Former Rangers chief executive Charles Green has disclosed a bold and ultimately abandoned scheme from the club’s 2012 financial crisis.

This change would have seen the senior Rangers team compete in the English pyramid while a reserve side continued in Scotland.

Green explained that he considered buying non-league side Stafford Rangers, with the plan seeming simple in outline but radical in effect.

Charles Green explains his plan to create Stafford Rangers

Under Green’s proposal, the newly renamed Rangers would field the first-team players in the Northern Premier League or Conference. He explained the goalkeeper and the rest of the senior squad would transfer or go on loan, creating a side that was basically the senior team, for all practical purposes. This would happen while the actual Rangers reserves would remain in the Scottish league system.

The former Rangers chief believed that the idea was consistent with existing cross-border arrangements. He questioned why the same logic of Welsh teams being a part of the English system should not apply in this case. Green even went on to claim that rules were effectively changed or selectively applied just because he was the one looking to do it.

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Speaking on the Keys & Gray Unleashed podcast, he said: “If I buy Stafford Rangers, I changed the name a day after I bought it. It’s no longer Stafford Rangers. We delete the name Stafford and we become Rangers. And guess who the goalkeeper is for Rangers?

“Who are playing in the Northern Premier League at that time. So we now got a team which is, this guy, that guy, that guy, this guy, who are obviously the Rangers first team. In Scotland, we would have the reserves playing in the Scottish league.

“So the Rangers reserves at the time would win the third division, right? But the same year, the Rangers first team are now playing at Rangers because they’ve gone there either transferred or gone on loan.”

For better or for worse, the plan never progressed. The Gers, after Green’s consortium purchased the club’s assets for £5.5m following the rejection of a Company Voluntary Arrangement, were placed in the Scottish Third Division and began the long climb back through the leagues at Ibrox.

Green continues to state that numerous challenges blocked the Stafford route, though he maintains the concept offered a dual-track solution that would have allowed the first team to pursue English football while preserving a Scottish presence. This revelation adds a striking, yet fundamental, new detail to the turbulent period after Rangers’ demotion, highlighting the lengths considered in the search for a route out of the lower reaches of Scottish football.