[SIZE=13px][FONT=verdana]CHARLES GREEN reckons that his Rangers players want to PUNCH him — and he couldn’t care less.
In the midst of a bombshell week at Ibrox as he admitted shafting disgraced former owner Craig Whyte to gain control of the fallen Glasgow giants Green opened his heart to The Scottish Sun.
He knows his outburst slating Ally McCoist’s side has made him unpopular in the dressing room but there’s not a shred of regret on that score.
The Gers chief executive stressed: “A few weeks ago I made a statement that a few people were aghast about when I said that it’s the worst Rangers team there’s ever been.
“I saw pundits on TV saying ‘The Chief Exec shouldn’t say that’. Why shouldn’t you say it? Is it true? If it’s true, say it.
“If I felt that I could forecast so well, I’d start buying lottery tickets because the next day’s result against Annan PROVED it.
“The players? I suspect there is an element of ‘can I kick him’ or ‘can I punch him’.
“I suppose if we had a game of five a side there’d be a few of them would give me some heavy tackles.
“I think I’d need to find some of my old speed to get away from them.
“Look, I don’t think the manager was happy about it. I don’t think the players were happy about it.
“But I actually don’t say things to make people happy and I don’t say things to make people sad.
“I say ’em because it’s factually correct and I say it because I believe it.”
Green is bidding to adapt to life in a bitterly divided city where he is left bemused by the role religion still plays in our football.
The Gers supremo holds no truck with any of it, though, and he confessed he would ponder hiring ex-Celt and self-confessed fascist Paolo Di Canio just as Sunderland have.
Di Canio received a one-match ban in Italy in 2005 for giving his fans at Lazio a Nazi salute and had previously described himself as ‘a fascist, but not a racist’.
Green does not see what all the fuss is about.
He said: “I don’t know the facts about Paolo Di Canio’s fascist comments but what have your political beliefs got to do with how you do your job?
“If I’m hiring, I don’t care what religion they are, I don’t care what colour they are, I don’t care what their political beliefs are, or their social etiquette.
“What I think is wrong is to force someone to accept your view so I encourage with my children their right to express their view.
“Even to the extent of recent press speculation that we were going to sign Jon Daly and people are suggesting it may be a challenge because he’s a Catholic from Southern Ireland.
“Well, that’s not a challenge at all. Listen, I’m quite happy to go on record and say that the only challenge that there is ever going to be is on what wages someone wants and how I’m going to pay them.
“Can they do the job and are they going to respect the badge that’s on the shirt? That’s all the matters for me.”
Green insists he hates the growing political correctness that is creeping into society and revealed he still refers to Rangers business partner Imran Ahmad as ‘my Paki friend’.
Prince Harry famously found himself caught up in a storm when tapes emerged of him referring to an Asian soldier as ‘our little Paki friend’.
Green sighed: “The sectarian element of the Old Firm has been a hard thing to get used to.
“That is something that I’ve found truly amazing and hugely surprising to find this divide in Scotland. It is a completely new concept to me.
“I was brought up in a mining community where whether someone was black, white, Catholic, Salvation Army, Protestant, made no difference.
“When I played at Worksop Town, the other striker was ‘Darkie’ Johnson. Now if I say that today I could go to jail.
“You know, Imran will come into the office regularly and I’ll say ‘How’s my Paki friend?’.
“Of course, you have all the do-gooders and puritanical people now saying you can’t say that. Prince Harry got into so much trouble for that.”
Green is lurching from one controversy to the next right now but insists the good Gers have done on their travels in Scottish football’s basement keeps him going.
He stressed: “Going to places like Annan and Elgin, the whole town has been welcoming — not just the football clubs. The shopkeepers, the pastie shop owners, the bar guys.
“The local economies are booming thanks to Rangers.
“So it’s not just the clubs are getting capacity attendances and breaking new club records at every ground.
“I’ve had chairmen come to me and say: ‘Mr Green, my local pub came and gave the club a cheque for £1,000 because when Rangers turned up he had record takings. More than on Christmas Eve’.
“What we’ve got is a real legacy now that we can be proud of that shows how this giant of a club, that had been humbled so publicly, has stood proud, walked with its head held high and earned a lot of respect.
“Look, I wasn’t a Rangers fan when I came — but I am becoming one very quickly.
“This club becomes a part of you and you become a part of it. That’s been something that I never expected would happen.”[/FONT][/SIZE]