MARK WARBURTON is confident Rangers can be ‘highly competitive’ in the Premiership next season – but insists they don’t have to break the bank to take on the top flight.

The Light Blues will clinch the Championship crown if they can see off Dumbarton at Ibrox tonight before they turn their attentions to the Petrofac Training Cup final and Old Firm Scottish Cup clash on successive weekends.

After four years outside the Premiership, Rangers will be expected to compete at the top of the standings next term as they bid to stop Celtic securing a sixth-straight top flight crown.

And Warburton is determined the Gers will hit the ground running and live up to the pressure from the stands in his second season at Ibrox.

He said: “I’ll throw the question back at you. What’s the expectation of Rangers next year?

“My expectation is that we have to go into that league and be highly competitive. I view highly competitive as that we’ve got to be a very, very tough team to beat and to break down and that we go into games expecting to win them.

“If we go into games expecting to win them, I’m not going to sit here and say we’re not going to challenge for the league.

“I’m not going to sit here and say we’re going to win the league. I’d say that any Rangers team with David, myself and the staff, will be highly competitive.

“And we will go in prepared well with a squad of players that I think will match that description.

“I’m choosing my words very carefully because I know how you guys will report them.

“If you’re a football neutral and you look it and say that Celtic have had X years of European football – Champions League football – and the financial benefits and a squad packed with international players, the neutral will tell you that they will take some beating, absolutely.

“And it would be foolish to say otherwise – to go into a game as it currently stands, they have to be favourites.

“It would be totally ignorant to say anything other than that but our job is to close the gap.

“How well we close that gap will be about how competitive we are but Rangers will never go into that league satisfied with being third or fourth.”

If Rangers are to come close to launching a bid for the Premiership crown, Warburton will have to add several players to his squad during the summer transfer window.

Hearts boss Robbie Neilson has claimed the Gers will need to match Celtic’s significantly larger wage bill to stand a chance of challenging their Old Firm rivals.

And Warburton is determined to find value for money in any deals he does as he bids to bolster his Ibrox ranks.

He said: “We have put targets forward to the board, targets who we think will add the value to close that gap and make us highly competitive.

“This time of year, the players you are looking at are obviously still playing. The last thing you want to do is upset managers and coaches. But the groundwork is being done to hopefully secure the targets.

“I hear £18m, £28m, £24m – there’s a £10m disparity in those figures. I don’t know what their (Celtic’s) budget is. It’s not my business.

“What I do know is the quality we need. We have a number of players who we think can step up and keep on developing. Then there are some areas where we have to add quality.”