Rangers have begun talks with a potential new owner about a takeover and while Walter Smith gave a guarded response to the news yesterday, the manager acknowledged that fresh investment on a wide scale is urgently required at Ibrox.

The Scottish champions, who are £31 million in debt, announced yesterday that they have opened discussions with “interested parties” and named Andrew Ellis, a London-based property developer, as the man who could take control from Sir David Murray, who has been seeking a buyer for his 90 per cent stake in the club for some time. Ellis is the figurehead for a consortium that is said to be ready to offer Murray £33 million for his shares.

Murray quit as chairman in August last year after two years of failing to find someone to take over the club. A group of Rangers directors — Alastair Johnston, the chairman, John McClelland, Martin Bain, Donald McIntyre and John Greig — will consider the implications of the offer.

However, as Smith pointed out yesterday, time is of the essence because the overall structure of the club has been weakened by the debt that forced its bankers, Lloyds Banking Group, to radically bring costs under control as it tried to recoup some of its £31 million.

Even success on the pitch, both in Europe — where Champions League involvement this season led to a £13 million profit for the six months to December — and domestically, where Smith’s team are on the verge of a second successive Clydesdale Bank Premier League title, has been unable to halt the erosion of the playing staff.

“It is very difficult for me to comment on the situation with Andrew Ellis, because I don’t know much about it,” Smith said. “The possibility of a new owner coming in would be positive. However, there is a difference between expressing an interest and actually buying the club.

“It is important that the club can get itself back on an even keel again and start to have a level of investment, not just in the team, but in the club as well.”

Smith and his assistants, Ally McCoist and Kenny McDowall, have worked without contracts since January, when the three-year deal they signed on recruitment by Murray in 2007 expired. The contracts of six players, including David Weir, the captain, and Kris Boyd, the leading goalscorer, expire in June.

Rangers have not bought a player since August 2008 and Johnston warned that the “outlook remains fraught with challenges” despite posting improved turnover figures last month. Two other bidders are believed to be keen to take over, but the Ellis consortium, RFC Holding (Guernsey), will be scrutinised first.

A club statement said: “It is important that any possible bidder is able to demonstrate the capacity and commitment to provide a stable and sustainable future for RFC and the independent directors will want to understand fully the plans of any potential bidder in order to recommend the action that shareholders should take.”

If Smith was cautious about embracing the idea that a white knight is poised to ride to Rangers’ rescue, it is simply his experience of the capricious nature of takeover deals involving football clubs in general, rather than Ellis’s failed attempt to take over Queen’s Park Rangers, where he was a director, in 2001, and a short-lived venture at Northampton Town.

“It is very difficult for us to comment from a football point of view because it is not really in our domain,” the manager said, insisting that the issue would not distract his players from attempting to retain their title.

“Your choice of when it comes around is never going to be the perfect one,” Smith said. “We have been living in an uncertain environment for 18 months. It has not affected us so far.”