FORMER Rangers striker Kris Boyd has urged Ibrox chairman Dave King to back his management team in the transfer market this month or risk losing them in the summer.

Rangers have already missed out on one January target in Toumani Diagouraga - the Brentford midfielder instead signing for Leeds United - and have yet to conclude a deal for another in St Johnstone’s Michael O’Halloran.

King said back in September that Rangers will “do business in the January transfer window”, and with just five days left, Boyd believes it is time for the chairman to provide the funds that would allow manager Mark Warburton to bring in the players he wants. Failing to do so, he warns, could see Warburton and assistant David Weir walk away from the club, even if they win promotion.

Boyd said: “When you have a board or a chairman trying to get people back onside by saying: ‘We will spend money, we will do this...’ then go and back the manager.

"Everyone in Scottish football has been pleasantly surprised by the way that Mark Warburton and Davie Weir have gone about their business and the attractive football that they’ve brought back to Rangers.

“But, at the end of the day, if they come up this year and the two of them leave and go back down the road [to English football] then I don’t think that the club can have any complaints.

“Ultimately, if you’re promising someone something and you don’t give it to them then why would you stay?

"It works both ways. The manager has come up with a plan and said they’ll do this and do that – they’ve done their job with what they have.

“It’s now up to the club to go and back them and strengthen the squad. I think when you put yourself in that position, if you’re not going to do it then I don’t see why you open your mouth and say you would do it.

"I can understand the things he [King] has said at the beginning to try and get the fans back on side and appease them.

"You could say that [the management team] have been let down although, at the same time, they were given money at the start of the season.

"But we’ve been reading things like: ‘We’ll spend £3-5million in January so that we don’t need to spend when we go back up’.

"Well, go and do it. The big thing for Rangers fans is that they’ve been lied to all along for the last five or six years. You want a structure put in place but, at the same time, it’s up to the board to go and back the manager.”