Thursday 10 September 2015 20:00, UK
Celtic "did Rangers a favour" by signing Ibrox target Scott Allan this summer, according to Dave King.
Rangers made three separate bids for the midfielder only to be rebuffed at every turn by Championship rivals Hibernian, who eventually sold him to Celtic for £275,000.
The move raised eyebrows given Allan's history of supporting Rangers, but King claims the 23-year-old's decision to join the Hoops could ultimately help his boyhood club regain Premiership status.
"No matter what we did, they were not going to sell to us," the Rangers chairman said. "Therefore I'm very grateful to Celtic for taking him away from Hibs. They did us a favour rather than leaving him behind."
King also claimed Rangers were encouraged by Easter Road insiders to bid for Allan, who was in the final year of his contract, only for Hibs to go cold on selling to their promotion rivals.
"The initial approach came from Hibs," he said. "They said, 'We know you're interested. If you do want to do business with Scott Allan, let's do it quite quickly so we know where we stand'.
"We proceeded to do it quite quickly so we were surprised with Hibs' official response of, 'we won't sell to Rangers under any circumstances whatsoever'. We initially took that as a negotiating position to increase the price and it was only after another couple rounds of negotiations that we knew they were serious.
"Clearly at a later stage, someone within Hibs made the decision [not to sell to Rangers]. I understand their position. We wouldn't be selling our top player to Hibs either, but unfortunately that wasn't the position that was communicated to us up front. As far as I'm concerned, Rangers Football Club acted perfectly correctly in all aspects."
King's account was immediately contradicted by Hibs chief executive Leeann Dempster, who said: "I took the initial call from Rangers. I can confirm that Mr King's version of events is not correct."
