MARK WARBURTON will blend ruthlessness and obsession with his commitment to passing football and succeed in his hugely ambitious three-year plan to bring Champions League football back to Rangers.

That's the view of Burnley sporting director Frank McParland, who worked side-by-side with the Light Blues manager and his assistant David Weir at Brentford and will travel north with the Turf Moor club's delegation for next Tuesday's much-anticipated friendly at Ibrox.

"If he is given full backing by the board, I am 100 per cent sure Rangers will be in the Champions League within three years," said McParland, who pushed Warburton into giving up the role of sporting director at Brentford in December 2013 and becoming a manager.

Goalkeeper Wes Foderingham revealed after joining Rangers that Warburton sold the Ladbrokes Championship outfit to him by promising a passport to European football's premier competition by 2018.
McParland insists his former colleague will definitely deliver on that bold pledge – providing chairman Dave King and his fellow-directors support his ideas.

He said: "They have taken him there for a reason and it is to get the club back to where it should be. I am convinced he will do it with the board behind him.

"The first thing you have to be is very good at your job. The second thing you have to be is really obsessed and totally hard-working and the third thing you have to be is loyal to the club.

"If you have those three things in one person, you have a recipe for success. Warburton and David Weir have those three things in abundance.

"I don't do a lot of interviews because I don't think I am very good at them. I speak freely and you can get misquoted, but this is not bull****.

"No-one ever says anything bad about anyone in interviews, but I am telling you that these two are really top people.

"I have got so much confidence in them. Mark is a terrific man-manager and people like him, but he has a real ruthless streak."

Warburton spent years working as a trader in London's Square Mile before, aged 40, he returned to his first love of football. As McParland reveals, though, he still sticks to the relentless hours he worked in The City and that refusal to clock off early means he will be able to marry first-team duties with rebuilding the club's youth system into the model he wants.

"He gets in at six in the morning and doesn't go home until eight at night and he will be in touch regularly with the academy people," said McParland. "As long as he gets the backing of everyone and is permitted to make the changes he wants, he is a success waiting to happen.

"He has all the teams playing 4-3-3 and we did that at Brentford. All sides must mirror what the first-team is doing because it means that everyone knows what is expected when you come up to train with the first-team.

"Mark lives or dies by the way the first-team plays and he wants the kids coming up to have the same level of coaching. For the first six months or so, he will be mainly on the first-team, but he will reach down to the academy eventually."