Rangers goalscoring hero James Tavernier has played down speculation over his future after both he and Martyn Waghorn rejected contract extensions tabled by the club.

Attacking full-back Tavernier and Waghorn grabbed the goals as Rangers got their season off to a flying start with a win over Motherwell on Saturday – and Tavernier says that is proof that both players are fully focused on their football.

The 24-year-old, who is contracted to the club until 2018, is dismissing speculation over his future, stressing that he is grateful to be at a club of such size and stature.

He is hoping that his agent and the club can come to an agreement so that his stay in Glasgow goes on even longer.

“I don’t really read the papers, I’m fully committed to Rangers,” Tavernier said. “Me and my family love it here and I know that Waggy and his family absolutely love it up in Glasgow too.

“We see our futures at Glasgow Rangers, and I’m sure it will get sorted out soon. It’s just normal contract negotiations. This happens up and down the country no matter what club you’re at.

“You go through a process, but it’s obviously been chucked up in the air a bit.

“You can take it two ways, you can either get frustrated or you can concentrate on the football.

“If you look into it too much it might throw you off on the pitch and you just can’t let that happen.

“You’ve got to be fully concentrated on what’s happening on the pitch and that’s what me and Waggy have been doing.

“The gaffer has seen that and Davie has seen that, so we’ll just keep working hard to go forward.

“We’re perfectly fine and we have been since we first came into the pre-season. We’ve got two years left so there’s nothing to worry about.

“We love it here and we’re working as hard as possible to become better players and obviously make Rangers a better team.

“This is a fantastic club and you’re not going to find a lot of clubs like this around the country.

“It’s a special place to be and the club have always been very good to me. The gaffer has given me a foundation that I’ve always wanted and I’m trying to repay that.

“I see my future at Rangers.”

Tavernier was buoyed by the way that Rangers grew into the game at Fir Park on Saturday after a shaky start, and with the likes of Joey Barton still to come into the side, he said they will only get stronger as the season progresses.

“It’s a great start,” he said. “It’s been a short break and a short couple of weeks since we’ve been in for pre-season, but it’s been going great and the trip to Charleston really benefitted the whole squad in our fitness.

“It just showed how strong we were in the game towards the end, so it’s been great.

“For our second game we still looked like the stronger team, so that shows how hard we’ve been working since day one.

“The gaffer wanted to strengthen the depth of the squad. We started today with our team from last year and then the new boys came in, and the team will obviously get rotated over these next three games.

“The new boys fitted straight into the game, so the gaffer has done a great job with his recruitment and it showed with Josh Windass and Niko Krancjar coming on and doing really well.

“They had a couple of chances in the first half and we might have been lucky that they didn’t put them in, but when it came to the second half we should have been five or six up.

“We missed so many chances, and of course it hurts when we do miss these chances. We don’t want to carry on from last season when we were creating loads of chances but just not putting them in the back of the net. With better opposition in the league we’ve got to be taking these chances.

“We’re trying to use this as a sort of pre-season looking towards the start of the league season, so it’s great to have such good opposition for that first game and we’ve set the standard really high.”

After a stellar campaign last time out on both a personal and team level, Tavernier was coy about his chances of reaching the same heights this season after moving up a level.

He was rather more bullish though when it came to his side’s chances of challenging for the title.

“I’d never say never, because I never expected to score as many goals as I did last year,” he said.

“It’ll obviously be difficult to try and beat that [goal tally] this year in the Premiership. Hopefully it can be done but I’ll just concentrate on my game.

“We want to be in Europe and we want to be a serious threat for the title. Our aim is to be right up there.

“You can’t just say that you want to smash the league this year, but we are fully and absolutely committed to trying to win the league.

“All the players are winners and the new lads that have come in have all experienced winning leagues, so we’ve all got that mentality and that’s what we’ll be carrying into the season.”