at the moment.

“Whoever we bring in has to be a lot better than what we have already, so it won’t be an easy task.”

While the recruitment of new stars will be McParland’s main priority in the months and years to come, there will be no spend for the sake of it philosophy from Warburton.

The Englishman is keen for Rangers to produce their own stars of the future and has spoken positively about the players and staff he inherited at Murray Park in the summer.

McParland was responsible for signing the likes of Raheem Sterling and Jordan Ibe during his time on Merseyside and hopes there are budding Light Blues ready to make their mark at Ibrox.

He said: “At every club I have been at, I have really been keen on getting the Academy players through – they know what the club is made of, they’ve got a heart for the club, and what’s better than having Rangers supporting players playing for Rangers?

“They have good rules here – they are strict with the players and they know what is expected of them. Rather than buy a player, for me, I would always rather produce one.

“When I was at Liverpool, I was Academy director for four and a half years, and brought a lot of good players in.

“So I’m there to support them, and having watched them, there are some really good players coming through, and that was certainly the case at 16 and 17 years old where there are players I was really impressed with.”

The capture of McParland was a crucial one for Warburton as he made the first high profile appointment to his staff since he and Weir were installed as Rangers’ new management team in June.

The lack of a fully functioning and adequate scouting network at Murray Park was first raised by Ally McCoist a couple of years ago as staffing levels were drastically reduced.

But McParland hopes he will not be the last new arrival as he looks to put a proper structure in place going forward.

“I would hope [we could make further appointments],” he told rangers.co.uk.

“I few are going to push on, we need to be really well organised. We don’t need hundreds of scouts as some clubs have, but we probably need a few more.

“I see myself working, certainly for the first couple of months, mostly around the first team, and analysing and looking at everything we’ve got.

“The manager has a good shout on everything that’s here at the moment, but I want to see everything for myself, speak to the people and look at the Academy and everything that’s here.”