Southampton’s Ross Wilson suggests Rangers have ambitious plans, shares why he snubbed Ibrox move

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Rangers attempted to bring Ross Wilson to Ibrox over the summer.

Southampton’s Ross Wilson has told BBC Sport that it simply wasn’t the right time to join Rangers earlier this year – but he thinks Rangers have ambitious plans.

After the Gers parted ways with manager Mark Warburton back in February, they announced their intention to move to a more continental setup, featuring a director of football working above the manager.

Pedro Caixinha was brought in as manager, but Rangers failed to bring in a director of football before luring Mark Allen away from Manchester City back in June.

Since then, Caixinha has been sacked, and Allen is aiding the search for a new manager – but it could have so easily been Southampton’s Ross Wilson serving that role instead.

Rangers keenly pursued former Falkirk director of football Wilson, who had built a strong reputation with Watford and Huddersfield before heading to Southampton in 2015.

The Gers attempted to bring Wilson back to Scotland earlier this year as their director of football, but as reported by BBC Sport, he snubbed the role in order to stay at Southampton.

Now, Wilson has told BBC Sport that he had ‘great conversations’ with a number of Rangers figures, admitting that the plans at Ibrox are ‘hugely ambitious’ and exciting for fans.

However, Wilson didn’t feel that it was the right time to leave Southampton and return to Scotland, and feels that Allen has a huge yet exciting task ahead of him at Ibrox.

“Obviously there was a lot of media conjecture at the time, a lot spoken about the thing.“The people at Rangers, there was contact of course we had some discussions, they were fantastic. I had great conversations with Andrew Dickson, Stewart Robertson, Graeme Park, Dave King – the conversations were all really, really good. Ultimately everything they said was hugely ambitious, great plans for what they’re trying to do at the club. But ultimately it was just wasn’t the right time for me to leave England and come back to Scotland and definitely not leave Southampton at the moment in time. So it just wasn’t something that worked for me at that moment in time.”

“It would have been hugely exciting; the size of the club in itself makes that task exciting. Mark Allen is there now and he’s got a huge task in his hands but rather than looking at it as a huge task, I think it’s an exciting task. Ultimately, the reason I decided to stay where I was is because I’ve got such a great job where I am and there was no reason for me at that moment in time to leave Southampton and take the job,” he added.