Raith Rovers director discusses potential link up with Glasgow Rangers

Kilgour revealed that, completely out the blue, Rangers had contacted Raith technical director John Potter and asked him to attend a meeting at Murray Park with Nils Koppen, the then Ibrox technical director who has since stepped down and been replaced by Dan Purdy.

He continued: "Nils spoke to John and he said that they’d pinpointed Raith Rovers as someone they would like to have a partnership with to develop their young players.

"The reason they chose us was they noticed an increase in crowds which they liked for developing their players. They liked the fact that we’ve got a technical director. They liked the work that we have done with Finlay Pollock in developing him.

"And also they had watched games and they said that they had really liked Barry Robson’s style of play and thought it would be a good style of play to develop their players.

"They then came to Stark’s Park the week after to have a look around and see what the facilities were like and they were really impressed. The way it was left was that we asked them to basically come up with a proposal for what this could look like.

"They saw this as bigger than a cooperation agreement. The rules in cooperation agreement are that the player must be Scottish and aged between 16 and 21.

"They saw this as something where they could potentially send us other players who were maybe a bit older than 21 and also weren’t Scottish.”

Kilgour said that whether or not Raith would pursue the link with Rangers was dependant on three factors, adding: "Number one will be a football factor where Barry and John would make a decision based purely on the football side of it.

"We as a board would make a financial decision on it about how this can help us with our budget in terms of what the cost would be to bring these players, or maybe they would be free, who knows?

"And then finally and most importantly there would be a brand perspective where we’d put it to supporters, because this is one of those decisions we feel supporters should be consulted on.

"We know that some supporters might not like the potential to be partnered with another club.

"So we would present all the facts. We’d present the opinion of Barry, we’d present the opinion of us as a board and we would let the supporters make the final decision.”

The cooperation agreement is a new initiative from the Scottish FA aimed at developing young players by allowing top-tier clubs to loan out eligible players (aged 16-21) to partner clubs with increased flexibility.

Kilgour added: "We first heard about this at the tail end of last year. Then it’s become a bit more popular in conversation in the last two months as clubs are starting to look at who they could potentially partner with.

"If I’m being honest it’s not one of John Potter’s priorities right now. There’s a lot of other things going on like just building a squad throughout the transfer window.

“No official proposal (from Rangers) has been sent. Rangers have obviously gone through a takeover.

"Nils Koppen is no longer at Rangers. Nothing has happened in the last three or four weeks but if anything does happen we’ll keep supporters updated.”