Nils Koppen reveals plans for changes at Rangers with ex-Ibrox stars set for key role

The Belgian steps up from his current director of recruitment role and will oversee several departments including the men's academy, medical, football operations, performance and analysis. He will also continue to lead the club's transfer strategy ahead of what he described as "quite an important" January window.

Koppen was originally hired by Rangers in December 2023 from Dutch side PSV, where he was head of scouting, having previously worked alongside manager Philippe Clement at Genk between 2016 and 2018. His promotion gives him similar responsibility to former sporting director Ross Wilson, who left for Nottingham Forest in April 2023. The 39-year-old has seen several members of the club’s football board depart since he arrived in Glasgow: chairman John Bennett, chief executive James Bisgrove and director of football operations Creag Robertson.

On his appointment, Koppen told RangersTV: "Nearly a year inside of this club and [I have] had the time to observe a lot of processes and people inside of the football department. I must say there's a lot of good people within this department but also a lot of areas that we have to improve, have to address on the short term and I think there will be some changes in the coming period, but all with the idea to strengthen the department and making the next steps. It's crucial that the team around the team has to be on the highest level to let our team perform on the park to get the best possible results.

"Winning is all that matters at this club and it is my job to ensure that everything that supports our men's first team, from recruitment, to the academy, medical, performance, operations, analysis and everything in between, is at as high a level as possible. I look forward to the challenge ahead and to supporting the wider team as we work night and day to ensure this club is challenging for trophies on every front."

Koppen is particularly keen to improve the output of the club's academy with plans to "sign the best talents of Scotland" and bring in former Rangers players to help coach them.

"I think there's a lot of good work to be done already in the last years within the academy but we cannot be satisfied with the general output of the academy," he said. "We have to keep on creating room for our own academy players to make the step to the first team, and we can do that by a better squad build-up, to roster them into the first team [and] to give them the opportunity to step up and be a part of that.

"I think one of the objectives still will be to sign the best talents of Scotland [and] to maintain our best talents, because I'm sure we've got a lot of good talents already in the building. We want to do that by strategic partnerships with other clubs, by changing our own philosophy, by bringing the players on a younger age, [to] expose them to the first-team training environment, to give them the opportunity to show themselves and make the right steps at the right moment.

"What we also don't have to forget is that we're a Scottish club - we have to educate players, not only for our first team but also in general for the Scottish game. One of the things where I'm looking at is maybe adding in some ex-professional Rangers players to increase that level of DNA to that level of detail."