WILLIE Henderson calls it as he sees it. The diminutive winger racked up nigh on 500 first-team appearances for Rangers, winning two League Championships, four Scottish Cups and two League Cups, playing in two Cup Winners' Cup finals and racking up 29 Scotland caps in the process. Now it is Celtic players who are racking up most of the major honours which are up for grabs in Scottish football and asked to assess the size of the gap between the two Glasgow big guns the former winger reckons it would take approximately £50m of in investment in new players for the Govan giants to be properly competitive with Celtic again. Speaking at the launch of this year's nominations for the Scottish Football Hall of Fame, Henderson said that Pedro Caixinha will need to make wholeseale changes to his squad during the summer and the Parkhead side recording a historic 10 top division titles in a row was inevitable unless there is serious outlay of cash on the Ibrox first team. While his assessment actually tallies with comments made by Rangers owner Dave King upon his arrival at the club, that "the minimum it would take would be £30m but it would probably be £50m", the 73-year-old feels it is time the board put their money where their mouths are.

"I don't think there has been £50m spent on players," said Henderson."And we need £50m spent on players to give us a chance of competing with Celtic next year.

I don’t know enough about what’s going on at the top of the club and what their plan is but the plan must include investment in players. The fans have been sensational and are paying their money every week but how long are they going to take it?"

“If money is not invested in players it would be very difficult to stop Celtic doing ten-in-a-row," added Henderson, part of the Rangers squad who battled with Celtic's nine-in-a-row players during the 1960s and 1970s. “But, one of the things people forget is the doors were ready to be shut on the club. That’s how far down the road it was. People tend to forget just how close that was. If you looked at it from that angle then from as business side of things it is a bit better. But, now it has been stabilised there needs to be real investment to take it back to having a team that can compete with Celtic - and even Aberdeen."

Scottish football, however, is a difficult environment for investment in its own right - even without the numerous legal wrangles which the club still find themselves dragged down by. Henderson doesn't care where the new cash comes from - indeed he would welcome a foreign investor if that is what it takes for the club to take the next step forward. “Any businessman that comes into football would accept that you are not going to make money," he said. "I would open the club up to an investor from overseas if they want to put the money. You would need a businessman who wants to do something good for Glasgow Rangers. However, as a business investment who would want to invest in Scottish football? Nobody is going to watch football in Scotland outside of Rangers and Celtic."

As far as Rangers were off the pace on Sunday at Hampden, Henderson will reserve judgement for now on Pedro Caixinha. He knows that football ultimately comes down to the players on the field, and the really bad news is that he feels less than a handful of this squad are capable of taking the club back to a truly competitive level. "What is happening just now took me back to the early sixties when the Rangers team I played in were so much better than Celtic and then the genius that was Jock Stein came along," said Henderson. "He was able to turn players such as Jinky [Jimmy Johnstone], Tommy Gemmell and Bobby Murdoch into stars and then, the masterstroke, bringing Bertie Auld back from Birmingham to be the maestro in midfield. That’s what I see happening at the moment but back then these players were available to Jock Stein. I don’t see too many Rangers players right now being able to be turned into players we need to have.

"The game has always been about players and I’ve said before Rangers need investment, an investor because there needs to be a lot of players bought to even give them a chance of catching up with Celtic. Celtic have so much control just now, a lot of good players performing well and Brendan Rodgers has done well since he came up. If we don’t invest in players then Celtic will be at the top for a lot of years."

Trailing Celtic is bad enough, but having a fair amount of ground to catch up on Aberdeen in second is even more galling. "Very much so," said Henderson. "But one of the things from the weekend game - and people have to understand this - is it looked as if there wasn’t enough effort being put in to a lot of the fans, but Celtic are just so far in front of us it’s difficult to make an impact against them. What the board have done since they came in has, to a certain extent, been fine. But the next step, now they’ve probably got the club on a better footing that way, is investment in players."