Ross Wilson knows that for many the writing is on the wall for the Premiership season.
But the Rangers sporting director has outlined his reasons for giving it every chance in a letter to the SPFL.
Record Sport revealed last week how Wilson backed Aberdeen chief Dave Cormack when he urged the authorities to explore every avenue.
France, Belgium and Holland have already called their seasons but Wilson prefers to take a more optimistic approach like his old colleagues in England’s top flight.
Wilson used to work for Southampton and the Premier League reiterated its desire to complete the season on the day Manchester City star Sergio Aguero claimed players were “scared” to return to action.
Ibrox boss Steven Gerrard insisted there wasn’t a will from the SPFL to finish the season and Wilson said: “I wrote to the SPFL but not so much about playing behind closed doors, that wasn’t my point.
“What I saw from Dave Cormack and from other clubs was lots of enthusiasm, innovation and creativity to try to inject that into our way of thinking as a country and look at every possible avenue.
“From speaking to colleagues I was previously working with down south, that is the approach they’ve taken. Even if it ultimately proves to be an unsuccessful approach, that innovation and creativity to at least try to explore avenues was the first point I was supporting.
“And the second point was to ensure we consult all stakeholders – and definitely players, managers and coaching
staff – to see what their view is.
“Whether we’re talking about closed-door games, fixture programmes, safety, health, testing, it would be remiss of us to ignore the players, managers and coaches in the middle of it.”
You might think the role of a sporting director would be redundant during a period of inactivity but Wilson insists he’s busier than ever.
He said: “My focus is on building the football side of things. There are so many facets to the job. When I took over six months ago I went on record as saying the foundations were strong.
“There was a lot of building to do. One of the areas I was determined to build was our scouting network and we’ve been doing that in a big way.
“We have put a lot of work into building up our scouting team to where I want it to be. There will be people joining us post coronavirus.
“I have been working hard too with Steven and the coaches.
“The coaches have also been working hard on the analysis of matches played this season, with a view to next term and where we might build our squad.”
Wilson knows there is huge uncertainty over the next transfer window and there have even been calls for it to be scrapped.
He said: “I wouldn’t call for an abolition of it but there needs to be lots of flexibility. A lot of the work in the north of England in the EFL could be affected by this.
“It might well be that at a time of real financial difficulty for clubs there, one of the routes to trade successfully out of that would be an extended transfer window.
“That has been mooted on the continent already.
“Many clubs in our Premiership may have a lot of contracts running out. You need the transfer market to sell and move.
“The flexibility, innovation and the creativity around what the transfer window looks like should certainly change. There is a lot of appetite throughout Europe for that as well.
“There needs to be an approach that enables clubs to work the market to help the situation.
“I don’t think any list ever becomes redundant. As much as we possibly can, we want to pre-empt the different scenarios.
“So it’s not a case of having 100 lists. It’s a case of our list covering all the potential bases as to where the market might be. It’s a really difficult one to answer because nobody knows what that landscape is going to look like.
“The role of the scouting team is to make sure we are really prepared for all the eventualities right across the board.
“We are trying to make sure the scouts are covering as much as they possibly can.
“There are a lot of new processes, procedures and ways of working that I was really keen to implement. That now needs to start coming to fruition.”
